Contractually Wed

Chapter Twelve

CHAPTER TWELVE

A FTER A WHOLE week of Apollo not returning to the family home, or returning her calls, Jia decided she’d had enough. Yes, she’d hurt him, but couldn’t he give her once chance to explain it? See it from her point of view? Understand that it had been her desperation to matter to him that had led her to hiding the truth?

Only now, when she was more rational, did she understand how deeply she’d hurt him. He expected her to abandon him like his father had done. And that was what she’d have done if knowing him and loving him hadn’t changed her on a cellular level.

And maybe the only way to prove to him how much he meant to her was to leave this life and come back by her own choice.

And no matter what the state of her relationship, she wanted to attend her sister’s wedding. She wanted a chance to build a new kind of relationship with her sister, who was doing her best to make amends.

So one bright chilly morning, Jia booked a flight, packed her bag and came downstairs to find Apollo’s mother in the kitchen.

If she hadn’t already cried enough to last a lifetime, she’d have fallen apart in front of this kind woman who even then had looked at her with nothing but understanding. Maria had wrapped her arms around Jia, kissed her temple, and gave her advice about how to combat the nausea and to take care of herself on the long flight.

She ran her hand over the dark wood of the banister, a bright glow of conviction in her heart.

This was her home, her family and her life with the man she adored with every breath. She wasn’t abandoning it just when she’d realized how precious it was.

A day after Rina’s wedding, Jia returned to their family home to collect a few things from her bedroom. Except for some books, keepsakes, and one large photo of her with her mom and Rina that she’d blown up and framed, she added the rest to a trash pile.

It was both fortifying and sad that she didn’t need or want anything more from this home she’d lived in all her life. Everything that mattered, everything that she needed, Apollo had already given to her, a hundred times over.

She taped up the small cardboard box and brought it down to find her father, Vik and Rina waiting. For her.

For just a second, Jia wished for Apollo’s presence so much that it was a physical ache in her belly. But no matter, she reminded herself, because he was there in her heart.

Rina strode to her side, hugged Jia and announced in that timid whisper of hers that she had a new job as a receptionist at a dental office. Jia had never been happier for her sister. Clearly, Michael was a great influence.

Vik, on the other hand, had a beard, dark shadows under his eyes and looked like he’d had a rough last few months. “I shouldn’t have a laid a finger on either of you. Drunk or not,” he said stiffly.

Jia nodded.

Her father, hands tucked into his coat pocket, looked as smart and stylish as he always did. But there was a beaten-down look in his eyes that made Jia wonder what new plague Apollo had unleashed on him. For so long, she’d done everything in her life to please this man. She’d yearned for one word of affection, for one hug, for one kind glance even.

“Is he treating you well, Jia?” he asked her, as if reading from a script he’d been asked to learn by rote. And suddenly, she wondered if this stilted, awkward reunion was all Apollo’s doing.

Jia laughed, through the tears pooling in her eyes. “He’s...good to me.”

“About your stock,” her father began.

“I don’t want it,” she said, shrugging. “I’ll sell it to you for a dollar. Just tell me where to sign.”

“I was about to tell you that it doesn’t matter what you do with it. He already has controlling stock. He’s had it for weeks now.”

“What? How?”

Rina bit her lip, carefully avoiding their brother’s and father’s gazes. “I sold mine to him. Paul and I had nowhere to go and Dad had fired him. So I called Apollo and asked him if he wanted to buy it.”

“My own daughter, selling out behind my back,” Father said, with a flatness to his tone. It almost felt like...acceptance. Even regret maybe. “Not that I have ever done anything to earn any loyalty from either of you.”

“What?” Jia asked, her mind reeling. “And he agreed?”

“Yes,” Rina said, smiling. “He paid way over the market price. When I tried to protest, given he’s your husband and I might need his help again, y’know,” Rina said, winking in a very un-Rina way, “he said he needed this to be over. And then he turned around, appointed Dad the CEO again with some conditions, got Vik out of jail and—”

“When?”

“In the last couple of weeks. But he’s not the controlling stock owner. You are,” her father said, something almost like a smile twitching at his lips.

Jia had to reach for the pillar to steady herself. “What?”

“He said the only reason he wasn’t also sending me to prison, for stealing from his father, for treating you with such...neglect was you. And the condition that he imposed was that I—”

“You treat me like a daughter you care about. As if I’m not the walking, talking symbol of your wife’s infidelity,” Jia said, giving voice to the words she’d wanted to for so long.

His father blanched. “I was wrong, Jia. On so many levels. And I’m here willingly to make any amends I can. I planned to fly out and see you even before Apollo began another level of upheaval in the company.” Her father stared at his hands, and his mouth pursed. “I didn’t realize what I had in you until I had nothing else.”

Jia wanted to believe him. While he had never loved her as he should, he had never lied to her, or said a cross word to her either. And she did see the glimmer of truth in his eyes now. But, suddenly, his affection, his amends didn’t matter much. Maybe she was just as good as Apollo at keeping grudges but right now, she had no bandwidth left to heal this particular relationship.

She simply nodded in his direction, bid her brother goodbye and left her childhood home with her happy sister by her side and a box full of memories.

Her heart was so full to bursting that she thought it might explode out of her chest. He had written the company he’d worked so hard to own into her name, he’d looked after them despite everything, had even forgiven the man he’d hated for years.

If there was a teeny pinch of doubt about his love for her, Jia had none now.

Jia had meant to fly out the same evening but when she’d gone back to the luxury hotel room she’d booked herself into, on Apollo’s card, she found that she was exhausted. Every inch of her wanted to go back to him, to their bed, to their room, to that beautiful house where she’d discovered how much she loved him.

But after she’d showered, changed into one of Apollo’s T-shirts that she’d carefully packed in her bag, and crawled into the large, luxurious king bed, sleep never came.

She turned and tossed for a couple of hours, then, finally sat up and ordered room service. Lunch had been a salad with Rina at one of their favorite places and she’d passed up dinner in pursuit of sleep.

When a knock came mere minutes later, she grabbed a robe, tied it and opened the door. To find Apollo standing there, his coat jacket on his arm.

Shirt buttons undone, a thick stubble on his jaw and his eyes wary with dark shadows cradling them, he looked rough and twisted inside out and somehow...incomplete. Exactly like she did.

Shaking from deep within, she opened the door wider and simply stood aside. Sudden, intense energy swathed what had felt like a vast space.

Jia watched as he threw the jacket on one of the chairs, paced the sitting lounge and then, after what felt like an eternity of seconds, came to face her. She, not having budged an inch from when she’d opened the door, pressed herself against it. She didn’t feel fear, obviously. But something else. Something primal and so real that she felt dizzy under the weight of it.

“If you’re angry that I came to New York anyway, let me explain,” she started.

He shook his head. “I knew you would two minutes after I left our bedroom. And I’ve never, not even in that first moment, ever wanted to change who you are, or how you love so wholeheartedly. You’re like a blazing sunset, matia mou . It was never... I wasn’t trying to tell you that you couldn’t see your bloody family. If you want, I’ll arrange for them to—”

“I know that, Apollo. I also know that I broke the little tenuous trust you placed in me.”

“Little and tenuous, agapi ? The sky itself couldn’t contain the trust I have in you. The love I feel for you.”

Jia trembled, and fought the sob rising up from her stomach, through her teeth like some great storm. But he stole that away too, filling her with shock when he went to his knees in front of her. “I’m sorry. I never ever meant to hurt you. I... I wanted you to love me. I wanted you to choose me for nothing but me. And I lost myself in that.”

He leaned forward and pressed his mouth to her belly. “The thought of losing you and this baby and this...” a serrated growl left his mouth, his massive shoulders trembling like an evergreen bending under a gale “...turned me into that powerless, helpless monster again.”

“Only I get to call you that. And after everything you did for my family...thank you.”

“Thank you, Jia. It wasn’t only for you, ne? It was for us.” Then he looked up and Jia cradled his cheeks and she thought she might faint at the love shining in his eyes. “You have released me from a prison of my own making. And suddenly, all I have is this overpowering, all-consuming need to adore you and love you and kiss you for the rest of our lives. Will you let me, Jia? Will you marry me again because I cannot imagine my life without you?”

Jia nodded and fell to her knees. He caught her and kissed her, and that sob she’d tried to hold off so hard broke through anyway.

Which of course made her grumpy husband very angry. He shot to his feet with her in his arms, brought her to the luxurious bed and held her in his lap, and clasped her jaw with a firm grip she loved. “No more tears, agapi . Parakalo . I can’t bear to see them. I adore you, yineka mou , and if you continue to neglect your health, you will force me to—”

“I won’t,” Jia said, hiding her face in his throat.

“And will you take better care of yourself? Will you eat?”

“I want to eat,” Jia said, giggling into his skin. “It’s your little bean that uses my stomach as its very own washer and dryer.”

Apollo looked up, stars and tears in his eyes, his palm covering her belly with a gentle reverence. “You’re happy about this, then?”

Such anguish flickered through the question that Jia had to swallow before she spoke. “Yes. Absolutely. I want this, with you. I want to have at least two more and I want us to love them as much as we love each other, and play with them, and hug them and teach them how to build castles. But more than anything, more than even this, Apollo, I want a life with you. I want to love you and be loved by you. Forever and ever.”

“All of it, and so much more, it’s all yours, Jia. I’m all yours.”

She buried her face in his chest and clung to him while he pressed tender, reverent kisses up and down her temple, jaw and neck.

Finally, after what felt like hours but was mere minutes, her heart settled. Especially when he pulled her under him and began to lavish her with kisses and promises.