Husband By Request

“It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s okay.”

The more she tried to assure him, the louder he wailed. His arms and legs moved wildly in the air.

Latent motherly instincts had her reaching for him. He screamed harder and held himself stiff in her arms. She gathered one of the blankets off the bed and rocked him while she paced back and forth. He refused to be comforted.

Suddenly she heard a woman’s voice call out. “I’m coming, Ari. I’m coming.” The door flew open. Olympia, a dark, voluptuous brunette who was lovelier than ever, rushed inside with a bottle in hand.

But when she saw who was holding her baby she let out a small cry and came to a standstill. Dominique watched the color leave the other woman’s face. Evidently she was the last person in the world Olympia had expected to find on board.

If looks could banish, Dominique would be consigned to the other end of the universe right now.

She quickly handed over the baby, who buried his face in his mommy’s neck and hugged her with all his might.

“I’m sorry I startled him. When I came down to get settled in I had no idea there was a baby in here. I tried to comfort him, but all I did was alarm him.”

Olympia kissed his cheek. Already he was settling down. “Obviously you’re looking for Andreas,” she murmured, while her unsmiling gaze swept over Dominique. “He’s still in Athens, but we’re expecting him to join us shortly—aren’t we, Ari?”

Us.

No mention of Olympia’s husband, Theo. Had he given her a divorce? If so, when?

It appeared Olympia and Andreas had been a family for quite some time. Under the circumstances, why had he waited so long before agreeing to divorce Dominique?

After all the months that she’d been in purgatory for not believing in her husband, it was entirely possible he hadn’t been trustworthy from the beginning and she’d been right to leave him.

Her body quaked in pain and confusion, especially since Olympia didn’t appear upset or intimidated. Now that the shock had worn off she displayed a certain unmistakable smugness. Even more telling, she didn’t try to engage Dominique in conversation.

Anyone watching them would never guess they’d once been friends. At least Dominique had always tried to be friends with her, for Andreas’s sake.

Paul had known exactly what he was doing when he’d let Dominique have her way and come aboard the Cygnus. He’d known what she’d find when she burst into the master bedroom.

No doubt Paul had imagined that once Dominique saw the baby she would sign the divorce papers and hightail it back to Sarajevo. He was probably rubbing his hands with glee.

But that was the old Dominique, full of self-doubt.

The new Dominique had come to Greece because she wanted to prove to Andreas that she was a confident woman in her own right—a wife who was his equal in living and loving.

So she would wait until Andreas arrived and they would talk privately. She would listen to what he had to tell her. Once she’d weighed his words, then she would choose to sign the papers or fight for him.

Squaring her shoulders, she said, “Forgive me for intruding, Olympia.”

The other woman had seated herself on the bed to hold Ari while he drank from his bottle noisily. “No problem. It was time for him to wake up from his nap anyway. Normally this is the time Andreas plays with him.”

Her self-satisfied preoccupation with the baby effectively shut Dominique out. Since it was apparent the other woman had no intention of enlightening her about anything except her closeness to Andreas, Dominique gathered her purse and shopping bags from the loveseat and left the room.

There were guest cabins at the end of the hall closest to the stairs. Dominique entered the one on the right. She deposited her things on the chair.

Instead of succumbing to the urge to curl up in a ball and sob her heart out, she went up on deck to sunbathe until Andreas arrived. Surely before dark the helicopter from his office building would fly him to Kefalonia? She planted her sunbed so it would be in his direct line of vision when he came aboard.

Paul had kept his promise to the extent that he hadn’t alerted Olympia there would be an unexpected visitor coming aboard. But that was before he’d delivered Dominique to the Cygnus.

Now that she was ensconced, she imagined he would have phoned her husband almost immediately.

However, if by some fluke Paul had decided to keep the knowledge from Andreas, then the helicopter pilot had probably gossiped to someone who would make sure the news reached the ears of her husband.

But even if Andreas knew she was on board, and was prepared for the physical changes in her, she still wanted to see his expression when they met for the first time after such a painful separation.

She removed her beach cover-up and stretched out. The temperature was in the low eighties. No clouds in the sky. She applied sunscreen to every exposed part of her before lying back.