No. Theywantedeach other. They were dynamite together. And now they knew and understood each other so much more so she wasn’t going anywhere.Shewould stay and fight this time.
‘So you’re leaving because you don’t want...’ She trailed off expectantly, forcing him to explain why.
His nostrils thinned, somehow he stood taller and straighter but she was right in his way unless he picked her up and set her to the side. He didn’t. He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and glared at her.
‘You deserve better.’ He ground out the most clichéd brush-off ever.
Bethan stepped closer and summoned more courage. ‘I don’t want better,’ she said softly. ‘I just want you. All I’ve ever really wanted was you. Just you.’
Desperately nervous, she gazed into his face, trying to read his reaction. But there was none. It wasn’t that he’d assumed his cool expressionless mask—he was simply deadened. Hollow. He shook his head, crushing her bravado without so much as a word. Her brain turned sluggish. Everything seemed to be happening weirdly slowly.
‘Why?’ she whispered.
He closed his eyes briefly. ‘I can’t give you what you want.’
‘What do youthinkI want?’ she muttered. ‘What else is there?’
She’d just said she only wantedhim. None of the fancy things others expected of him. She didn’t give a damn about dollars or properties or how many people he was in charge of. She just wanted to bewithhim.
‘Children.’
Rigid, she stared at the bleakness in his eyes andrefusedto breathe. ‘You don’t want children?’
‘And you want love,’ he added hoarsely. ‘Youdeservelove.’
Pain whistled through her and she found herself asking again—a variant on the question that had caused her so much heartache already. ‘And you can’t give me that?’
‘Not the kind you deserve.’ He folded his arms across his chest. ‘When we married I thought you’d be happy on the island. That if we had children, they’d be there with you. I would only be there on the weekends. Now I know that wouldn’t be enough for you but I can’t offer more.’
He’d wanted to compartmentalise—his home life, his work. He’d wanted to keep her away from the Vasiliadis compound back then, not because there was something wrong with her, but with his family. Now she understood the loneliness and pressure he’d endured there, she could see why he’d wanted to protect her.
Had it been more? Had he wanted her to be his sanctuary—to be at that villa like his safe haven? So why then would he want to see her so little? Would he really have been happy to share her bed for only a couple of nights a week? Maybe all he’d wanted was for her to give him heirs so he’d carry on that damned Vasiliadis lineage, while he lived it up in Athens with affairs?
No.Ares was faithful to the bone. He would never do that. And he was so damned determinedly independent. So hope wouldn’t die within her.
‘Why can’t you be with me all the time?’ she pressed. ‘Why did you really want that distance?’
His face paled but his gaze didn’t waver from hers. ‘I can’t be an involved father,’ he muttered.
‘Because...?’ She waited.
In the long silence her brain fired up, desperately searching for reasons in the face of his compressed mouth.
‘You don’t want to be like yours was? Because you never had a decent example... Is that why?’ she asked.
He finally broke from her gaze and bowed his head and didn’t deny it.
His father hadn’t just been absent, he’d rejected his role altogether. While his grandfather had been a bully. Ares would be so much better than either of those men—surely heknewthat? She frantically tried to think of solutions—straining to convince him. ‘You know I’ve never had an example of a real working relationship—only the romantic, idealistic memories my father fed me, and my grandmother. But that doesn’t mean I can’tlearnhow to get through the complexities of marriage. You could learn with me.’
He was so very still. ‘I’m not able to do that, Bethan.’
‘Because you don’t want to,’ she breathed. He didn’t want her enough.
‘Because I can’t give you the lifestyle with the kind of family you want,’ he reiterated.
‘Because you don’t want tobethere—not all the time. You really think you’re incapable of that?’
He clenched his fists. ‘I’m not going to stand in the way of your dreams.’
