Marriage Without Love & More Than a Convenient Marriage?

“I’m not an idiot. I’ve got the message that there’s more going on than you’ve let me see.” Now his gaze came up and his dark-chocolate irises were intensely black in the fading light. “I want you to quit keeping so much to yourself, Adara.”

Longing speared into her, but so did fear. The words I can’t lodged in her throat. She never shared, never asked for help. She didn’t know how.

A knock at the door heralded room service. Gideon moved to let the server in and stood back as the meals were set out. Gideon’s knowledge of her tastes and his desire to please were well at the forefront. He’d ordered prawn soup, fried calamari, and baked fish fillets on rice with eggplant. Delicious scents of scorched ouzo and tangy mint made her mouth water. Their climb to the beach, coupled with the time change, had her stomach trying to eat itself. Much as she knew it would be better not to encourage either of them that their marriage had a chance, she couldn’t help sinking into the chair he held.

Winking lights bobbed on the water, live music drifted from the restaurant below and the warm evening air stroked her skin with a sensual breeze. The

server closed the door on his way out and the big bed stood with inviting significance just inside the room.

And then there was the man, still barefoot, still with his shirt hanging open off his shoulders, the pattern of hair across his chest and abdomen accentuating his firm pecs and six-pack stomach. How he managed casual elegance with such a disreputable outfit, she didn’t know, but the woman in her not only responded, but melted into a puddle of sexual craving.

She was in very real danger of being seduced by nothing more than his presence.

Frightened of herself, she stole a furtive glance into his face and found him watching her closely, not smug, but his gaze was sharp with awareness that she was reacting to him. Her cheeks heated with embarrassment at not being able to help this interminable attraction to him.

Gideon couldn’t remember ever being so tuned to a woman, not out of bed anyway, and even at that he and Adara had fallen into certain patterns. Now that he was beginning to see how much she disguised behind a placid expression or level tone, he was determined to pick up every cue. The fact he’d just caught her lusting after him in her reserved way pleased him intensely, but her reluctance to let nature take its course confused him.

“I’ve been faithful to you, Adara. I hope you believe that.”

She stopped chewing for a thoughtful moment. Her brows came together in a frown he couldn’t interpret. Worry? Misery? Defeat?

“I do,” she finally said, but her tone seemed to qualify the statement.

“But?” he prompted.

“It doesn’t change the fact that one of the major reasons we married...” Her brows pulled again and this time it was pure pain, like something deeply embedded was being wrenched out of her.

He tensed, knowing what was coming and not liking the way it penetrated his walls either.

“Obviously I’m not able to give you children,” she said with strained composure. “I won’t even try. Not anymore.”

The bitter acceptance he read beneath her mask of self-possession, her trounced distress, was so tangible, he reached across to cover her shaking hand where she gripped her knife. Her knuckles felt sharp as barnacles where they poked against his palm.

He would give anything to spare her this anguish.

“Having children was a condition that came from your side of the table. It’s not a deal-breaker for me,” he reassured her.

If anything, she grew more distraught. “You never wanted children?”

Tread lightly, he cautioned himself, touching a thoughtful tongue to his bottom lip. “It’s not that I never wanted them. If that were true, I’d be a real monster for putting you through all you’ve suffered in trying to have one. I’m very—” Disappointed wasn’t a strong enough word.

“I’m sad,” he admitted, drawing his hand back as he took the uncharacteristic step of admitting to feelings. He’d been powerless at sea in a storm once and hadn’t felt as helpless and vulnerable as he had each time she’d miscarried. This one he’d learned about today was the worst yet, filling him with visions of coming upon her dead. It was too horrifying a thing to happen to a person even once in a lifetime and he’d been through it twice already. He couldn’t stomach thinking of finding her lifeless and white.

Then there was the bereft sense of loss that he’d known nothing about the baby before it was gone. He hated having no control over the situation, hated being unable to give her something she wanted that seemed as if it should be so simple. He hated how the whole thing stirred up old grief. He ought to be over forming deep attachments. He’d certainly fought against developing any. But he wished he’d known those babies and felt cheated that he hadn’t been given the chance.

He swiped his clammy palm down his thigh.

“I’m sad, too,” she whispered thickly, gaze fixed on her sweating glass of ice water. “I wanted a family. A real one, not a broken one like I had.”

“So, it wasn’t just pressure from your father to give him the heir your brothers weren’t providing?”

She made a motion of negation, mouth pouted into sorrow.

Damn, he swore silently, thinking his version of her as merely ticking children off the list with everything else would have been so much easier to navigate.

“I thought you were like my father, not really wanting a family, but determined to have an heir. A boy.” Of course, her tiny shrug added silently.

He could see wary shadows in her eyes as she confessed what had been in her mind. She wasn’t any more comfortable with being honest than he was. He sure as hell didn’t enjoy hearing her unflattering assessment of his attitude toward progeny.