“I’ve spoken to Georgiou about how things were left on Istuval.” Leon nodded at the lawyer on his right. “We’ll have several meetings through the rest of the day to address how we’ll proceed. Eat up.”
She looked at the scrumptious tropical fruits and flaky pastries before her, but her appetite was gone.
Leon had managed to keep his hands and lips off women for five years. There had been nights when he’d thought he would go around the bend with sexual frustration, but aside from ogling the occasional pair of legs or a really nice rack, he’d managed to keep his libido firmly leashed.
Until last night when he had completely lost his head.
Was that what celibacy did to a man? Because he shouldn’t have gone from zero to a hundred in the space of a sigh. He’d still been catching up on sleep from pulling an all-nighter aboard the trimaran. And he’d been in a terrible mood, peeved about a lot of things, not least that one old friend had betrayed him while the other clearly couldn’t stand him. His own hypocrisy annoyed him most of all. He was stung that Zach still resented him over their broken deal, but he had no intention of forgiving the opportunistic doctor for taking advantage of him. Yes, he was a blackened kettle calling out the pot.
When he’d settled on the bed next to Tanja, he had only wanted to turn off his brain and sleep. He hadn’t even allowed himself to fall deeply asleep. He’d been listening for the baby so she wouldn’t wake Tanja.
Tanja’s restlessness had tripped something in him, though. He’d woken in a rush of sexual awareness that he might have ignored if their conversation hadn’t turned so intimate.
Why had he felt compelled to tell her he’d been forgoing sex? It wasn’t that he felt embarrassed or proud of it. He had never worn sexual conquests as a badge so a lack of them didn’t prickle his ego.
But it had been a profoundly intimate thing to reveal. She had said that small thing about her parents and he’d had a flash of admiration for them. Of wishing he was a tiny bit like them instead of so much like his own father.
Then she had practically dared him to prove they still had chemistry, and the next thing he’d known he’d been trying to sate the most powerful sexual hunger he’d ever experienced. He’d been close to losing himself like an adolescent—and they’d had layers of clothing and blankets between them. What would have happened if they’d been naked?
He knew what would have happened. With a flood of heat straight to his groin, he vividly recalled Tanja’s pale, lithe form straddling him the first time they’d made love. It was a favorite image in the highlight reel that he had replayed thousands of times since their very short marriage. He had believed it was nothing more than an embellished memory. They’d had fun for a few weeks, but sex with Tanja hadn’t been any more profound than his other intimate experiences.
He had clung to that conviction until last night.
Now he was seeing his disinterest in other women in a different light. In the last five years, anytime he’d felt a glimmer of attraction toward someone new, he had reminded himself he was married. That he had scruples.
Did he, though? Or had his instinctual turning away gone deeper?
Those other women hadn’t been Tanja. Their hair had been the wrong color. Their laughter too high-pitched or too husky, not the perfect balance of clear and throaty. They had talked about things that should have interested him, but failed to engage him intellectually. They’d projected small signals of receptivity, placing a hand on an arm or tilting a head with invitation, but he’d always been turned off, not on. He’d been aware of the opportunity, but something had stopped him from wanting to cross that line.
Maybe his faithfulness to his marriage vows wasn’t about proving he was a better man than his father. Maybe he had imprinted on his wife like one of those animals that mated for life—like a wolf. Or a seahorse.
That scared the hell out of him.
Marriage was not a ticket to eternal happiness. He knew that. It was a shackle to another person’s whims and hurtful behaviors.
Yes, he had let himself believe for five minutes that his own marriage could be different. Tanja had that effect on him. She made everything seem brighter and hotter and softer and sweeter. She was like a club drug—something he avoided because he didn’t like the crash landing back into reality.
That’s how he’d come down from his marriage, by returning to Greece and discovering that, even in death, his father caused both him and his mother untold anguish.
Leon had proceeded to do the same to his own wife. He’d failed to send the money, hurting Tanja and her whole family. He’d pulled back from her out of shame, grateful that she wasn’t striking back. A cold war was better than an active one.
The minute he was back in her sphere, however, she had lobbed a grenade by naming him Illi’s father.
Leon was still furious with her for putting his name on the paperwork without his consent. He’d been completely honest last night when he had told her he had never expected to be married with a baby. Family wasn’t something he understood well enough to imagine he could do it successfully. He was bound to do more damage than good, and he hated failure.
On top of that, he was facing untold legal trouble and their clandestine, lusty, expiring marriage was tumbling into the public eye.
Behind him, Georgiou was trying to forestall the worst of what might come out. He was interviewing Tanja, making notes on all the people on Istuval who might help with changing Illi’s paperwork and any who might threaten the process.
Yet, when Leon heard Tanja ask, “How will our divorce affect all this?” he spun from the ruminations he’d been directing out the window overlooking the view off the stern and came back to rejoin them at the small conference table in his office.
“We can’t divorce,” Leon said implacably, skin too tight because some force within him was pushing outward. “Not until Illi’s adoption is finalized. No one will authorize an adoption to a couple in the middle of a breakup.”
“But we don’t know how long the adoption will take.” Tanja looked to Georgiou for guidance. “Do we?”
Georgiou shook his head with regret. “A month? A year? We’ll need patience and diplomacy so the authorities on Istuval don’t make more of the irregularity than it deserves. Once they reissue the paperwork on their end, I imagine our government will be fairly accommodating.”
“You mean mine.” Tanja shot a panicked look from Georgiou to Leon. “I’m taking Illi to Canada.” Her tone brooked no argument.
As much as Leon had never wanted to be a father, the responsibility Tanja had thrust on him wasn’t one he took lightly. It was onerous, but not in the way he had always expected it to be, which confounded him. In fact, the idea of leaving the full weight of Illi’s future on Tanja felt downright wrong.