LITMIR.BIZ

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not the one who walked out.”

      “You had divorce papers drawn up and ready to serve. No doubt they attempted to do so while you were in Hong Kong, but I’d already left for New York.” At least she’d assumed that had been his plan.

      She hadn’t even bothered having her own papers created, knowing his were sufficient to the task. The speed with which she’d been served upon returning to the States had certainly implied she’d been right.

      “What are you talking about?” Ariston asked in a tone that could have frozen rolling lava.

      “Stop it,” she demanded. “I’m not playing these games with you.”

      “Explain yourself.”

      “You. Had. Divorce. Papers. Drawn. Up,” she enunciated very slowly and clearly. “Before we ever left New York for our spring trip to Athens.”

      Following Ariston’s lifelong practice since reaching adulthood, he and Chloe had lived one month in four in Greece. It made for a lot of travel, but she hadn’t minded.

      And multinational tycoon that he was, that sort of thing was simply everyday living for Ariston.

      “How did you know that?” he asked with unperturbed curiosity, making no effort to deny it at least.

      “My father faxed me a copy.”

      “And he got them how?”

      “I have no idea. Probably through the same underhanded channels you use.”

      “I do not engage in corporate espionage.” Ariston sounded genuinely offended.

      She was hard-pressed not to give in to a gallows-style humor. “Call it what you like.”

      “Highly developed business acumen and contacts.”

      “Fine.”

      “So you left because you believed I was going to file for divorce?” he asked with a very odd inflection to his tone.

      She wanted to scream, Yes, that’s right, but she simply shrugged. “I left because that was the only course open to me at that point. Our marriage wasn’t working.”

      “I thought it was working very well.”

      “You would.” And still he’d had the papers drawn up, presumably because in the one important area, to him at least, their marriage had been a bust.

      She hadn’t gotten pregnant.

      “What is that supposed to mean?”

      She shook her head, not about to admit her love for him and how the emotional distance between them had killed her a little more each day. “We wanted different things.”

      “On that I would have to agree.” Again the strange tone, but this time it was tinged with an inexplicable anger.

      Right. Their marriage hadn’t been what either of them had wanted. She’d known that. Hearing him say it shouldn’t hurt now. It did. But it shouldn’t.

      One thing was certain—she needed to move forward with her life. Irrevocably.

      She’d thought she’d done that—leaving him, accepting the divorce without contest. Moving across country and opening her shop and gallery had been her way of cementing the break.

      But if she couldn’t get a handle on the memories and emotions that had hurt far more than they’d ever helped, she was never going to be free of him, Chloe realized with awful clarity.

      CHAPTER TWO

      ARISTON sipped from his cup—matching china to hers that probably cost more than most of the paintings she had for sale in her gallery—and made a face. “I never understood your taste for flavored coffee.”

      “Surely Jean could have made you the dark Arabic blend you prefer.” Chloe had always thought his beverage of preference tasted like espresso even when it was prepared in the automatic drip.

      And to her way of thinking, espresso belonged in gourmet coffees with lots of milk and yummy flavorings. The thought of drinking it straight out of one of those tiny cups always made her shudder.

      He dismissed her suggestion with a wave of his hand. “That would have required preparing two pots, not one.”

      Chloe sincerely doubted it. If Jean didn’t have one of those fancy single-cup coffeemakers in the small kitchen behind her own office, Chloe would be shocked.

      Which meant that Jean had served Ariston Chloe’s favorite on purpose. Why?

      “You told her ahead of time to make my favorite,” Chloe guessed, gobsmacked at the idea and wholly unable to understand what he hoped to gain by doing so.

      She was the first to admit she didn’t begin to operate on the Machiavellian level he did when it came to business, but this was beyond her. It was as if he was trying to be accommodating and when it came to business, she knew her ex-husband was anything but.

      Maybe he was trying to lull her into a false sense of complacency? To what purpose? He held all the cards in the deck, not just the good ones, and they both knew it.

      “Naturally. It was only polite.”

      “If you say so.” Realizing how rude that sounded, which had not been her intention, she added, “Thank you.”

      “That aside,” he said as if the coffee discussion had derailed them from talking about what really mattered. “Entering such an arrangement with unexpressed resentments for its terms wasn’t very ethical of you, was it?” he chided.

      Ethical? Was the man serious?

      Needing to move, she jumped up and walked over to the nearest wall of windows. She stared down at the city, people and cars made tiny by distance. “Do you honestly believe I didn’t express my unhappiness at the idea of quitting art school and being forced into what amounted to a medieval marriage bargain to my father?”

      Before she’d met Ariston and realized that dreams could change.

      “Eber implied to my grandfather that you were entirely on board with the plan.” Ariston spoke from behind her.

      She wasn’t surprised that in her agitation, she hadn’t realized he’d moved.

      She didn’t bother to turn and face him, however. “Right. And you both believed him. It never occurred to you that he might have simply cut funding to my schooling and living expenses, effectively getting me evicted from my dorm?”

      Instead of the city below, she saw the face of the dean of her college when the older man had been forced to give Chloe the news. They’d been midway through the term and she’d been sure her father couldn’t demand his money back.

      But apparently powerful men could do things other mere mortals couldn’t.

      “I suppose you never guessed he might freeze my accounts because they were all in his name, too? No, I doubt you even thought about why I agreed to that barbaric bargain.”

      “Bargains such as ours are common enough among the world’s powerful in both business and politics. You needn’t act as if you were sold into marriage in some medieval contract in which you had no say or personal rights.”

      She spun to face him, old anger brought about by a feeling of utter helplessness rising to the fore. “Wasn’t I? I was a twenty-year-old college student, Ariston! I’d only ever worked part-time in an art supply store for hobby money. I had no clue how to even begin going about getting my life back when he took it away.”

      Ariston’s handsome face set in unreadable lines, but emotion she couldn’t name flickered briefly in his blue eyes. “You never told me any of this.”

      “By the time I met you, both my father and my sister had put the emotional screws in.” And Chloe had forgiven Rhea, though she doubted she ever

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