Smothering the recollection, he took a few, much needed steps to his bar. ‘It is what it is. Have you eaten?’ he asked, then wondered why he was prolonging this meeting.
She dropped her hands, her expression incredulous. ‘My life is in tatters and you’re asking me if I want to eat?’
‘Cut the melodrama. I was merely attempting to be courteous. I have nothing else to say to you on the matter of your husband’s employment. Feel free to leave. Or stay and join me for dinner.’ His hand tightened around the decanter as the invitation slipped out, almost without conscious thought.
‘Why do you snarl every time you say the word husband? Morgan was your brother’s tanker pilot, and I know things didn’t end well...’
Ari raised a brow. ‘You think things didn’t end well?’
He knew Sakis had done a stellar job in saving the company’s reputation and hidden the true extent of Morgan Lowell’s sabotage from the press. But was she also oblivious to her husband’s betrayal? Or had she merely blinded herself to her husband’s true nature, the way she’d blithely hidden the fact that she was newly widowed when she’d climbed into his bed?
‘I’m not trying to belittle what happened. I just don’t understand why you look as if you have dog poo on your shoes whenever I use the word husband!’
‘Perhaps I don’t wish to be reminded of the dead.’ Death had brought too much suffering, had left devastation in its path, wounds that could never be healed. Knowing it was death that had made their paths cross in the first place didn’t ease the vice around his chest.
His answer seemed to sober her. ‘No, neither do I,’ she said.
Her steps were decidedly less agitated when she went to retrieve her large bag from the corner of his sofa.
She was leaving, walking out of his life again. That single thought sent a spark of fierce rebellion through his stomach. He didn’t realise he’d placed himself between the lift and her until she stopped in front of him.
‘Thank you for your help, Mr Pantelides.’ Her words were polite enough and her eyes were determined enough but he didn’t miss the slight wobble to her mouth.
Ari wanted to slide his thumb over that mouth, loosen it until its velvet plumpness slid smoothly against his skin.
‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.
Her eyes narrowed. ‘I thought you didn’t care?’
‘People tend to get litigious in your circumstances. For your own sake and the in-laws you claim to care about, I would hate for you to take that route.’
She hitched her handbag up onto her shoulder, her eyes back to full glare. ‘I detect a veiled threat in there. But, from where I’m standing, I have nothing to lose so I may or may not speak with a lawyer to weigh my options.’
‘From where I’m standing, you have none. Do you have a job?’
Her gaze slid away and he got the distinct feeling she was about to be less than truthful. ‘Kind of.’
‘Kind of? Doing what?’
She carefully avoided his gaze. ‘Oh, this and that. Not that it’s any of your business.’
‘And does this and that not provide you with enough to keep a roof over your head?’
Her eyes darted back to his, defiance burning in their depth. ‘If you must know, I’m not working at the moment. But I had a job before I got married. Morgan encouraged me to take a leave of absence for a while so his mother wasn’t left alone for long periods of time. Terry was a long-haul lorry driver.’
‘Right, so your husband convinced you to abandon your career to play babysitter to his mother. And you agreed?’
‘There’s that tone again. Why the hell am I even bothering?’ She tried to move past him. ‘Goodbye, Mr Pantelides. I hope you don’t get a nosebleed from that super lofty position on your high horse.’
He caught her by the waist. The slide of her cotton shirt over her skin reminded him of how it’d felt to undress her, to bare her softness to his touch. Ari’s mouth watered with the fierce need to experience that act again.
Weak... Theos, he was weak, just like his father.
‘Let me go.’
‘No,’ he said, feeling a thread of real fear in that word. He should let her go. Forget about her. Forget how she’d made him feel that night. Because everything that had come after that moment of bliss had brought him nothing but jagged pain.
‘Yes! I refuse to talk to you when you act like I’m some lowlife who’s wandered into your perfect little world.’