Page 2 of His Forgotten Wife

Only in the last few months had she learned that Ares was actually estranged from them, given the open animosity between him and his two older brothers. Even that admission had only come about because he’d needed her “cooperation.”

Naive fool that she had been, she’d readily agreed to his proposal and promptly lost her common sense.

“They must be overjoyed to learn you’re awake,” she added, trying to be diplomatic. “Your mother definitely.” She remembered the fondness in his tone when he’d spoken of her.

“What I know is that they irritate the hell out of me.” He swept an expansive hand around himself, gesturing to the chaos.

“The worst is that they’ll take advantage of my weakened position.

The best scenario is this is a fresh opportunity to develop a better relationship.

Which is why I need you here, immediately. ”

“Need me there?” Dolly repeated inanely. As your wife? The question danced on her lips, yet something held her back.

She recalled their visit to the county clerk’s office, where they signed the marriage contract with two strangers as witnesses in order to protect his wealth, and then the weekend that had followed. The memories drifted through her head like wisps of impressions from her most cringeworthy dream.

“For what?” she forced herself to say.

“As my assistant, what else?” Impatience coated Ares’s words. “While the specialist assures me I should recover fully over the next year, he did say that my memory could be hazy and vague for a few months.”

“Hazy memories…” Lead settled into her stomach, even as another part of her—obsessed with belated self-preservation—shuddered in relief.

What if he never remembered their arrangement or her foolish admission that she had feelings for him? Could this be the fresh start she needed with him?

Maybe she didn’t have to exit his life completely, maybe…

Dolly shuddered at her eagerness that she might not have to remove herself from his life. The time it took for Ares to recover and remember would only be a short respite.

“Are there gaps in your memories? Around any particular time?” she probed.

Ares thrust a hand through his hair, frustration imbuing his every gesture.

“If you haven’t wiped your memory of everything connected to me and the company, you’ll remember that the month before I left for Greece was a particularly stressful time.

We had that merger we were considering, and then there was the litigation suit. ”

“Of course I remember,” she said, a thread of anger weaving into her own words now.

“All I remember is being very angry with myself on that flight back to Athens,” he said, ignoring her admission, telling her he was in that tunneled hyperfocus mode, “and then through the chopper ride to Corfu.”

His gray eyes held hers, penetrating even through the screen. Sweat beading over her forehead, Dolly realized he was waiting for her to fill in the blanks. A very real feeling of horror clamped her gut.

“Did we fight, Dahlia?” he said when she remained silent.

She shook her head. Was it a lie if it had been less a fight and more a fissure in their relationship? The last thing either of them needed right now was a recap of how badly that entire weekend had turned out.

“What else did the doctors say?”

“Why do you care?” he said, sounding like that churlish stranger she’d met years ago.

“Please, Ares. I know that you won’t share any of this with your family. So tell me.”

He stared at her for a few seconds, his gaze thoughtful. Then he sighed. “The usual stuff about not forcing the blanks to fill, to not rush things. To let my body and mind dictate the healing, mental and physical.”

“I can understand that this must feel very…threatening, especially to you,” she said, choosing her words carefully.

“Losing control of your mind and your body in such a horrible way, but it’s important to let yourself heal now.

Insisting that it happen on your timeline only defeats the whole thing.

Slowly but surely, everything that’s important will come back to you. ”

She knew she was comforting herself along with him, though it didn’t really work.

His scowl was so familiar that it warmed her insides more than her own words. “If I need a motivational therapist, I will hire one.” His frown deepened. “Is my memory gap that bad or did you feed me this kind of bullshit before too?”

“Fine,” she said, her composure snapping. “If you find what I say so…trivial, why are you calling me?”

“I told you, I need you here. Honestly, I’m disappointed that you haven’t been sitting by my side night and day, waiting for this moment. Here I woke up with a distinct impression that you were unflinchingly loyal.”

“Need me there for what?” Dolly demanded, matching his grumpy tone, knowing that his expectation of her wasn’t too far off.

The number of times she’d almost called Christina to beg for a flight ticket on the company’s dime was laughably high. Only his sheer contempt for her on their last meeting had stopped her. And the worry that he might work himself up into another bout of fury if he saw her on waking.

The bald reminder of how weak she could be when it came to him made her words unusually sharp.

“You’ve literally just woken up out of a coma five hours ago.

A coma you’ve been in for seven weeks after sustaining a horrible head injury.

Your memory is hazy, and you’re clearly not in good physical condition.

And like you just mentioned, I do not possess any kind of skills that could be of use to you.

We both know you don’t keep people like me around out of the goodness of your heart.

” If she was throwing the gist of the things he’d said to her back in his face, there was the relief that he didn’t know that little fact.

“Again, have you always been this mouthy with me?” He raised a thick brow, lips twitching. The glint of humor in his eyes took the edge out of his question. “If you have, why do I think you’re irreplaceable to me?”

“No one is that for you, Ares. You have always made that clear.”

“So we argued about your importance in my life?”

God, the man had a brain like a steel trap. Dolly fidgeted in her seat, holding back the wriggling truth with great effort. “Not really.”

Because they hadn’t argued. He had simply told her what she was to him and what she wasn’t and how foolish she was to harbor feelings for him.

And how damnably inconvenient and awkward she’d made everything by actually confessing to them.

And oh, couldn’t she have just swallowed it all or kept them to herself at least?

But despite her confusion and fear at how tangled things had become between them, and annoyance at his current high-handedness that she attend to him, she understood that he must be feeling all those emotions a million times more strongly.

“To tell you the truth, I do not feel like myself,” he said, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck.

“I do not like that feeling when the entire world is already so strange and alien to me. The last thing I need in this condition is to be surrounded by my…family. But… I can’t leave until I solve this litigation suit, once and for all.

Wasn’t that the reason I traveled to Greece? ”

Dolly nodded, even as her pulse spiked like unearthed wire looking to ground. She’d never felt more devious than at the moment, willfully keeping a big secret from him. Was it willful if it protected them both though? she wondered, her head beginning to pound now.

“While I understand your dilemma,” she said softly, “there’s nothing to be done, Ares. Sometimes, life has us by the short and curlies, and we simply have to give in. Trying to wrest control during that time is…counterintuitive, to use your own words.”

A smile split his thin lips, changing the very landscape of his rugged features. It even touched his eyes, melting the gray frost. He looked boyishly handsome, so achingly beautiful that the knot in her chest tightened, as if he were holding the threads for it and tugging at them willy-nilly.

Seven weeks of his absence apparently hadn’t thickened her armor enough. But caring about him shouldn’t necessarily mean that she loved him. The last few months had made her see how terribly tangled her own feelings were.

“Ahh…what a poetic way to put it, Dahlia. Is that why I kept you around, for your no-nonsense approach to life?”

She shrugged, wet heat prickling behind her eyes. “I kept up with your maniacal moods and impossible demands better than anyone else. Maybe that’s why.”

“So make this period ahead easier for me. Help me catch up to everything. Come back to your job, Dahlia.” When she hesitated, he bit out, “Whatever you’re making, I’ll double it. I’ll triple what you were making with me before.”

“I’m not working currently,” she blurted out before she could catch the ramifications of admitting that to him. “I told you, I needed a break,” she added, hoping he wouldn’t read much into it.

“But you take care of your aging grandfather and pay the mortgage on your aunt and uncle’s house and pretty much support all of them, don’t you? Plus you have those humongous student loans for Columbia that you wouldn’t let me clear.”

Dolly blinked.

How could he remember that small, insignificant fact but not the earth-shattering contract they had both signed? Had her fervent admission that night been so traumatic that his mind had blocked out the entire week leading up to his accident completely?

“Dahlia?” he prompted, tone impatient.

She cleared her throat. “You paid me well enough that I had some savings. The day after your accident, my grandfather fell and had to have hip surgery. Seemed like a good time to take a break.”

“Sure you don’t need any financial help?”

She shook her head, shying her gaze away from him.

For all his temperamental moods and ruthless demands on her time and energy, he had always been more than fair to her monetarily.