Not Just the Greek's Wife

chapter THREE


ARISTON set the phone down, the need for pretense gone now that Chloe had left his office.

Feeling unsettled in a way that was totally alien to his nature, Ariston cursed volubly in Greek. Just like the first time around, nothing was as it seemed with Chloe.

None of the motives he’d attributed to her actions during their marriage withstood the revelations she’d made in his office. And damn it to hell, he hadn’t intended to have sex with her. Not yet.

No matter how much he’d enjoyed it and knew the pleasure to be reciprocal, he didn’t like being out of control. And he had been. He didn’t like deviating from the plan. And he had done.

Frustration and a touch of something he absolutely refused to acknowledge, but someone else might label fear, went through him. He took a deliberate sip of his coffee and the unwelcome flavor pouring across his tongue hit him as another testament to his loss of control.

With another low curse, he threw the cup against the bulletproof glass of his oversize office windows. The sound of shattering crockery was a lot more satisfying than his own thoughts.

Jean opened the door almost immediately. “Is everything all right in here?”

“Is she gone?” Ariston demanded.

“Yes.”

“You gave her instructions for where to meet for dinner?” Plans he’d made before Chloe ever set foot in his office this morning.

“I did.” Jean looked at the broken china cup and coffee spilled against the window. “I know you don’t like that blend, but was that entirely necessary?”

“Have maintenance in to clean it up when I’ve left,” he instructed without answering her gentle gibe.

She nodded, her expression revealing concern he had no desire to see. “Do you need anything?”

“Just privacy.” The words came out harsher than intended, but he wasn’t about to apologize.

Jean, being the highly efficient and intelligent PA that she was, closed the door with a soft snick, disappearing on the other side.

His meeting with Chloe ran over and over in his mind, his superior brain having difficulty aligning newly discovered realities with beliefs he had held for two years.

She hadn’t confirmed it, but he now believed there was a strong possibility that his wife had walked out on him because of the divorce papers her father had told her about.

Divorce papers Ariston had drawn up in his absolute fury at discovering Chloe’s deceitful actions.

Actions that no longer fit into the scenario Ariston had first assigned to them, but behavior that was no less a heinous betrayal of both his grandfather and himself regardless of what had motivated it.

How else could he see her use of birth control when one of the major reasons for their marriage contract was to provide his grandfather with the certainty of the next generation of Spiridakous?

Ariston had believed that marrying Chloe as part of a business bargain would take the messy emotional side out of his need for children to pass the Spiridakou empire onto. His own father had messed up spectacularly in that arena repeatedly.

And Ariston’s one foray into the world of romance had had him crashing and burning, not to mention losing several million dollars on a business deal gone bad in the bargain.

So when his grandfather had come to him and asked him to consider a contractual marriage to ensure the next generation, after careful consideration, Ariston had agreed. As he’d reminded Chloe, it wasn’t so uncommon among the men at his level of power and wealth.

He knew Eber Dioletis was looking for a single investor to infuse capital into his company.

Eber didn’t want to give enough shares of the company for the investment capital he expected in return, but the marriage deal made it possible for both men to find a win-win.

Emotions were messy and devastating.

Business was something Ariston understood and knew how to control, so finding a wife as the result of a business deal appealed very much.

He now realized his certainty that a business marriage would come without the complications he’d sworn off, not once, but twice in his life—first because of his parents’ devastating mistakes and then because of his own—was one of the reasons he’d been so livid with Chloe for lying to him.

She’d let him down personally, but more important, Chloe had betrayed him on a business level, just as Shannon had done. Only this time, Ariston’s grandfather had been hurt as well and Ariston found that untenable.

The one person in his life he could trust and wanted to protect, and Chloe had betrayed them both.

Ariston hadn’t discovered what she’d been up to until a couple of months before their third anniversary. He’d been looking for his wife’s favorite pair of earrings so he could have a complementary necklace and bracelet made as a gift to celebrate the occasion.

He’d also hoped to use the jewelry to soften her toward having fertility tests done. Ariston hadn’t said anything, but he’d been to his own doctor and tests had confirmed that there should be no problem with conception coming from his side.

He’d thought Chloe might need fertility treatments because three years of sex at least once a day, often more frequently, should have resulted in pregnancy.

For a woman not on birth control.

Ariston had never found the earrings. What he had found was a partially used packet of birth control pills in the upper drawer of Chloe’s jewelry armoire.

No matter how she wanted to look at it, Chloe had affirmed to both Ariston and his grandfather that she wanted children before she ever signed the contract they’d negotiated with Eber Dioletis.

She’d tacked on an eventually, but Ariston had assumed the eventually would come within the initial three-year parameter of their marriage contract.

Apparently, he’d been wrong.

What was bothering him now was the possibility—no, probability—he’d been equally wrong about other things, as well.

Chloe had not been on board with her father’s idea of marrying her off in another business contract advantageous to Dioletis Industries. Ariston had known the older man’s plans in that line had fallen through, but he’d assumed it was because of actions on Ariston’s part.

He’d made subtle but unmistakable promises regarding the future of the other man’s business interests if he married Chloe. Ariston had followed that up by allowing his displeasure at the thought of his ex-wife married to someone else leak into the financial community.

It would take a brave or very stupid man to buck the Spiridakou empire.

No one had. Or so he thought.

It had never occurred to Ariston that Chloe might have refused any other marriage deal outright, that those threats might be unnecessary.

However, that made a lot more sense of the fact that she’d made a new life for herself across country. Her claim she’d had nothing to do with her father or Dioletis Industries in two years rang true and was too easily checked. As she had to know it would be.

He’d told Chloe he hadn’t had her watched by a private investigator, and he hadn’t, but now he regretted that choice.

He’d been too focused on Eber and Dioletis Industries and maneuvering her father into an untenable situation for which there was only one out—giving Ariston what he wanted. He hadn’t been focused enough on the woman who had been his wife.

Most telling, for Ariston at any rate, was that he had no trouble adjusting his view of her to something other than a mercenary witch, willing to defraud a trusting old man to get what she wanted for her father’s company, that he’d believed her to be for the past two years.

His instincts had told him Chloe was an innocent, but he’d allowed his knowledge of her deceit to override them.

His new view cast his full-on revenge plans in a different light and opened the door to other possibilities he hadn’t considered.

He hadn’t gotten where he was by ignoring potential avenues and opportunities either. In fact, he was known for his ability to change his train of thought to a new track with lightning speed and efficiency.

Their discussion earlier today would imply that whatever Chloe’s reasons for using the pill, unswerving loyalty to her father and his company was not one of them.

He had no choice but to acknowledge that it appeared she’d been far more her father’s pawn than the black queen on Eber’s side of the chessboard as Ariston had once believed.

Well before their last trip to Greece, Ariston had known Eber was courting other businessmen for another monetarily motivated wedding for his daughter.

At first, he’d assumed the rumors were about his oldest, Rhea, whose marriage Eber had never approved of. The marriage was the only thing Rhea had ever bucked her father’s will regarding and Ariston wouldn’t have put it past the other man to force his daughter into a divorce.

Only later, after discovering the birth control, had Ariston taken Eber’s rumored overtures as irrefutable proof of Chloe’s duplicity. He’d believed that she planned to walk away from their marriage as soon as the contract was completed.

It had surprised him that the family would give up stock in the still privately held company so easily. According to the terms of the contract, Ariston controlled the shares placed in a trust for the first three years of their marriage. If, after three years, either he or Chloe filed for divorce, he kept the rather large chunk of stock.

Well worth the fifty-million-dollar investment.

If Ariston had divorced Chloe before the three-year term, though, he would have forfeited the stock, and vice versa if Chloe had filed for legal separation or divorce during that time.

However, if a child resulted from their marriage, said child would then own the shares, which Ariston would only be trustee of until the child’s twenty-first year.

In addition, the terms of any divorce settlement would change significantly in Chloe’s favor once a child had been conceived. She had every monetary reason in the world to get pregnant and Ariston had wanted it that way, assuming the incentives would be enough to dictate the direction of their relationship.

He’d been wrong and he did not enjoy that state of events. At all.

Regardless, whatever it had been, he now very much doubted that Chloe’s use of birth control had been part of a plot to bilk him and his grandfather of fifty million dollars.

Because he still owned the stock as per the agreement and even if they didn’t realize it, the precarious state of Dioletis Industries did not rest on Eber’s shoulders. No matter how archaic some of his business practices.

As ignorant of the birth control as Ariston, Eber must have assumed Ariston would be the one to end the marriage at the three-year mark because Chloe had not conceived. Hence his investigations into Ariston’s legal actions.

Make no mistake, Ariston had every intention of finding out how the other man had gotten hold of the papers, but he understood the attempts to do so now.

A small spark of satisfaction flared at the knowledge Eber had been no more aware of his daughter’s efforts to prevent pregnancy than Ariston had been.

Ariston arrived at the restaurant right on time for the eight-o’clock reservation, but Chloe had already been seated.

Her now shoulder-length brown hair with its golden highlights was an unmistakable beacon at his favorite table. She appeared to be enjoying a jumbo shrimp cocktail. A mutual favorite of theirs.

“I am not late, I hope,” he said as he took the chair across from her.

She looked up, a wry twist to her lips. “You know you aren’t. But since you divorced me, I’ve been living more like a normal person and I usually eat dinner around six. I was starving, to tell you the truth.”

He was pleased to see her eating at all and thought her claims she normally ate somewhat of an exaggeration.

She had lost weight since the divorce and he would prefer to see her put it back on. For her health’s sake. Not because her overthin figure had turned him off. He wasn’t sure anything could.

For whatever reason, his libido was turned to her signal to near devastating effect.

But she’d never had much spare weight to begin with, having an indifferent attitude toward food that he had wondered about at times during their marriage.

The slightest cold or flu had her off her feet and losing pounds she couldn’t afford off her willowy five-foot-eight-inch figure.

He should inquire as to whether she’d been ill recently. That would account for her more gaunt appearance now.

For the present, he simply said mildly, “Well, that looks good. I hope you ordered me one as well.”

Her green eyes twinkled as she nodded at the waiter, hovering nearby. “Oh, I thought you could do without.”

The waiter arrived with Ariston’s matching appetizer. They took a moment to order their entrées.

“You like to tease the bear.” Ariston gave her a mock frown. “I had forgotten that.”

“Really? I thought you said I was memorable.” Something shifted in her expression, but then she was smiling again, if with less sparkle than he remembered. “But you meant sexually, didn’t you?”

He was too smart to agree with her. He might have played the fool during their marriage, but he wasn’t one. Not really.

“There are many things I remember about you, Chloe.” That, at least, was the truth.

Her green gaze narrowed speculatively. “I imagine I was the first woman to ever leave you. That would have made me memorable, I suppose.”

“That’s the thing about imagination. It’s not real.”

Her shock was palpable. “I didn’t know you’d had any serious relationships. I can’t believe she ditched you either.”

“Why not? You did.”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“Because we wanted different things,” he mocked. “Perhaps my memory is faulty, but it was you in those discussions with me and my grandfather via video conference saying you wanted children eventually and that you agreed to the marriage.”

“I’m not the one who filed for divorce.”

“I wouldn’t have been either, if you’d still been there when I got back from Hong Kong.”

Both her expression and the sound that came out of her mouth said she didn’t believe him.

“Shannon was my one and only serious girlfriend,” he said, rather than trying to convince Chloe of something Ariston would rather forget himself.

“When?”

“A long time ago. I was younger than you were when we married.”

Interest burned bright in Chloe’s emerald gaze. “How young?”

“Nineteen.”

“How old was she?” Chloe asked, proving an insight he didn’t expect.

“Twenty-seven.” And Shannon had had an entire universe worth more experience than he had with sex and the male-female thing.

He’d avoided it because of what he’d seen in his parents’ marriages, so he’d been entirely unprepared for a piranha like Shannon to come into his life.

Chloe stopped eating, fiddling with her silverware instead. “How long did it last?”

“Long enough for her to gather enough inside information so her father could steal a multimillion-dollar deal out from under me.” Long enough for him to tell Shannon that he loved her and wanted to be together always.

Even then, he’d been jaded about marriage, so when she’d broached the subject, he’d said they didn’t need legal bindings to know what they were to each other. It had been all romance at the time, only later had he given thanks for that one small foresight.

“I … oh …” Chloe frowned, her eyes troubled. “It wasn’t like that with us.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“No, of course not. I didn’t try to get any deals for my father.”

“You got him a lot of cash.”

“That was your idea … yours and his. I wasn’t even brought in until the deal between you two was negotiated.”

“True.” He frowned, annoyed by the fact that their discussion had already gone off script to what he’d planned. “We got sidetracked rather spectacularly earlier. You never answered my question.”

For several seconds Chloe looked confused, but then her expression cleared, only to turn into a frown. “You mean why I’d asked to meet with you? Are you still pretending not to know?”

“It is no pretense. You have agreed that you’ve changed, implied there is no love lost between you and your father, and yet here you are.”

“Because my sister asked me to fall at your feet in supplication. And because her husband begged me to save my sister.” Chloe shrugged her thin shoulders. “I don’t think I have that power, but I’ll try.”

The image her words evoked made his slacks uncomfortably tight, but he merely said, “For the sake of your family’s fortune.”

Now was not the time to be sidetracked by sexual innuendo or fantasizing.

“For the sake of my family, or at least the ones that still matter to me,” Chloe said with conviction. “But Rhea also reminded me of the hundreds of people employed by Dioletis Industries. I can’t turn my back on all those families without at least asking you to show a little mercy.”

Her expression indicated she had little hope in the success of her request, but that it was important enough to her to try. That was easy to believe. Even in their first meeting, Chloe had evinced concern for the employees of her father’s company. No doubt their welfare had been one of the screws her father had turned five years ago.

And Rhea was using it again now, to great effect.

Ariston was tempted to shake his ex-wife and demand if she didn’t realize she was being used again. However, he had his own plans and they didn’t include pointing out weaknesses he wanted to exploit as well.

“This is about the rumors circulating that I plan to offload my stock in Dioletis Industries.”

The privately held company had gone public the year before in a bid to save it. It might have worked if Ariston hadn’t been working behind the scenes, but as it stood the company wavered precariously on the precipice of bankruptcy. It would take only a simple shove on the right leverage point to push it over, and Ariston held that leverage.

In more ways than one, the most obvious being his chunk of stock that if he unloaded onto the market in one big block would devalue the rest until the company’s viability would be placed in question. At that point, its creditors would have no choice other than to demand bankruptcy proceedings.

Particularly those under Ariston’s financial umbrella. The Spiridakou name was no longer on all of the company’s concerns and that worked well for Ariston in times like these.

“Partly.” She sighed and looked away, a telling response.

Ah, so, as he’d expected and hoped, the Dioletis family wanted more from him than his promise to hold on to his stock.

Finally the script was going according to plan. “Mercy has no place in business. Surely your father taught you that.”

“I don’t share my father’s views and particularly not in that regard.” Chloe glared at him, clearly offended.

He almost smiled. This was turning out to be almost too easy. “If I don’t sell my shares, the company as it stands will only stay afloat another year, maybe two at the most.”

“Samuel mentioned that and Rhea confirmed it.”

At least Rhea had been forthright with Chloe. Perhaps the sister wasn’t using his ex-wife quite as ruthlessly as her father had done.

“What could you possibly expect me to do at this point?” Ariston asked, wondering if she would be as truthful with him as her sister had been with her.

“Expect? Nothing.” She sighed again, looking more defeated than anything else. “But hope? I guess I’m an irrepressible optimist, because I can’t seem to give that commodity up entirely where you are concerned.”

Again with the hope issue. What was it that she’d hoped for from him before and not gotten?

“And what is it you hope?” If she was as unwilling to answer this time as she had been the last, they would be at an impasse. For now.

“I’m not lending investment capital to a man who has no more business sense than to have kept the majority of his liquid assets in our home country’s toppling banking institution,” he said before she had a chance to answer his question.

Eber was a business dinosaur and his once thriving company had no chance with him at the helm in the new world economy, even without a powerful enemy like Ariston.

Chloe waited for their plates to be set before them before saying, “No, I can see that would be a mistake.”

“If you do, you’ve gained business acumen you never had when married to me.” He took a bite of his dinner, hoping it would encourage her to do the same and feeling triumphant when it worked.

The aged steak, seared but not cooked through, was one of the restaurant’s specialty dishes he had always enjoyed. It did not disappoint, but Chloe looked equally pleased with her blackened salmon.

“I do understand some things,” Chloe said after enjoying several thoughtful bites of her dinner. “Like the fact that Spiridakou & Sons Enterprises has weathered the current financial crisis in a way businesses in countries with much more stable economies than Greece have not.”

“Though it may have started in Greece with my great-grandfather, SSE is now a fully functioning multinational corporation with headquarters in New York and Greece.” He was proud of that fact.

His grandfather had made their company a multimillion-dollar concern. Ariston had taken it into the billions.

At thirty-two, he was one of the youngest billionaires living. Not entirely self-made, he’d nevertheless brought the company started by his great-grandfather to a level far beyond anything the Spiridakous that came before him had been able to achieve.

“Yes, with a brilliant businessman at its head.” Chloe’s voice was laced with unexpected approval and respect.

“You believe I am brilliant?”

“In business, there is no question.” There was a caveat there in her voice.

He got the distinct impression, though, that if he asked about it, she would say it was nothing.

Or none of his business.

“So, what do you want?” he asked instead.

For a moment something poignant and vulnerable flared in her emerald gaze, but then it was gone. “My father signed over his principle interests in the company to my sister.”

“Yes?” This was not news to Ariston.

Eber’s health had deteriorated right along with his company. His move to make his daughter chairman had not been welcome, but Ariston had been determined to follow through with his plans no matter who spearheaded the Dioletis empire.

“You already knew that. Even so, you brought my father up. Twice.” She shook her head. “You are such a shark.”