Antonides' Forbidden Wife

It wasn’t a joke.

Or if it was, the joke was on him.

Sometimes he thought that his marriage to Ally was more like a dream—a distant recollection of one moment out of his life that seemed to have no connection to the rest of his life, except for one, which had ended badly.

He should have left it there. Or filed for divorce himself after their set-to at the gallery five years ago.

But he hadn’t. Why bother?

He’d certainly had no intention of marrying at the time. In fact having a wife in absentia had actually been convenient. He’d had a built-in reason for never getting serious. It had stood him in good stead in Hawaii back in his beach-bum days. But it had been even more of a godsend since he’d come back to New York and his parents had begun dragging out every available woman they knew.

“Don’t bother,” he’d said straight off. “I’m married.”

They hadn’t believed him, of course.

Where was his wife? Who was his wife? They’d dismissed it as a joke, too, until he’d shown them the marriage license.

Then they’d had a thousand questions, each nosier and more personal than the last. He’d only answered the ones he wanted to. He’d told them her name, where he’d met her, why he’d married her.

“A favor?” his father had sputtered. “You married her for a favor?”

“Why not?” PJ had said flatly, folding his arms across his chest. “She was between a rock and a hard place. She needed a way out. You’d have done the same,” he said bluntly. His father, for all his bombast, was a far bigger softie than any of his children. “Wouldn’t you?” he’d challenged the old man.

Aeolus had grunted.

“So when is she coming back?” he and Helena had both wanted to know.

“When she finds herself,” PJ had replied. That was probably the closest he’d come to telling a lie.

How the hell did he know when or what Ally would do? He’d have thought she’d be glad to see him when he’d turned up at her gallery opening. Instead she’d been stiff and remote and defensive.

She hadn’t even seemed like Ally. She’d been dismissive of Annie, completely misunderstanding his reason for bringing the other woman along. She hadn’t seemed at all like the girl he’d married. He’d told himself it didn’t matter, that he should just forget her.

But he couldn’t. She was always there—Ally and the one night they’d shared.

“You should go get her,” Yiayia told him. Yiayia was always full of ideas. The minute word of PJ’s marriage had come to her ears, she’d been busy figuring out how to bring them together again.

“No.” PJ was adamant. “Things are fine just the way they are.”

If he’d hoped they would be different, if now and then he had even begun to think about how to make them different, it wasn’t something he’d spent a lot of time dwelling on. Nor was he going to discuss it with Yiayia.

“Pah,” Yiayia had said. “What good is a wife when she is not here? It is not good for a man to be alone, Petros. And it is not good for a great-grandmother to be denied her rightful great-grandchildren, either.”

He’d glowered at her. “That’s what this is all about really,” he’d grumbled.

“Do you think so?” Yiayia said. Then she’d shaken her head in dismay. “You are hiding behind her skirts.”

“I am not! How the hell can I hide behind the skirts of someone who isn’t even here.”

“You use her not to deal with the women your father brings you.”

PJ shrugged. “I don’t want them.”

“Because you want her.”

“That’s not true!”

“So prove it. Not to me.” Yiayia cut off his protest before he could open his mouth. “For yourself. Go find her. See what she is like now. Bring her home. Or get a divorce.”

He ground his teeth, but Yiayia just looked at him serenely. Finally he’d shrugged. “Maybe I will.”

“‘Maybe’ builds no fires to keep me warm. ‘Maybe’ gives me no great-grandbabies.”

“Fine, damn it,” he said, goaded. “It’s our tenth anniversary in August. I’ll track her down. Take her out to dinner to celebrate.”

And sort things out once and for all.

Yiayia smiled and patted his knee. “Bring her home to meet us. It is good she meets your family, ne, Petros?”

PJ hadn’t answered that. But he knew she was right about one thing.

He was thirty-two years old now. Not twenty-two, or even twenty-seven. He was ready to be married to someone who was actually present in his life. And though some of the women his father turned up with were actually quite nice, he still hadn’t forgotten Ally.

And now Ally was back.

“She’s gorgeous,” Rosie said now.

“Yeah.”

In fact, gorgeous didn’t cover the half of it. Ally had always been amazing looking. He’d been struck by that the first time he’d seen her behind the counter at Benny’s taking orders.

The combined genes of her Japanese father and her Chinese-Hawaiian-Anglo mother had come together to make Alice Maruyama an absolute beauty with a porcelain complexion, high cheekbones beneath wide slightly tilted dark eyes, with the longest eyelashes he’d ever seen.

Her shining black hair had always been neatly tamed, nicely brushed, pinned down or pulled up.

Except for the night he’d made love to her. And then it had been a lavish black silk curtain, loose and lush, that begged him to thread it through his fingers, bury his face in it, rub his cheek against it.

The second she’d walked through the door this afternoon, his fingers had itched to undo that sleek librarian’s knot at the back of head, let down her hair and do all those things again.

Good thing he had a well-honed sense of self-preservation. Good thing he’d learned something from going to see her at her gallery opening wearing his heart on his sleeve. He’d been a fool for her once. He wasn’t doing it again.

But he wasn’t letting her walk blithely away, either.

There was still something between them. Electricity. Attraction. Unfinished business.

Had she ever spent a night like their wedding night with bloody Jon? His fingers balled into fists at the thought.

How could she just walk in here and toss divorce papers at him? Why should she want to marry another man?