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“I’ve never seen you take to anyone the way you reacted to her. I mean, I guess your reaction this evening was exactly the same as the first time you met her, since you were rude to her then, too.” He tugged at his bow tie, thinking back to how odd that day had been. “You did a quick about-face and decided she ought to be our surrogate. That never made sense to me, but you seemed excited for the possibility so I went along with it. As things progressed, you became very close with her. I’m embarrassed to admit that it began to feel like an affair, even though you were only texting with her. She calls you Sasha.”
“What’s wrong with that?” She had her fists buried in the pockets of her robe. Her shoulders were hunched defensively.
“You’ve never invited me to call you anything but Alexandra.” God, he felt puerile saying that.
“You can call me Sasha if you want to.” She wasn’t pandering. She was frowning behind her sunglasses. “Alexandra feels like a stranger who is carrying a lot of other people’s expectations. That’s what Winnie called me. I kind of hate being Alexandra.”
I will never again be the woman you married.
He would have to accept that. In fact, everything about their marriage was shifting, partly due to her memory loss, but also because of the baby.
“I’m going to connect with Molly tomorrow.” Hopefully without Gio. He should have tried harder to speak with her this evening, to gauge their relationship, but he’d been more concerned about his wife’s reaction than the deal he had yet to finalize.
Damn. That was sobering to acknowledge.
“What will you say to her?” she asked warily.
“I’ll find out where things stand. Our arrangement was that she would leave her employment by now and stay at the island estate for the rest of her pregnancy. She had talked about your staying there with her. Would you?” he asked, subconsciously bracing for the answer.
She nodded jerkily, mouth pensive. “Yes. I’d like that.”
Damn. That felt...bad.
Shortly after their marriage, when Sasha had gained access to the first portion of her fortune, Rafael had suggested this island estate as a good investment. Humbolt had played the stock market—poorly—and invested wherever it served his attempts to be part of the old boys’ club.
Sasha had received a lot of her trust in properties, several of which she had sold out of spite, so her mother couldn’t use them, but also so she could buy this.
It consisted of a modern villa amid sprawling acres of farmland that not only paid for itself, but produced a profit off the sale of oranges, olives, lamb, and wine. She had fallen in love with it and only wished they had more time to spend here.
Now was her chance, she thought privately, as Rafael showed her and Molly around.
The property gave the impression of being remote, situated up a hill with a view overlooking the sea, but it was a relatively short helicopter ride back to Athens, should Molly need attention. There was also a nearby village where a nurse-midwife had a small practice. It was already arranged that she would come by tomorrow and continue checking on both women regularly. A housekeeper would come by three times a week with groceries and whatever else they might need.
Sasha knew all of this since she had arranged it, but she paid attention as though it was new information. After nearly three weeks of this game, she was clinging to her lie by her fingernails.
Molly thanked Rafael, then excused herself to the powder room. Talk about a pretense! That woman was definitely showing. Sasha had about a thousand questions for her, all of them around her relationship with Gio, but she walked Rafael out to the helipad first.
“Maybe wear a hat when you go outside,” he said as he searched through the lenses of her sunglasses. “Are you sure you don’t want the housekeeper to move in full-time?”
“No, we’ll manage.” Sasha dug deep to keep this bland look on her face, so he wouldn’t know how close she was to breaking.
“All right. I’ll—” He released a hiss of pent-up frustration. “I’ll try to come back next weekend, but now that Gio has pulled the pin, I have a lot of triage in front of me.”
Sasha had yet to get the full story on that, too.
Rafael surprised her by ducking his head and stealing a brief, hard kiss that turned the embers of her old yearnings into a conflagration of instant need.
She had barely reacted before he was pulling away, leaving her breathless as he swung on his crutches toward the helicopter.
She stepped backward into the shade, but didn’t step inside until the rotors began to turn. Then she watched from the window as the helicopter lifted off, taking him back to Athens. She felt rather bereft as he became a dot in the sky and disappeared.
When she turned away from the glass, Molly was hovering in the archway between the lounge and the kitchen.
“Oh, don’t look so stressed out, Moll. I’m faking. The only memory I lost was the actual crash.”
“What? Oh, my Gawd, Sasha. Why would you do that?” she cried.
Sasha winced one eye closed and patted the air. “My concussion is real and so are the headaches. Keep your voice down.”
