Page 44 of His Forgotten Wife
And that early learning came in handy as he mindlessly walked around the grounds in relative darkness. The feeling of loss and pain remained the same though. But he wasn’t alone this time as he had been back then, he reminded himself.
He had Dahlia on his side now and while the thought didn’t take away the disappointment and the pain, it steadied him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dahlia waited allnight for Ares. First in her bedroom, then in the gym, then in the sauna, then in his own bedroom. Had even crawled into his bed past midnight, desperate for a whiff of him. Buried her face in his pillow and around dawn, she’d fallen into an exhausted slumber.
He had never come to bed.
There had been no sign of him the next morning either. When she’d asked Arabella about it, the girl’s eyes had filled with sudden anxiety, provoked by Dolly’s fervent question. Finally, the girl had admitted that she had seen her brother that morning and that he had looked extremely agitated. When she’d begged to know what was going on, Ares had admitted that he was going to visit their grandfather who lived in a nearby village. Then there was the fact that their mother had gone off to London early this morning.
Dolly’s heart had sunk to her toes, her own agitation on behalf of Ares rising. Clearly, something big had happened with his father and brothers after he’d ordered her to leave. The villa was eerily quiet, as if in anticipation of the incoming storm. And yet Arabella looked alone and small and afraid and she hadn’t wanted to abandon the girl.
God, how had she grown so fond of the teenager? And what was she going to do when it was time to bid goodbye to her too?
The last thing she’d wanted was for Arabella to live through the fraught, even toxic fallout of her brothers’ actions. It was only a momentary reprieve since Dolly couldn’t protect her from the consequences forever.
Still, she understood why Ares hadn’t wanted to open a vein of poison straight through his family.
So, Dolly lied that she was taking the day off—as if it had all been planned with Ares, and begged Arabella to take her sightseeing. She texted Ares several times throughout the day, even knowing that his cellphone was usually a second thought for him and he hated to be harassed through texts like that. She’d happily bear his ire and irritation if it meant knowing that he was faring okay.
It was late evening when they returned to an empty villa.
Her body humming with alarm now, Dolly took a quick shower, and pulled on a worn-out T of Ares’s from Columbia.
Her hair in a braid, she was coming down the winding stairs on bare feet when she heard Ares and another familiar voice from the large study. For just a second, she wanted to run back up the stairs to her bedroom and hide there.
Pressing a hand to her abdomen, she walked into the living room to find Ares and his entire family assembled. Including his parents, the meatheads, his grandparents and Arabella. The tension in the room was cloying enough that she hesitated.
The conversation ground to a screeching halt as all heads turned in her direction. But Dolly had eyes for no one else, nor space in her heart to register anything beyond Ares.
Her gaze collided with his and for a moment, all the breath whooshed out of her. Anger and something more shimmered there, before he cut eye contact completely. Thoughts flocked through her head at an alarming rate, making her dizzy. But all she wanted, her stupid heart wanted, was to go to him and hold him and have him hold her tight.
And yet, the gap between them felt like it was wider than ever.
“Oh, don’t run away, Dahlia. We’ve been waiting for you to arrive. There’s important family stuff to take care of.”
“Ares…”
“Sit down, Dahlia,” he bit out in a soft tone that made alarm bells clang in her head.
Something was very wrong.
A moment later, Ares flung a sheaf of papers onto the middle of the coffee table, the movement ringing with impatience and barely suppressed fury.
“Here are the papers I had drawn by my lawyer today. And some other important documentation that I should have acted on, months ago.”
Eager greed danced in the meatheads’ eyes while the rest of them looked baffled. “What are they, Ares? What’s going on?” Juliana asked him and then turned to her, as if Dolly would know the answers. Something about the trust in her eyes made her stomach tight.
“Oh, my sweet, wonderful wife doesn’t know much about it,” Ares said, in a mocking tone. “At least not what I’ve been up to in the last day.”
A single bee’s buzzing would have been loud like thunder in the ensuing silence.
“Wife? What do you mean?” Juliana said, looking between them.
Everything inside her came to a standstill, a cold fist at the center of her. He knew. How? Had he remembered everything? What did that mean?
Dolly understood what it meant to want the ground to open up and swallow you whole. Her cheeks burned at the scrutiny from everyone.
