“You don’t really trust anyone,” Tristan said.
“I trust you and Gui.”
“Now, you do. But you didn’t for the first fifteen years we knew each other.”
“I don’t think Ava’s going to give me that much time.”
“Having met her, I’d agree. What’s the hold-up here? Is it the relationship with Stavros?”
No, it wasn’t. It was him and the damned hollowness inside that he knew was the wellspring of his aloofness. That distance he kept as a buffer between him and the world.
“No, that’s not it.”
“What is it then?”
He couldn’t put it into words with Tristan. “Nothing.”
“It sounds like you love her,mon ami. Don’t let her slip away. She’s the first good thing to happen to you since…well, ever. She’s the kind of woman who can give you the home and family you’ve always wanted.”
“I wasn’t looking for home and family.”
“Whatever you say.”
He wished it really was whatever he said. Because then he’d order Ava to move back to his room and make their lives together everything she wanted them to be. “Later.”
He hung up the phone as everything coalesced in his head. He needed Ava even more than he needed Theo or Ari or the Theakis shipping business. He needed her because she made him feel alive. Before her, he’d been stuck in the rut that came from always running and never standing still.
Did he love her?
Yes, he thought. He did love her. She was the only woman who’d ever made an impression on him. The only woman who’d ever made him feel so many different things. The only woman he’d never been able to forget.
He needed to find Ava and tell her that he loved her. Tell her that he’d been an idiot for not believing in her. Because now he understood what she wanted from him.
He went to the bedroom she’d moved back into two days ago and knocked on the door.
The door opened and she stood there in her bare feet and bathrobe. Her face was scrubbed clean of makeup and her hair was pulled back. His breath caught in his throat as the love he felt for her swamped him.
She kept the door partially closed like a barrier between them and he realized he wasn’t going to let her do this. Let her turn him into some kind of simpering fool because he loved her.
He pushed the door open and scooped her up in his arms. He kicked the door closed and carried her across the room. Hetossed her down on the center of the bed and then covered her body with his own.
She wedged her hands between them pushing against his chest. “What are you doing?”
“Claiming my wife.”
“You already did that on our wedding night.”
“No I didn’t,” he said, bending down to kiss her because the words hovering on the tip of his tongue were too revealing.
He plundered her mouth and restaked his claim on her. Tried to show her with his body all the things that he struggled to find the words to say. Her hands skimmed over his chest up to his neck, wrapping around his shoulders.
“I’ve missed you,moro mou.”
“I’ve missed you, too. But sex isn’t going to make everything okay between us,” she said. “I want more than this from you.”
“What do you want, Ava?”
“You to know that I trust you. So I have something for you.”
