Marriage Without Love & More Than a Convenient Marriage?

The penthouse seemed cavernous and chilly when they returned from Greece. It was after midnight when they arrived after what had been a long, quiet flight.

They’d been through a lot since meeting up at the end of her brother’s driveway, so she supposed it was natural they’d both withdraw a bit to digest it all, but the hint of tension and reserve Gideon was wearing bothered her.

They’d made love in the middle of the night and again first thing this morning. It had been wonderful as ever, but afterward, as they’d soaped each other in the shower, things had taken this turn into a brick wall.

Unable to get Gideon’s look of paternal tenderness toward Evie out of her mind, she’d pointed out how her brother and his wife made adoption look like the most natural thing in the world.

“They do,” he had agreed without inflection.

“It’s something to think about,” she had pressed ever so lightly. “Isn’t it?”

“Perhaps.”

So noncommittal.

Adara chewed her lip, completely open to the idea herself, but that meant staying married. Forever. To a man who didn’t appear as enthused by the idea of children as she was.

He was such an enigma. Returning to New York was a cold plunge into her old marriage to a workaholic who liked his space and only communicated when he had to—if the scene she entered when she left the powder room was anything to go by.

Paul, their chauffeur, was exiting Adara’s room where he would have left her luggage. Gideon was coming back to the living room from his own room, where he would have left his own. He swept his thumb across his smart phone as he gave Paul a rough schedule for the next few days, asking her absently, “Are you leaving early for the office with me tomorrow or do you want Paul to come back for you?”

Back to separate lives that revolved around their careers. She looked at her empty arms as she crossed them over her aching chest. “How early is early?”

He grimaced at the clock. “Six? The time change will have me up anyway.”

Her too. “That’s fine,” she said, then thought, Welcome back, Mrs. Complacent. She’d obviously forgotten her spine back in Greece.

Paul wished them a good night and left. Gideon came across to set the security panel, then looked down at her as she stifled a yawn.

“Straight to bed?” he asked.

A bristling sensation lifted in the region between her shoulder blades and the back of her neck. His question was one of the shorthand signals they’d developed in this detached marriage of theirs. He was letting her off the hook for sex.

She was exhausted. It shouldn’t bother her, but it left her feeling abandoned and without hope for their marriage, a family, or a love like her brother had found.

“Yes,” she said quietly, pulling on her cloak of polite endurance to hide how hurt she was. “It’s been a long day and tomorrow will be longer.” Smooth out all those rough edges, Adara. Make it seem as if you don’t have a heart to break.

“Your place or mine?”

“I—what?” She blinked at him, trying to quell the flutter of sensual excitement that woke in her blood. A little embarrassed by how quickly she could bloom back to life, she murmured, “I’m genuinely tired.”

Nevertheless, she seesawed with indecision, longing for the closeness she experienced in his arms, but fearful of how neglected she felt when he drew himself apart from her the way he had since meeting her brother.

“I’m freaking exhausted,” he admitted with heartfelt weariness, “but we’re not going back to separate bedrooms. Mine,” he said decisively, catching her hand to lead her there. “Don’t bother moving your clothes. The farther away the better.”

“Gideon.” She chuckled a little as she stumbled behind him, then was distracted by entering a room she’d rarely peeked into. It was scrupulously clean and not just from the housekeeper doing a thorough job in the

ir absence. Gideon was a tidy man. Living on boats forged that habit, he’d told her once. He didn’t like clutter. The decorator’s palette for the walls was unmarred by paintings or photos. The night table held only a phone dock that doubled as a bedside light.

He stepped into his closet to set his shoes on a shelf.

“You need to find a few days in the next week to come to Valparaiso with me,” he told her as he emerged, drawing his belt free as he spoke, then hanging it precisely alongside the rest.

“You’ve become very dictatorial in the last few days, do you realize that?” She wasn’t sure where the cheeky comment came from, but it blurted out even as her voice tightened along with her blood vessels. He was undressing, shedding his shirt without reserve to expose tanned planes of muscle.

“You used to be a pushover. I didn’t have to try very hard to get what I wanted. Now I do.”

“Does that bother you?” A pang in her lip made her realize she was biting down as she awaited his answer, habitually fearful of masculine disapproval.