More than a Convenient Marriage?. Dani Collins

of reliability, she acknowledged with a hitch of loss.

      “I’ve never tried to curb your independence,” he asserted. “Marrying me gained you your freedom.”

      They’d never spoken so bluntly about her motives. She’d only stated in the beginning that she’d like to keep working until they had a family, but he knew her better after her confession today. He was looking at her as though he could see right into her.

      It made her uncomfortable.

      “Marrying at all was a gamble,” she acknowledged with a tentative honesty that caused her veins to sting with apprehension. “But you’re right. I was fairly sure I’d have more control over my life living with you than I had with my father.”

      She squinted against the glare off the water as she silently acknowledged that she’d learned to use Gideon to some extent, pitting him against her father when she wanted something for herself. Not often and not aggressively, just with a quiet comment that Gideon would prefer this or that.

      “You had women working for you in high-level positions,” she noted, remembering all the minute details that had added up to a risk worth taking. “You were shocked that I didn’t know how to drive. You fired that man who was harassing your receptionist. I was reasonably certain my life with you would be better than it was with my father so I took a chance.” She glanced at him, wondering if he judged her harshly for advancing her interests through him.

      “So what’s changed?” he challenged. “I taught you to drive. I put you in charge of the hotels. Do you want more responsibility? Less? Tell me. I’m not trying to hem you in.”

      No, Gideon wasn’t a tyrant. He was ever so reasonable. She’d always liked that about him, but today that quality put her on edge. “Lexi—”

      “—is a nonissue,” he stated curtly. “Nothing happened and do you know why? Because I thought you were having an affair and got myself on a plane and chased you down. I didn’t even think twice about it. Why didn’t you do that? Why didn’t you confront me? Why didn’t you ask me why I’d even consider letting another woman throw herself under me?”

      “You don’t have to be so crude about it!” She instinctively propelled herself backward, pushing space between herself and the unbearable thought of him sleeping with another woman. She hadn’t been able to face it herself, let along confront him, not with everything else that had happened.

      “You said we don’t talk,” he said with pointed aggression. “Let’s. You left me twisting with sexual frustration. Having an affair started to look like a viable option. If you didn’t want me going elsewhere, why weren’t you meeting my needs at home?”

      “I did! I—”

      “Going down isn’t good enough, Adara.”

      His vulgarity was bad enough, but it almost sounded like a critique and she resented that. She tried hard to please him and could tell that he liked what she did, so why did he have to be so disparaging about it?

      Unbearably hurt, she kicked toward shore, barely turning her head to defend, “I was pregnant. What else could I do?”

      How he reacted to that news she didn’t care. She just wanted to be away from him, but as her toes found cold, thick sand, she halted. Leaving the water suddenly seemed a horribly exposing thing to do. How stupid to think she could become a new person by shedding a few stitches of clothing. She was the same old worthless Adara who couldn’t even keep a baby in her womb.

      The sun seared across her shoulders. Her wet hair hung in her eyes and she kept her arms folded tightly across her chest, trying to hold in the agony.

      She felt ridiculous, climbing down to this silly beach that was impossible to leave, revealing things that were intensely personal to her and wouldn’t matter at all to him.

      “What did you say?” He was too close. She flinched, feeling the sharpness of his voice like the tip of a flicking whip.

      “You heard me,” she managed to say even though her throat was clogging. She clenched her eyes shut, silently begging him to do what he always did. Say nothing and give her space. She didn’t want to do this. She never, ever wanted to do this again.

      “You were pregnant?” His voice moved in front of her.

      She turned her head to the side, hating him for cutting off her escape to the beach, hating herself for lacking the courage to take it when she’d had the chance.

      Keeping her eyes tightly closed, she dug her fingers into her arms, her whole body aching with tension. “It doesn’t matter,” she insisted through her teeth. “It’s over and I just want a divorce.”

      Gideon was distantly aware of the sea trying to pull him out with the tide. His entire being was numb enough that he had to concentrate on keeping his feet rooted as he stared at Adara. She was a knot of torment. For the first time he could see her suffering and it made his heart clench. When had she started to care about the miscarriages? The last one had been called into him from across the globe, his offer to come home dismissed as unnecessary.

      “Tell me—”

      “What is there to tell, Gideon?” Her eyes opening into pits of hopeless fury. Her face creased with sharp lines of grief. “It was the same as every other one. I did the test and held my breath, terrified to so much as bump my hip on the edge of my desk. And just when I let myself believe this time might be different, the backache started and the spotting appeared and then it was twenty-four hours of medieval torture until I was spat out in hell with nothing to show for it. At least I didn’t have the humiliation of being assaulted by the people in white coats this time.”

      She took a step to the side, thinking to circle him and leave the water, but he shifted into her path, his hand reaching to stop her. His expression was appalled. “What do you mean about being assaulted?”

      She cringed from his touch, her recoil like a knee into his belly. Gideon clenched his abdominal muscles and curled his fingers into his palm, forcing his hand to his side under the water even though he wanted to grip her with all his strength and squeeze the answers out of her. She couldn’t possibly be saying what he thought she was saying.

      “What people in white coats?” he demanded, but the words sounded far away. “Are you telling me you didn’t go to the hospital?” Intense, fearful dread hollowed out his chest as he watched her mask fear and compunction with a defiant thrust of her chin.

      “Do you know what they do to you after you’ve had a miscarriage? No, you don’t. But I do and I’m sick of it. So, no, I didn’t go,” she declared with bitter rebelliousness.

      Horror washed through him in freezing waves.

      “We need to get you to a doctor.” He flew his gaze to the cliff, terror tightening in him. What the hell had he been thinking, letting her descend to this impossible place?

      “It was three weeks ago, Gideon. If it was going to kill me, it would have by now.”

      “It could have,” he retorted, helplessness making him brutal. “You could have bled to death.”

      She shrugged that off with false bravado, eyes glossy and red. “At the time that looked like a—what’s the expression you used? A viable option?”

      It was a vicious slap that he deserved. While he’d been contemplating an affair, she’d been losing the battle to keep their baby. Again. And she’d been filled with such dejection she’d refused medical care and courted death.

      The fact she’d let herself brush elbows with the Grim Reaper made him so agitated, he clipped out a string of foul Greek curses. “Don’t talk like that. Damn it, you should have told me.”

      “Why?” she lashed out in uncharacteristic confrontation. “Do you think I enjoy telling you what a failure I am? It’s not like you care. You just go back to work while I sit there screaming inside.” She struck a fist onto the surface of the water. “I hate it. I can’t