Antonides' Forbidden Wife

“Why not?” She was rattled now. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Sure it does.” He shrugged. “We’re married. We took vows.”

“Oh, yes, right. And we’ve certainly kept them, haven’t we?”

The brow lifted again and he said mildly, “Speak for yourself, Al.”

She gaped at him. “What are you saying?”

“Never mind.” He looked away out the window, stared out at Manhattan across the river for a long moment while Ally stewed, waiting for him to enlighten her. Finally he looked her way again. “I’m just saying we’ve been married for ten years. That’s a long time. Lots of marriages don’t last that long,” he added.

“Are you suggesting that more people shouldn’t see each other for ten years? Or five,” she added, forcing herself to add that one disastrous meeting.

He shook his head, smiling slightly. “No. I’m saying we should give it a shot.”

“What?” She couldn’t believe her ears. “Give what a shot?”

“Marriage. Living together. Seeing if it will work.” Deep green eyes bored into hers.

Ally opened her mouth, then closed it again. She couldn’t believe this was happening. Not now! Not ever, for that matter. That had never been the plan. Not for her, and certainly not for PJ.

“We don’t know each other,” she pointed out.

“We were friends once.”

“You were a beach bum and I was the counter girl where you bought plate lunches and hamburgers.”

“We met there,” he agreed. “And we became friends. You’re not trying to say we weren’t friends.”

“No.” She couldn’t say that. They had been friends. “But that’s the point. We were friends, PJ. Buddies. We never even went out! You certainly didn’t love me then! And you can’t possibly love me now.”

“So? I like what I see. And a lot of marriages start with less.”

He made it sound eminently sensible and reasonable—as if it were perfectly logical for two people to go their separate ways for ten years and then suddenly, without warning, pick up where they left off.

Maybe to him it was. After all, he’d married her with no real forethought at all. It had been useful to her, so he had done it.

She shook her head. “That’s ridiculous.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Of course it is. We don’t live anywhere near each other. We have entirely different lives.”

“I’m adaptable.”

“Well, I’m not! I’ve got a life in Hawaii now. I’ve come home, settled down. I like it there. I’ve worked hard to get where I am, to do what I’m doing. It’s time to take the next step.”

“Which is?”

“Get a divorce!”

“No.”

“Yes! I’ve got to,” she said. “I…I’m getting a life!”

“Finally?” His tone was mocking.

She wrapped her arms across her chest. “I had other things to do first. You know that.”

“And now you’ve done them, so you want a divorce.” A brow lifted. “Why now?”

“Because I’ve found you, for one thing,” she said with a touch of annoyance. “And why wait? It’s not as if we’ve got a relationship. On the contrary, we have nothing.”

“We have memories.”

“Ten-year-old memories,” she scoffed.

“And one five-year-old one,” PJ reminded her.

Ally’s face burned. “I’ve apologized for that!”

“So you have. Thank you,” he said formally. “Anyway, it’s not my fault we didn’t keep in touch,” he pointed out. “You’re the one who didn’t leave a forwarding address.”

“Mea culpa,” Ally muttered. But then she added, “Maybe I should have kept in touch, but—”

But doing so would have been a temptation she didn’t want to have to deal with. Marrying PJ had been one thing—it had been a few words recited, a couple of signatures scrawled. It had been a legal document, but it hadn’t been personal. Not really.

That night, though—that one night with PJ—had destroyed all her notions of their marriage being no more than an impersonal business proposition. It had made her want things she knew she had no business wanting, things she was sure PJ definitely didn’t want. She knew he’d married her to help her out.

To change the rules after the fact wouldn’t have been fair.

She shook her head. “I just thought it was better if I didn’t.”

“No distractions,” PJ translated flatly.

“Yes,” Ally lied. “But times change. People change as you said.” She gave him the brightest smile she could manage under the circumstances, but she couldn’t quite meet his eyes.

“So what’s the real reason, Al?”

The question cut across the jumble of her thoughts exactly the way his suggestion that he marry her had cut across the morass of worries she’d wallowed in all those years ago.

She hadn’t counted on that, any more than she’d counted on this.

She’d assured herself that seeing PJ again would be a good thing. That it was the right thing to do—the polite thing to do—come and ask him face-to-face to sign the divorce papers rather than simply mail the papers to him.

She’d been convinced that seeing him again would bring closure.

She’d convinced herself that she would walk into PJ’s office and have changed enough to feel nothing more than gratitude to the man she had married ten years before.