But seeing less of him made her savor their time together more. She surrendered to the wonder of discovering him, learning things she’d never hoped to find in him, or with anyone else.
Then, on Friday, he told her he’d arrive at seven. He showed up at eleven, long after Alex had been in bed.
Her heart constricted again at finding him looking progressively more tired. Tonight he also seemed fed up, on edge.
The moment he sat down, his phone rang.
He apologized to her, walked to her veranda to take the call. She heard him growling with escalating aggression. She watched him from the kitchen as he came inside, flung the phone on the couch then strode with barely suppressed anger to her bathroom.
He came out with his hair wet. Seemed he’d needed to douse his head in cooling water.
She finally made her presence known, her heart twisting in her chest with the need to alleviate his tension.
He turned to her with a bleak tide turning his eyes black.
Then he muttered, “It’s no use, Selene. This is not working.”
Seven
“I-it isn’t?”
Selene heard her strangled rasp, didn’t know how it had been produced, let alone formulated words. Everything inside her had been flash frozen by Aris’s declaration.
She watched him, the numbness of dread spreading as he shook his head, his bleakness deepening. “I hoped it would, that I could make it work, but no, it certainly isn’t.”
She couldn’t think. Couldn’t feel or let anything sink in.
But he was driving the icicles deeper into her heart. “I was a fool to think I could arrange my schedule to have enough time to be with you. And that was when I didn’t know about Alex and the kind of time commitment he’d require.”
He was giving up on them already.
He was telling her it was over. Before it really began.
No. He couldn’t be. He’d seemed to want this to work so much. And they’d been doing so well. So they hadn’t continued as they’d begun. But they could organize themselves better. If they worked at it, they had the potential to become what those first two days had promised they could be. Happy to be with each other.
But she gazed into the twin thundercloud storms of his eyes and knew. He meant it. He was ending them.
He’d made his decision. And nothing would talk him out of it.
“I have to get away or I’ll do something drastic.” He ran spastic fingers through the thick locks of his damp hair, dug them into his scalp as if to defuse a pressure that would crush his skull. “I thought I’d take things slow, buy time, until I figured out how to make things work, with either everyone involved coming out winners, or at least suffering the least damage possible.”
So he’d been factoring in damages. But even with worst outcomes accounted for, he already thought it wasn’t working, was so at the end of his tether he wanted only to get away from them?
Up till two weeks ago, she’d been certain this would be his reaction to any personal closeness or responsibility. That he’d feel suffocated, would become contemptuous of, even disgusted with, those who needed him. She’d believed that Aris…Aristedes Sarantos was born to be a conqueror, never a nurturer.
But he’d showed her he had so much more to him than she’d thought. Things she couldn’t have dreamed of.
He’d given her a glimpse of…perfection.
Had he discovered it would take more than he was prepared to provide in the long run, so he was cutting things short, before the damages entered the level of the unacceptable?
She should be thankful that he’d discovered this early, that he was being honest.
She wasn’t. She only…hurt. Far more than she’d thought she would. She knew anger would come later. At herself. For letting him override her better judgment, for being so weak that she’d risked an injury she’d been almost certain she’d sustain.
But he probably thought, with her initial resistance and cynicism, that she’d been wading as superficially as he’d been, hadn’t invested enough yet to feel any loss.
Unaware of her condition, he was bent on making his point. “When I told everyone involved in the current negotiations war that I was postponing my decision, that I will resume talks in a month’s time, all hell broke loose. Instead of making everyone relax and take things slower, they think I’m going to orchestrate some unheard-of coup. Now everyone is pursuing me for any hint they can get out of me, any assurance for a piece of the action or at least shelter from the fallout when I finally make my move.”
She blinked dazedly. “You’re talking about the U.S. Navy contract?” The contract Louvardis wanted to oust him of.
He gritted his teeth, muttered, “What else. It seems my reputation is too established that no one will consider I mean it when I say I’m postponing making offers because I’m not ready to make any. They all think this is a maneuver to pull the rug out from under whomever I’ve decided to eliminate. Now, instead of laying off, they believe the world is ending, when all I want is one damn month to think things through. Or not to think, for once.”
What did that have to do with deciding they were not working?
“Your brothers are behind the rabid reactions. They put their threat into action and are openly backing the Di Giordanos for a builder, and everyone who stands to lose a dime if I’m eliminated is chasing me like it’s a matter of life or death.”
She shook her head, tried to adjust her mind-set from the intensely personal to the purely business. “I almost have the draft we talked about done. My brothers will revise their stance if you offer it to them.”
He’d already said he couldn’t risk her involvement in his battle with her brothers. Not at the cost of having them suspect what was going on between them. He’d said he’d find another way around their adamant refusal to deal with him. But if things had gone this bad, this soon, maybe he’d reconsider.
He shut his eyes, opened them. She found them roiling with finality. “No. I have far more to lose by this maneuver than anything I stand to gain. For the moment I’ve made sure they can’t move without me making a move first. So I’ll leave things hanging, until I decide how to deal with it. Right now, for the first time ever, I can’t see a viable course of action. And the way I’m feeling, if I’m pushed, it will be everyone’s funeral.”
Having her and Alex in his life for two weeks had plunged him into such turmoil? They should be in some record book as the ones who’d caused the iceberg Aristedes Sarantos to lose his cool. And he wanted to get away as fast as possible to regain it.