Husband By Request

Dominique’s guess that Olympia would call about Ari had been close to prophetic. The only thing she’d erred with was that the call had come in the daytime instead of the middle of the night. Still, it worried her to think anything might be seriously wrong with the baby.

“Thank you, Eleni. I’ll pick up in our bedroom.”

Once they reached it, Andreas lowered Dominique to the floor, then walked over to the bedside table to get the phone.

Most of his conversations with Olympia were brief. But, like clockwork, he responded by saying he’d be right there.

Over the distance separating them, he shot Dominique an oblique glance.

Oh, my darling Andreas. How you give yourself away.

“Ari’s sick and can’t stop throwing up. Olympia called the doctor. He told her to take him to the hospital. She’s frantic.”

She’s more than that, only you can’t see it.

“Then you have to go.”

“Dominique?”

“It’s all right. If he’s very sick, then she needs your support. But, as you know, I’m the last person she wants to see, so I’ll stay here.”

Beg me to come with you, Andreas.

He walked toward her. “You’re sure?”

Wrong answer, my darling.

“I’m positive.”

“I’ll try to get back before dark.”

You can try, but you won’t succeed—because Olympia will find a way to keep you tied to her.

In a lightning move Andreas lowered his head and kissed her with almost suffocating intensity. Once upon a time his display of passion would have been enough to hold her until he came back to make love to her all over again.

But something had snapped inside Dominique since the housekeeper had told them who was on the phone. The more Andreas molded her body to his with barely suppressed savagery, the more she felt distanced from him.

In fact she had the strangest sensation that she was standing outside her body, aware of what was going on, but no longer with the capacity to derive or give pleasure.

In pure revelation it came to Dominique that Ari was his mother’s trump card, one she would play over and over again in the future. There would always be another crisis, another problem, or she would manufacture one.

Theo hadn’t given up on his son out of a lack of human feeling. He’d given up because the power of the tie between Olympia and Andreas was too great to contest, let alone break. You could try, but in the end you’d only dash your heart to pieces against it.

Dominique had come back to Greece to fight for her marriage, but she’d arrived at least twenty years too late.

No matter what time Andreas returned to Zakynthos, he wouldn’t find her waiting for him. Never again.

It was after ten p.m. when the doctor came into the waiting room of the pediatric ward looking for Olympia. Andreas stood up when he saw him.

“Your baby’s going to be fine, Mrs. Panos. You can take him home. He had a bout of gastroenteritis, but the worst has passed. Check with my office tomorrow if you have any more questions.”

“Thank you.”

In a few minutes they’d bundled little Ari up in the carrycot and left the hospital for Olympia’s apartment. Once they were inside and she’d put him to bed, she turned pleading brown eyes to Andreas. “Would you stay with me tonight?”

His mind replayed his wife’s warning.

All she has to do is ask, and you come running. It’s because for years and years you’ve been programmed to respond that way, and she knows it. Only she’s not a teenager anymore. Her ploys are growing more desperate…