to strengthen suddenly water-weak joints in her knees as their eyes met for the first time in two years.
She’d missed him. A lot. The constant ache inside her had barely diminished in its intensity in the twenty-four months spent trying to forget him.
The psychobabblers claimed time healed all wounds, but Chloe’s felt nearly as raw and excruciating as they had the day her marriage ended. She could feel every inch of ground she’d gained sliding away as emotions she didn’t want to experience, much less acknowledge, washed over her.
One dark brow quirked and he asked, “Would you like coffee, or is this a flying visit?”
She opened her mouth to answer, but closed it again without saying a word, her attention wholly caught by the man in front of her.
He hadn’t changed. He should have, shouldn’t he?
She had. Her five-foot-eight-inch form was scarecrow skinny now and though she still highlighted her chocolate brown hair, she wore it longer in waves that settled against her shoulders.
He’d commented more than once that he liked long hair, but she’d refused to grow it out while they were married. She wasn’t sure why now. Only that then, it had made her feel more independent. As if despite the fact she was in love with her business-marriage husband, she remained true to herself.
That sense of independence had been little comfort after she’d walked away from him.
Though she hadn’t had a choice. After three years of marriage, she’d discovered he’d had divorce papers drawn up. As per their initial agreement. Even so, the discovery had been a crushing blow and leaving him had taken every ounce of her stubborn resolve. But her pride had demanded she make the first and irrevocable move.
Doing so hadn’t been the healing balm she’d hoped. She was only twenty-five, but pain and worry had etched tiny lines around her eyes.
However, there were no new worry or laugh lines on his face, no early gray hairs to mark his advent into his thirties. It remained espresso dark, almost black, kept short but with a style that screamed power and money. The only hint to his Greek heritage, the slight curl in that perfectly styled hair.
Ariston was still just as devastatingly gorgeous as he’d ever been, his expression equally impossible to read and his manners impeccable.
Unexpected emotions slammed through her. Want and love and need and pain, all of it so strong, she had to force herself to keep breathing.
She hadn’t left because she wanted to. She’d gone because she had to.
It had been two years, but shockingly, she craved him as strongly as if she’d walked out the door of the apartment in Athens yesterday.
Even sitting and wearing an impeccably tailored suit, it was clear his six-foot-three-inch frame sported the same well-honed muscles that she had enjoyed exploring so very much in their marriage bed. Not only a virgin, but wholly innocent on her wedding night, Chloe had known passion with only one man. This one.
An angel … a devil … a man capable of stirring things in her she could not afford to feel.
That dark brow rose again, his mouth tilting just the tiniest in sardonic amusement and she realized she still hadn’t answered.
“No, I … I mean, yes, coffee would be lovely.”
He gave the instruction to Jean and then focused that all-consuming gaze back on Chloe. “Perhaps you would care to take a seat?”
It was only then that she realized she’d frozen only a step over the threshold. Heat suffused her cheeks. “Oh, yes, of course.”
She managed to make it into one of the armchairs without incident and didn’t even bother stifling her sigh of relief as she did so. She’d always been rotten at games like poker. Everything she felt played across her face.
Why had Rhea thought this was a good idea again? Oh, yes, because Ariston had insisted. And what Ariston Spiridakou wanted, the Greek business mogul got.
Two years ago he hadn’t wanted Chloe. For some inexplicable reason, now he did. Or at least to meet with her.
“To what do I owe the honor of this visit?” Ariston asked when the silence between them had stretched long enough for Jean to have come and gone, leaving aromatic coffee in her wake.
“Are you playing the cat to my mouse?” she asked with no attempt to hide her censure. “You told Rhea you wouldn’t meet with her.”
“Yes, but the purpose of that meeting has yet to be broached.”
Oh, he was enjoying this. Playing corporate shark with the wife who’d had the audacity to walk out on him first.
Chloe fixated on preparing her drink so she didn’t have to look at Ariston. If she did, she might very well give in to her sudden urge to toss her coffee cup right at his head. “Do you really need to ask?”
“It appears I do.”
“Right.” She took a fortifying sip of coffee. It was her favorite Sumatran blend with the hint of vanilla and cinnamon.
Jean had remembered, bless her.
Unwilling to appear the coward or play his little games, Chloe forced her eyes to meet those of her ex-husband. “I’m sure you know exactly why I’m here, but maybe you’re wondering why I thought coming would be of any use? To be honest, I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be, but I had to try.”
There. He could put that in his pipe and smoke it. If he smoked. Which he didn’t. Darn it, her mind was running away with her again.
She consciously reined in her wayward thoughts.
“For your father’s sake.” Ariston’s tone was flat, his mouth drawn in a line that could have been disapproval, or just as easily apathy. “You would do anything for your father.”
A sound of dark humor spilled from Chloe’s lips before she could even think of stifling it.
Seriously? Had Ariston gotten to know her at all during the brief three years of their marriage? She had never once tried to pretend a closeness with her father that did not exist. That had never existed.
She wasn’t the business-minded protégée Rhea was, garnering their father’s attention in a way Chloe could never compete with. Chloe had always been the artsy one, like their mother whose paintings had hung on the walls of their home years after death had taken her from their lives.
“I haven’t seen or spoken to my father in almost two years.” More vehement than she intended, Chloe took a deep breath and let her gaze shift to the original El Greco hanging on the wall behind his desk in its gilt-edged frame.
She had always loved it, but the old masterpiece held no solace for her today.
Her father had sold her into marriage with no care for her feelings. When they’d been ripped asunder, rational or not, she’d laid a good portion of the blame at his door.
She might have been able to forgive him for setting her up for such heartache, but not what came after.
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Really?” She shook her head, finding it difficult to believe even now that Ariston was so ignorant of her feelings, and let their gazes meet again.
His was assessing.
Was it possible that despite the fact she’d never tried to hide it, Ariston simply hadn’t noticed how little interaction she had with her father? The two men had a closer relationship than she’d ever shared with the man who’d fathered her.
She was convinced Ariston knew the other businessman better than she ever would.
“Eber Dioletis only ever deigned to notice my existence when he needed a daughter to fulfill the business contract he thought would save his crumbling empire.” He hadn’t even