Page 3 of His Forgotten Wife

Then there was the giant payout he had given her for signing the marriage contract, along with stock options in GenTech.

She’d used up three-quarters of it to pay toward a long-term care home for her grandfather’s foreseeable future.

As for the remaining amount, she’d simply written out a check in her aunt’s name, which she hoped would cover the meals and clothes and shelter that she and her uncle had given her after her parents had died—as she had been reminded of constantly after they had taken her in.

It was the only way her self-respect would allow her to take such a huge amount from Ares.

But she wouldn’t mistake his caring for her as attachment or more, ever again.

“How long before you can transfer his care to a live-in nurse?”

“A month, maybe. I don’t like the idea of leaving his care to some stranger,” she said, giving in to the inevitable, but adding a big chunk of buffer for herself.

At some point, she’d have to tell him the truth about what had happened between them. She owed him the truth, even if it meant the end of things between them forever.

The very thought made her stomach cave in.

“That’s too goddamned long, Dahlia.” His distress came through in his thickening Greek accent. “I need you more.”

She laughed past the tears clogging up her throat. “And there’s the demanding billionaire baby I know.”

“Is this some kind of petty revenge for something I did?” His gray eyes bored into hers. “Did I upset you before I left for Greece?”

And just like that, he came straight to the messy point. “That’s not how…” She swallowed. “I would never…”

The words wouldn’t come because she was doing exactly what he was suggesting: punishing him—because it was a punishment for Ares to deal with people who didn’t know him and whom he wasn’t comfortable with. That included his family.

She was punishing him for what he didn’t feel for her. Which was so wrong of her.

His mouth took on a tight set. “You’re a liar, Dahlia.”

Dolly flushed. “I can try to be there in two weeks. No earlier. And you’re footing the bill for the live-in nurse.”

“Of course.” The tension seeped out of him instantly, as if someone had suctioned it out using a tube.

Which only made the dark circles under his eyes and the gauntness of his face more pronounced.

Guilt stabbed her in tiny pinpricks because she could see that he really did need her.

“I’ll have Christina send you the paperwork for reinstatement. ”

“That’s not necessary, because I’m not coming to you in a professional capacity.”

“I don’t need your fucking pity,” he bit out.

“There has to be something between pity and being paid for every moment I spend with you, Ares.”

“I have been out of it for seven weeks, Dahlia. Christina said the board has been giving her a hard time. Most of the R & D has stalled. I need a bloody assistant to put things to rights.”

“Okay, fine,” she said, giving in. And then, because she was a pushover when it came to him, she said, “I’m glad you’re well. I worried about you.”

“Come here and make life easier for me, then.”

She laughed at his sheer arrogance and how he didn’t see it that way at all. “You can’t dictate how I show my…care for you. That’s not how this works.”

“What use is it, then?” he demanded, a petulant note creeping in.

Tucking her hair behind her ear, Dolly resisted getting into it with him. “I’ll be there only temporarily though. A month at the most. My grandfather needs me here.”

“It’s kind of beneath you, ne ? Using him as an excuse to get out of dealing with me and whatever problems exist between us?”

How was the man so perceptive one second and so dense the next? Because he doesn’t understand emotions , came her own answer. “Fine, you want the truth? I think it’s time I moved on from…you, from being your assistant. So I won’t be coming back to work for you.”

“You make it sound like I tortured you?” The sliver of doubt in his voice—as if it truly were a possibility—pierced her like a needle stabbing into her skin. All she wanted was to reach out and hold him, for both their sakes.

Good thing there was a screen and thousands of miles between them.

“Of course you didn’t,” she said, threading a smile through her words. “And I wouldn’t have stood for it if you had.”

“So what was the problem, then?”

Dolly chose her words carefully. After all, she had prepared them for weeks while praying to the universe that he would come out of the coma, healthy and whole.

“Working for you meant I had no life outside of the job. I’m twenty-six and have hardly even been in one serious relationship.

I had no friends, no fun, no…existence outside of circling you like a planet stuck in orbit.

Let’s just say my biological clock is ticking and I heard it loud in the last few months. ”

“Why am I under the impression that you aren’t someone who would let society’s arbitrary constructs railroad you into following a decided schema for your life?”

Damn it but the man knew her so well.

“You’re under the wrong impression. It seems I do want grand romantic love and companionship and really fantastic sex and friendship and…babies.” If she sounded belligerent, it was to cover up the tremors in her voice. But she couldn’t hide the heat cresting her cheeks.

While their relationship had always straddled the line between friendship and more, it was the first time Dolly had verbalized her personal desires in such bare words.

Weeks ago, she’d been foolish enough to assume she could have them with him. As long as they were on the path to seeing each other as more than friends and colleagues, she didn’t care how long it took to get there.

She couldn’t be so foolish again , she reminded herself now. Definitely not with this man who could shred her into pieces with two pithy sentences.

He hadn’t just rejected her tender admission of attraction, but called their entire relationship into question.

“Nothing’s wrong with it if that’s you want, Dahlia,” he said, responding to her tone. “Maybe things have changed for you. Or maybe I didn’t know you that well to begin with.”

She nodded, hating herself for putting him on the wrong foot. Especially when he wasn’t completely himself.

“A month it is, then,” he said, a steeliness in his tone. “For me to change your mind and make you stay with me. Shouldn’t be that hard.”

Despite conflicting emotions pulling her this way and that, Dolly laughed. At his sheer arrogance, at his innate confidence, at how the truth of it shone in his eyes.

For a long time, she had prided herself on the fact that Ares needed her, that only she could keep his life running smoothly.

Only to realize that he saw her as no more than a parameter, a constant at that, in the vast, complex equation that was his mind.

“I’ll see you soon, Ares.”

A sudden rise in the noise level in his room told her his family had arrived. “Not soon enough for me,” he groaned, sending goose bumps over Dolly’s skin.

She ended the call before he could see how desperately she wanted to soothe him, to be by him. To hold him even, not that she ever had before.

And now she had a month to come clean…

Her belly twisted up in knots as she wondered how she would bring up the small, sticky subject of their having been married in secret.

How she would admit that he’d asked her to marry him—to sign a watertight contract to be exact, for a one-year marriage with a huge payout on signing—on one normal Tuesday evening as if it were just a complicated business assignment.

And how she had said yes without hesitation and signed the contract.

Because it meant everything to her that he would trust her beyond anyone else, because it meant that, maybe, just maybe, he liked her a little, even. As more than a friend, as more than an efficient assistant.

In her stupid pathetic heart, it had even looked like they were finally taking a step forward in their relationship.

Not that she’d expected Ares to change overnight and fall in love with her just because she was his wife…

There was also the fact that, having stood by him all these years, the lawsuit and the claim on his fortune made her just as furious as it did him.

A wife had been the perfect way to protect his assets from his vulturelike half brothers, who had twisted their grandfather’s long-ago birthday gift to Ares into a family investment that they also had a claim to.

She was a wife he could sign off his assets to at a moment’s notice. As his spouse, her own private assets would be untouchable by his family in the state of New York. But that was the last resort, the final trick up his sleeve, only to be used if he couldn’t settle the lawsuit outside of court.

The last thing he wanted was for a scandal to touch the Demetrius family.

A week after they had signed the marriage contract, they’d found themselves stuck in a cabin upstate with a snowstorm raging outside. She’d drunk cognac—which had loosened her tongue and her heart, cheap drunk that she was.

And when he had pulled her to her feet and she stumbled into his chest, she blurted out her attraction to him. Her feelings for him that she had tried so hard to nip in the bud but failed.

His rejection had been swift and brutal, leaving her with no doubt of his disgust.

Burying her face in her hands, Dolly let out a half groan, half cry.

It was clear to her that Ares remembered nothing of their arrangement, nor the lurid details of her admission and his swift rejection.

Her time with Ares Demetrius was limited before either the gap in his memories would fill in or she’d tell him the truth. And that difficult fact made her chest heavy and her throat tight.