More than a Convenient Marriage?. Dani Collins

wet underpants see-through, her staggered steps so uncoordinated and indicative of her distress it made him want to reach out for her, but he was rooted in the water, aghast.

      He cared. Maybe he’d never told her, but each lost baby had scored his heart. This one, knowing he could have walked into the penthouse and found both of them dead, lanced him with such deep horror he could barely acknowledge it.

      She was the one who had appeared not to care. The fact she’d been so distraught she hadn’t sought medical attention told him how far past the end of her rope she had been, but she’d never let him see any of that.

      He followed her on heavy feet, pausing where they’d left their clothes.

      She gave him a stark look, her gaze filling with apprehension as she took in that he was completely naked. Her fingers hurried to button her blouse.

      Hell. He wasn’t trying to come on to her.

      “Adara.” A throb of tender empathy caught in him like a barbed hook. He reached out to cup her neck, her hair a weight on his wrist.

      She stiffened, but he didn’t let her pull away. He carefully took her shoulder in his opposite hand and made her face him, for once driven by a need deeper than sexual to touch her.

      “I’m sorry,” he said with deep sincerity. “Sorry we lost another baby, sorry you felt you couldn’t tell me. I do care. You’ve always been stoic about it and I’ve followed your lead. How could I know it was devastating you like this if you didn’t say?”

      She shivered despite the heat. Her blink released a single tear from the corner of her eye. Her plump mouth trembled with vulnerability, and a need to comfort overwhelmed him.

      Gideon gathered her in. She seemed so delicate and breakable. He touched his mouth to hers, wanting to reassure, to console.

      It wasn’t meant to be a pass, but she felt so good. The kiss was a soft press of a juicy fruit to the mouth of a starved man. He couldn’t help opening his lips on hers, sliding his tongue along the seam then pressing in for a deep lick of her personal flavor. Involuntarily, his arms tightened while greed swelled in him. Everything in him expanded in one hard kick. His erection pulled to attention in a rush of heat, fed by the erotically familiar scent of his wife.

      The feathery touch of her hands whispered from his ribs to his shoulder blades. A needy sob emanated from her throat, encouraging him.

      Here. Now. His brain shorted into the most basic thoughts as his carnal instincts took over. He skimmed his hand to the wet underpants covering her backside, starting to slide them down even as he deepened the kiss and began to ease them both to the sand.

      Adara’s knees softened for one heartbeat, almost succumbing, then she broke away from their kiss with a ragged moan, stumbling backward a few steps as she shoved from him with near violence. Her flush of arousal dissolved into a bewildered glare of accusation and betrayal.

      That wounded look bludgeoned him like a club.

      Without speaking, face white, she gathered her things and moved to the bottom of the rope where she tried to force her wet legs into her denim shorts.

      Gideon pinched the bridge of his nose, ears rushing with the blood still pumping hotly through his system, deeply aware that the distance had been closed until he’d forgotten that he was trying to comfort, not seduce. But the sexual attraction between them was something he couldn’t help. He wished he could. The fact that he couldn’t entirely control his hunger for her bothered him no end.

      His thoughts were dark as they returned to the hotel, a fresh sweat on his salted skin as they came through the front doors, with not a word exchanged since the beach. The life he’d created with Adara, so easy on the surface, had grown choppy, teaming with undercurrents. She’d stirred up more emotion in him with this bolt to Greece than he’d suffered in years and he didn’t like it.

      Part of him wanted to cut and run, but it was impossible now he understood what was driving her request for a divorce: grief. He understood that frame of mind better than she would suspect. He’d even bolted across the ocean in the very same way, more than once, but he was able to think more clearly this time. Losing the baby was heartrending, but he wasn’t left alone. He still had her. They needed to stick together. With careful navigation, they’d be back on course and sailing smoothly. When she came out the other side, she’d appreciate that he hadn’t let her do anything rash.

      He hoped.

      Adara blinked as they entered the artificial light of the hotel foyer. The temperature change hit her between the eyes like a blow. The boutique accommodation was the best the island offered, but nothing like the luxury service she took for granted in her thousand-room high-rise hotels. Still, she liked the coziness of this small, out-of-the-way place. She’d give serious thought to developing some hideaways like this herself, she decided.

      Another time. Right now she felt like one giant blister, hot and raw, skin so thin she could be nicked open by the tiniest harsh word.

      Desire had almost overwhelmed her on the beach. Gideon’s kiss had been an oasis in a desert of too many empty days and untouched nights. His heartfelt words, the way he’d enfolded her as if he could make the whole world right again, had filled her with hope and relief. For a few seconds she had felt cherished, even when his kiss had turned from tenderness to hunger. It had all been balm to her injured soul, right up until he’d begun to tilt them to the sand.

      Then fear of pregnancy had undercut her arousal. Her next instinct had been to at least give him pleasure. She liked making him lose control, but then she’d remembered it wasn’t good enough.

      It had all crashed into her as a busload of confusing emotions: shattered confidence, anger at her own weakness and a sense of being tricked and teased with a promise that would be broken. If she had had other men, perhaps she wouldn’t be so susceptible to him, but she was a neophyte where men were concerned, even after five years of marriage. She needed distance from him, to get her head straightened out and her heart put back together.

      Gideon was given a room card at the same time she was.

      As they departed the front desk for the elevators, she said in a ferocious undertone, “You did not get yourself added to my room.” They might share a suite, but never a room. She would die.

      “I booked my own,” he said stiffly, the reserve in his voice making her feel as if she’d done something wrong. She hadn’t! Had she? Should she have been more open about the miscarriages?

      She shook off guilt she didn’t want to feel. “Gideon—” she began to protest.

      “What? You’re allowed a vacation, but I’m not?”

      She tilted her head in disgruntlement. That was not what she was driving at. She wanted distance from him.

      “Would you like to eat here tonight or try somewhere else?” he said in a continuation of assumptions that were making her crazy.

      “It’s been a lot of travel getting here and already a long day. I’m going to shower and rest, possibly sleep through dinner,” she asserted, silently thinking, Go away. Her feelings toward him were infinitely easier to bear when half a globe separated them.

      “I’ll email you when I get hungry then. If you’re up, you can join me. If not, I won’t disturb you.”

      She eyed him, suspicious of yet another display of ultraconsideration, especially when he walked her to her room. At the last second, he turned to insert his card in the door across from hers.

      Her heart gave a nervous jump. So close. Immediately, a jangle went through her system, eagerness and fretfulness tying her into knots. She locked herself into her room, worried that he’d badger her into spending time with him that would roll into rolling around with him. She couldn’t do it. She didn’t have it in her to risk pregnancy and go through another miscarriage.

      Even though she ached rather desperately to feel his strong, naked body moving over and into hers.

      Craving