Page 19 of Contractually Wed

His promise reverberated through her as Jia went back to her open cubicle and tried not to hear the frenzied whispers around her. For the next couple of hours that she lingered at work, no one would meet her eyes, or respond to her without looking at her as if she’d suddenly turned into a bug-eyed monster. Paulo, when she forced him to respond, couldn’t get away from her fast enough.

The reprieve was over. His family knew, her coworkers knew and now, the whole world would know that she was Jia Galanis. And yet, as she repeated to herself a thousand times, and relived the moment when Apollo had looked into her eyes and admitted that he saw her, Jia didn’t feel trepidation at all. If anything, she felt excited about this new, temporary relationship more than she ever had about a real one.

CHAPTER FIVE

APOLLOHADN’TMEANTto leave her to the curious, even aggressive in Camilla’s case, clutches of his family. He had just decided to bring her home, right before they had descended on them en masse.

But after, even though he’d taunted her that he wanted his wedding night, he’d sent her to his family home with his chauffeur, claiming a work emergency. Long past midnight, he had returned to his penthouse.

Whatever he thought he was escaping by sending Jia away, duplicitously no less, smacked him in the face when he walked in. From the vast sitting lounge where she’d spread around her sketching papers to the kitchen where she’d abandoned spice tins and tea boxes and chocolate hampers, to the large media room where her video game equipment lay scattered about, she had already stamped the space with her presence.

The silence without her was different from the one with her, and he realized how companionable even that had become between them. As if they were an old couple, married for fifty or so years, easy with each other in everything, like his grandparents were. Even the bathroom—week two she’d begun using the one attached to his bedroom, claiming a woman needed the more luxurious one—didn’t remain untouched. There was a box of tampons on the black granite.

He’d found her sobbing one evening, hair in a messy updo, pillows clutched to her chest while watching some old Bollywood flick. When he’d demanded to know what had upset her so, she’d stuffed more chocolate into her mouth and bit out that she always cried like that on her period and would he please leave her alone. He had sat by her, pretending to be absorbed in the colorful movie that he didn’t even understand, and then fascinated when she started explaining the convoluted plot, forgetting her usual frosty silence.

None of his sisters had ever complained or sobbed or made such a mess of themselves on their periods, he’d thought. But then, when had he had time for any of them, either growing up or after their father had died. For all he claimed to do for his family, he’d had very little to do with his own for the past two decades. Something Mama hadn’t missed pointing out in the three minutes they had talked to each other.

Several hairbrushes, a bottle of perfume and tubes of lipstick surrounded his sink, mocking him. He almost lifted the bottle of perfume to sniff it like some lovesick fool when he caught his reflection and stopped.

Walking back into the kitchen, he poured himself a glass of wine and then discarded it. Even the damned wine reminded him of her. Remembering Jia got headaches from red wine, he’d already asked his housekeeper to stock more whites.

Then as he moved through his bedroom shedding his clothes and donning sweats, the source of his restlessness finally hit him.

I’m sorry for everything my father did to your family, she’d said.

No one could doubt her apology had been heartfelt, not Camilla. Not him. And yet, her words and her expression haunted him, holding up a mirror into which he didn’t want to look.

He’d thought telling her that his marrying her wasn’t meant as a punishment would be enough. But was that true of his intentions, or the impact it had caused on her life? Knowing her now, knowing how he’d uprooted her from her family, without even her familiar things, knowing he’d thrust her into the center of his family, knowing how prejudiced they would be against her, what was it if not punishment?

For close to two decades, he’d worked himself to the bone, neglecting his relationship with his mother and sisters, neglecting his own happiness and comfort, pursuing wealth and connection and power, with one goal in mind.

To ruin Jay Shetty’s company and his peace as he’d ruined theirs. To push him toward despair as he’d done to Apollo’s father. And along the way, he’d deemed it okay to include the old man’s family. He’d known Rina didn’t wanted to marry him but he hadn’t cared much about it because all it took was for her to naysay her own father, right?

Not his problem.

But now, when he remembered the ache in Jia’s face when they had all argued about her family as if she wasn’t standing right there, her easy, blunt honesty and her apology as she faced up to what her father had done when she’d been no more than a child, her flirty answers so that the coldness of their deal wasn’t exposed to his family... Apollo wondered at the sanity of what he had done. Wondered suddenly about all the possibilities of a future that he had stolen from Jia.

Did she have a boyfriend back home? A lover who was even now mourning her loss? What were her dreams, other than rescuing her useless family? Why didn’t she work for some other company instead of letting her brother pass off her work as his own? Why the desperate effort to save a family who seemed undeserving at best and loathsome at worst?

He knew nothing of her hopes and fears. But more importantly, with the little he did know, Apollo didn’t want to give her up.

She was Jay Shetty’s daughter, she owned the stock that Apollo needed, and she was one of the most innovative young architects he’d ever met, and keeping her as his wife would be a lifelong, painful thorn in the old man’s side. Especially since he would make sure that Jia shifted her allegiance completely toward him.

Anything less than complete surrender was unacceptable to him in his wife, on principle. But even more, from the woman he was fast becoming obsessed with.

All the fun, parties, peace and comfort, and even sex, that he’d given up in his twenties and most of his thirties, he would make up with her. The prospect of spoiling Jia and himself, of glutting himself on her, with her, breathed new life into his burned-out soul.

As he pushed his muscles beyond endurance on the rowing machine in the state-of-the-art gym—one place Jia hadn’t invaded because she claimed she was allergic to sweat—he shifted his view of this marriage he’d insisted on.

Whatever he had taken away from Jia, he was sure, was small and pathetic enough that he could replace it. He’d drown her in wealth and recognition and laurels for her work, lavish her with gifts and luxury, so much so that all that fierce loyalty she showed her undeserving family would soon be his.

He would have all of her, and he would make her happier than Jay ever had andthatwould be the best revenge.

Two days later, it was midafternoon when Apollo stepped out of the chopper he’d called in at the last minute. Usually, he enjoyed the two-hour-long drive from his headquarters in Athens to the eco-friendly mansion he had built for his family nearly eight years ago.

It was one of his favorite projects, a contemporary but warm design set on fifteen acres of land—a gift to his mother. Although she’d never been as happy or receptive about the gift as he’d expected her, even needed her, to be. Neither did he forget that she wouldn’t have even moved in if not for Camilla, who, after a nasty divorce that had left her with nothing, had wanted her boys to have a good life.

Christina, whose partner, Fatima, was a world-renowned artist and traveled quite a bit like him, had been the least challenging about accepting gifts from the wealth he had amassed. Among all of them, she was the outdoorsy one, and the idea of living on fifteen acres of land, surrounded by her family, held great appeal for her. Being the compassionate one, she was also the one who had tried to understand what had driven Apollo for so long, though she never quite supported him either.

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