Page 9 of His Forgotten Wife

This attraction was last thing he needed right now, an extra complication when they were caught in a situation that demanded constant proximity. And it made him wonder if he had felt this awareness and attraction to her before.

Had he tamped it down because it was unprofessional and made him feel this…out of control? Had he ever admitted it to her?

Because he was definitely failing now at keeping the boundaries, especially given he was parading her as his fiancée.

“Right,” he said, refusing to betray this new awareness just yet, “I forgot about your whole dating, romance and babies plan.”

Her shoulders went straight, stretching the soft fabric of her sleeveless top tight across her breasts.

The light from the hanging sconce limned her high cheekbones and lips, leaving the rest of her face in alluring shadows.

“Mock me all you want. But nothing’s wrong with paying attention to what I want from life. ”

“How did the two unofficial dates go?” The pulsing, pounding pain behind his left eye felt worse as the image of Dahlia with different men moved through his head like a bloody slideshow.

“Should I expect one of those men to pursue you across the Atlantic and fight me over you? Do they know that you’re engaged to your billionaire tech boss and are playing around with their hearts? ”

Swift color rushed into her cheeks, lips parting on a gasp he wanted to catch with his own.

“What?” Her voice rose, a half growl, half squeak, drawing attention to them.

She laced her fingers on the table. “They weren’t even dates.

More like coffee at the bodega and sushi at the hospital cafeteria.

Two random guys I met while waiting nights at the hospital.

It was more for company than anything else. H-how do you know?”

“Christina told me.”

“She had no right to do that. Are you paying her to spy on me?”

“We were talking and I expressed my concern at your irrational behavior. She told me what you’ve been up to.”

She leaned forward, her anger rolling off her in waves. “ My irrational behavior?”

A subtle scent of jasmine, deepened by her own, teased his nostrils. He was claimed by an intense, overwhelming urge to duck his head and bury his nose in the crook of her neck where the scent would be richer and deeper. Then he would wrap the braid around his fingers and pull her closer.

Instead, Ares sat back in his chair, fisting his hands in his lap under the table. Clearly, something in his head had shaken loose as a result of the accident because lusting over his assistant and his one true friend was so not him.

Christos , it wasn’t just inappropriate but a damned inconvenience too. Lust and affection and even bonds of friendship were things that had never interested him before. And yet now…everything seemed to play out to the background of Dahlia’s presence.

“You’re determined to quit a well-paying job to find romance and love and all that…flimsy stuff. What is it if not irrational? Clearly, my accident had more effect on you than you will admit.”

“Of course it had an effect, Ares. You were my boss, my friend and my…” Her throat bobbed up and down.

Despite the cool breeze floating up from the sea, dots of sweat decorated her upper lip. Again, that urge to lean down and lick at that plump lip, to grasp it between his own and suck at it, filled him. He wanted to touch her, not just to know how she would feel but to comfort her too.

Lust was still a biological function he understood. But this need to comfort her in such a personal way, this anger at what he continued to see as her abandonment of him… What the hell is happening to me? Had his brain been completely rewired thanks to the damned coma he’d been in?

With her jaw tight, Dahlia looked as shaken as he felt inside. And that, perversely, grounded him. She was the most sensible, balanced person he knew. Somehow, they would get through this and return to that comfortable, convenient plane of pseudo-friendship. They had to.

Without sounding melodramatic, his survival depended on it.

“I was devastated by your accident and your…coma.” Her brown eyes looked impossibly wide in the shadows.

“And it made me take a good look at my own life and I realized I don’t like the direction it has taken.

I want more than eighty-hour work weeks inside a steel-and-chrome office.

” Her mouth twisted with self-deprecation.

“Did you know that I haven’t gone on a vacation since I was thirteen?

I worked two jobs during high school and college.

I had grand plans for a career in business. ”

“And so?”

“So what?” she said with such fire in her eyes and belligerence in her tone that Ares wanted to taste it straight from her lips.

Was this too a forgotten memory or had Dahlia always been so full of fire?

He had to assume the latter because the one unshakable fact he knew in his gut—which showed how much the accident had changed him, because his gut was suddenly his compass—was that he admired and respected her.

“Did you find the mythical man who’s supposed to make these new, feverish dreams of yours come true?” he quipped. “The man who’s supposed to give you romance novel–worthy sex and movie-worthy romance?”

Her eyes shied away from his, her anger with him an almost tangible force catching them in a bubble. Outlined against the dark waters of the sea behind her, her profile was breathtakingly beautiful. “You’re a bastard, Ares Demetrius.”

“Excuse me? I didn’t catch your answer,” he said, eager to rile her up even more. Maybe then her control would break and he would see what she was hiding. What it was that she didn’t want to give him.

“No. I didn’t meet half a good man, much less a fully perfect one.

” Her mouth turned down. “A single hint that I cared for my grandfather full-time, or that I was between jobs, or the fact that I don’t like casual sex had them running in the other direction.

Apparently, I’m as out of touch with the dating world as you are. There, are you happy?”

“That you have failed miserably at this, yes,” he said without an ounce of guilt.

“Jesus,” she said, rubbing her fingers over her face. “I’ve forgotten how blunt you can be.”

The chipped nail polish on her nails stood out against her skin, a stark reminder of how far she had come to be here and how she didn’t belong here, amidst his contentious family.

The entire world zoomed out and suddenly all Ares could see was how pinched her features looked and how much weight she’d lost. How his rigid, rigorous lifestyle, his accident, his demand that she see to his needs, had affected her.

And now that his focus had turned to her and only her , he knew what he needed to do.

“How about I make you an offer?”

“I think you’ve made me enough offers, thank you,” she quipped, sinking deeper into her chair and throwing her head back. The long, graceful column of her throat drew his attention.

Everything about her was a fascinating mystery he wanted to unlock and play with. For the simple pleasure of knowing her like no other man did or ever could.

He shot to his feet, planted himself behind her chair, and gripped her temples. With a surprised grunt, she jerked beneath his touch but he pressed down. “Relax, Dahlia.”

Her fingers wrapped around his wrist, the touch jolting through him like the fireworks his cousins had lit an hour ago. “That’s not…necessary,” she whispered, eyes widening into dreamy pools.

Ares’s body reacted with a vivid image of those same fingers wrapped around his shaft, squeezing him hard. Christos , he had never reacted like this to a woman’s innocent touch. Not that he let any woman touch him, innocent or otherwise.

“As you’ve made abundantly clear,” he said, his words sounding husky, “I demand a lot from you, ne ? So maybe it’s time for me to care for you.”

A serrated laugh escaped her lips, coated with disbelief.

He turned his fingertips in tight circles. Her laughter cut off.

“Don’t worry, Dahlia. I’m only doing this because I know you will pay it back in efficiency and loyalty.”

“Now that’s the boss I know.”

Smiling, he pressed the tips of his fingers into her temples and dragged them past her hairline into her thick hair. When he rubbed gently, a moan slipped out from behind her clamped lips. The sound pinged over his nerves, shutting out everything else around them.

He clamped his muscles to stop himself from bending down and tasting that moan straight from her lips. It was as if all the hormonal, uncontrollable urges of puberty were hitting him now, in one day.

“Think of the next few weeks as a break, a fun adventure. Who knows? My family might drive me so crazy that even I could join in.”

Her brown eyes sparkled with mirth. “You? Fun?”

“Why not? Christina and the new CTO have things well in hand. And I can’t manage more than an hour or two of work before these blasted headaches set in. Why don’t we treat this…engagement period as a holiday?”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“Give me one good reason you can’t spend a month sunning yourself on a glorious beach, eating good food and taking in the sights. You’ll spend maybe an hour or two with me for work. When we return to New York, you can begin your perfect man search again. That’s my offer.”

She sighed and the rise and fall of her breasts mesmerized him. “We’ll be muddling all the lines between us. Lines you have always insisted stay in place. Also, I doubt how much fun you can really be.”

“Be honest, Dahlia. Are you worried that you might end up realizing that there’s no perfect man for you out there but me?”

“What?” Swatting at his hands, she shot to her feet. Her words were a breathy whisper as she studied him. “What do you mean?”

“I got you good, didn’t I?” He grinned. “And you keep saying I don’t know how to have fun.”

Words, and curses he thought, sputtered from her lips as she stepped toe to toe with him. His fingers itched to pull her against him, to absorb all that outrage into his own body. To soothe and pet and coax her into giving him her complete trust again.

Because he had a feeling he’d had it once, utterly. And somehow, had managed to lose it.

Christos, had he ever noticed how perfectly she would fit against him? Was this sudden bout of awareness of her as a woman some byproduct of how close he had come to his death?

It struck him then that he didn’t mind this sudden tension between them as much as he should.

All he cared about was that life was both comforting and fascinating when Dahlia was around and there was no way he was going to give her up.