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‘Hold your breath if you want to. Or don’t...’
Challenging words. But she didn’t know him well if she thought he wouldn’t accept that gauntlet.
He would be right there when she failed. And this time if she betrayed him he’d dispatch Odessa Santella and there would be no going back.
Goals reaffirmed, he grabbed his tablet, ignoring the woman whose head was now whipping back and forth, who gasped delightfully at her first sight of the Acropolis, her neck craned with almost endearing eagerness until the iconic landmark was out of view.
CHAPTER FIVE
CONTRARY TO HER belief that the week would speed towards the moment she married Ares, Odessa thought it crawled by treacle-slowly. So slowly so that she came within a whisper of suggesting they bring the date forward.
She only held her tongue because, despite her bravado, nerves were killing her.
Also because her feigned flippancy seemed to get under Ares’s skin, and for some insane reason she preferred his brooding watchfulness and rasped interrogation about every aspect of her wedding planning to his icy aloofness.
It had started when he’d shown her the breathtaking private island where they were to wed. The punch of pure joy on seeing the setting, plucked straight from every daydream she’d ever harboured about her wedding day, had disturbed her enough to scramble to hide it, inadvertently sparking a restive reaction in him. Almost as if he needed regular evidence that she meant to keep her word.
She’d made a game of providing it, having no qualms about interrupting his work day to ask his opinion about linen colour themes or primary flower choices.
It was a situation Sergios had found hilarious, egging her on with winks and approving nods.
Their one serious clash had come when she’d protested that she didn’t want anything from him when their marriage ended. That had drawn a sceptical glare that had sent his lawyers scrambling away to give them privacy. And in the ensuing twenty minutes she’d discovered just how cynical this new, mega-successful Ares had become.
No, he didn’t believe her pious claim not to want anything from him.
No, he wasn’t about to accept that she wouldn’t sue him for a stake of his fortune further down the line.
Yes, her protests were useless.
To shut him up, Odessa had signed the prenup that granted her twenty million euros should they divorce. A fortune most people would give their eye-teeth for, but to her would mean she was leaving something vital behind.
They’d carried on like that until now, the morning before the wedding, when a less formally dressed but still furnace-hot Ares entered the living room where she was watching TV with Sergios after breakfast—although the old man had already dozed off in his favourite chair.
‘Are you ready?’ he drawled, his gaze shifting over her in that mildly possessive way he’d taken to using when looking at her, then returning to her face and her puzzled frown. ‘Did you check your phone?’
She grabbed the sleek new phone he’d handed her the morning after their arrival. There, tucked away in a text box, was his prompt about a ten a.m. appointment.
‘Where are we going? Do I need to change?’
His gaze slid down her floral wraparound dress to the matching wedge heels. ‘You’re fine as you are. We’re going to see my private doctor.’
‘I’m to be checked over to see if I fit my brood mare status, am I?’ she blurted before she could stop herself.
The time she’d had to dwell on what was happening was taking its toll on her nerves.
He slanted her an enigmatic look. ‘The examination isn’t for just you. It’s for both of us.’
Surprise snatched her breath away. ‘You’re getting checked too?’
‘Indeed. If only to make sure my robust stallion status is at premium level.’
It took her a startling moment to realise he was cracking a joke. Her lips curved in response, her heart leaping. For a second while Ares had forgotten himself she’d caught a glimmer of the younger man she remembered.
Even after his amusement waned, she let that memory sustain her. Let it shore her up to withstand this older version’s more dynamic battering of her senses.
That glimmer made another fleeting appearance when they were both pronounced rudely healthy two hours later, and a layer of tension left his shoulders.
In contrast, her own heartbeat escalated when she noticed that his gaze had grown even more brooding, the hand he placed on her back as they left his doctor’s office that much more possessive. Even in the car and heading home he kept her close, his eyes pinned on her in a way that made her hackles rise.
