Excerpt of More Than A Convenient Marriage? by Dani Collins

“Loverboy not home?”

The familiar male voice stopped her heart and jerked her gaze up from the chevron pattern in the cobblestones to the magnificence that was her husband. Swift, fierce attraction sliced through her, sharp and disarming as always.

Not a day passed that she didn’t wonder how she’d landed such a smoking hot man. He was shamelessly handsome, his features even and just hard enough to be undeniably masculine. He rarely smiled, but he didn’t have to charm when his sophistication and intelligence commanded such respect. The sheer physical presence of him quieted a room. She always thought of him as a purebred stallion, outwardly still and disciplined, but with an invisible energy and power that warned he could explode any second.

Don’t overlook resourceful, she thought acridly. How else had he turned up half a world from where she’d thought he would be when she’d taken pains to keep her whereabouts strictly confidential?

Fortunately, Adara had a lot of experience hiding visceral reactions like instant animal attraction and guilty alarm. She kept her sunglasses on and willed her pulse to slow, keeping her limbs loose and her body language unreadable.

“What are you doing here?” she asked with a cool lift of her chin. “Lexi said you would be in Chile.” Lexi’s tone still grated, so proprietary over Gideon’s schedule, so pitying as she had looked upon the ignorant wife who not only failed as a woman biologically, but no longer interested her husband sexually. Adara had wanted to erase the woman’s superior smile with a swipe of her manicured nails.

“Let’s turn that question around, shall we?” Gideon strolled with deadly negligence around the front of her car. Adara had never been afraid of him, not physically, not like she had been of her father, but somewhere along the line Gideon had developed the power to hurt her with a look or a word, without even trying, and that scared her. She steeled herself against him, but her nerves still fried with the urge to flee.

She made herself stand her ground and find the reliable armor of civility she’d grown as self-defense long ago. It served her well in her dealings with this man, allowing her to engage with him even intimately without losing herself. Still, she wanted higher, thicker invisible walls. Her reasons for coming to Greece were too private to share, carrying as they did such a heavy risk of rejection. That’s why she hadn’t told him or anyone else where she was going. “I’m here on personal business,” she said in a lightly dismissive tone, not inviting discussion.

He, in turn, should have given her his polite nod of acknowledgment that always drove home that he was supremely indifferent to what happened in her world. It might hurt a little, but far better to have her trials and triumphs brushed aside than dissected and diminished.

While she, as was her habit, wouldn’t bother repeating a question he ignored, even though she really did want to know how and why he’d followed her here. Giving away none of her burning curiosity, she only elevated her brows in silent, Is that all?

Oddly, even though his body language was as neutral as always, his expression impassive as he squinted against the brightness of the day, she again had the sense of that coiled force drawing even tighter inside him. When he spoke, the words burst out of him with quiet ferocity.

“I can see how personal it is. Who is he?” His tone made her heart give a little kick. Gideon rarely got angry and even more rarely showed it. He certainly never directed anger at her, but his accusation warned of a fuselage of incendiary fury targeted right at her center. Adara was equally good at keeping her temper in check. She told herself not to let his jab pierce her shell, but his charge was a shock and she couldn’t believe it! The man was banging his secretary in the most clichéd of affairs and he still had the nerve to dog her all the way to Greece to accuse her of cheating?

Despite knowing from experience you didn’t provoke a man in a temper, she let her some of her indignation show with a pithy sneer as she informed him how misguided he was. “He has a wife and new baby—”

Gideon’s harsh crack of laughter cut her off. “Cheating on one spouse wasn’t enough, you have to go for two and ruin the life of a child into the mix?”

Since when did he care about children?

A fierce burn sprang up behind Adara’s eyes, completely unwanted right now when she needed to keep her cool. The back of her throat stung, making her voice thick. She hoped he’d put it down to ire, not heartbreak.

“As I said, Lexi assured me you had appointments in Chile. ‘We will be flying into Valparaiso,’ she told me. ‘We will be staying in the family suite at the Makricosta Grand.’” Adara choked out what Lexi hadn’t said, but what had been in the woman’s eyes and supercilious smile. “‘We will be wrecking your bed and calling your staff for breakfast in the morning.’ Who is cheating on who, you hypocrite?”

It was more emotion than she’d ever dared reveal around him, but his adultery was a blow she hadn’t seen coming and she was always on guard for unearned strikes. Always. Somehow she’d convinced herself she could trust him and if she was angry with anyone, it was herself for being so blindly oblivious. She was shaking she was so furious! Combustible rage bared his teeth, but his voice was crisp and glacial. “Lexi did not say that because it’s not true. And why would you care if she did? We aren’t wrecking any beds, are we? Hypocrite.”