What The Greek's Wife Needs - Dani Collins Page 0,58
overwhelmed her in waves of euphoric angst. When her daughter tried to drop her face through the tablet screen to get to him and Tanja wanted to do the very same thing.
Perhaps he missed them, too. He walked in late on a Wednesday evening when she hadn’t been expecting him until Thursday afternoon. He surprised her in her pj’s watching an old rom-com, fighting her lonesomeness with a glass of wine and a bowl of popcorn.
He exhaled a huge sigh as he saw her. Before she could do more than set aside the bowl and rise to say, “You’re home,” he had planted a kiss on her that nearly made her faint.
Heart hammering, exchanging no other words, they peeked in on the sleeping Illi, then hurried to the master bedroom where they ravaged the hell out of each other. When he reached for the nightstand, she said, “It’s okay. I saw the doctor. I have an IUD.”
He fell on her and their naked joining took them to a new level of intimate pleasure, one that left her in a state of elation for days after.
Tanja began to believe he was coming to love her, too. Maybe, despite all the trials and tribulations and the five years of separation, she was married to her soul mate?
Leon sorted through the courier envelopes on his desk, separating out the ones addressed to him from the ones addressed to his wife.
He had half expected to feel bothered by sharing his home. He’d never lived with anyone so closely and had always liked his space just so.
Tanja was fairly tidy by nature, but her cosmetics turned up on his side of the bathroom sink and her purse landed on his desk and sometimes the shirt he wanted was already on her back. As for Illi, she had a very attentive nanny, but still needed a lot of care and attention, often at the most inconvenient times, and for someone who had only mastered rolling, she was very good at scattering toys far and wide.
He had missed that small sense of disarray while he’d been away on his business trip. He should have embraced the time alone. He’d always preferred to answer to no one, but he’d been irritated that Tanja and Illi hadn’t been able to come with him. He had felt as though he was holding his breath the whole time, annoyed at the way people rushed to do his bidding while each minute of the clock dragged.
The last thing he wanted was to become dependent, but he had rushed back early. Which disconcerted him. Tanja was the furthest thing from cruel, but she didn’t have to be. She had the power to hurt him anyway, and that knowledge, that anticipation that she would, hung over him like a blade that could drop at any second.
It whistled down upon him when he opened the envelope from Georgiou.
“How would you feel if I invited my father to visit?” Tanja asked, coming in while he was still absorbing what his lawyer had sent.
Leon’s blood was pounding so hard in his ears he barely heard her.
“What’s wrong?” Her tone plummeted into something cold and filled with dread.
He gave himself a mental shake, wiping his face clean of whatever was causing her cheeks to grow hollow and her eyes to widen with apprehension.
“Nothing,” he stated. It felt like a lie. A grave one. “Georgiou’s email the other day said things were going well with the officials in Istuval. He said we should have something soon. I thought this was the finalized postnuptial, but it’s also Illi’s adoption papers.” He showed her the official certificates.
Tanja’s eyes latched on to the Canadian passport and she snatched it up. “Oh, my God! When he asked me to get her photo taken for this, I thought it would take weeks.”
She flipped it open, saw Illi’s name and clasped the passport to her heart. Her eyes welled. “She’s mine? Really? Oh, my God, Leon. Thank you. Thank you.”
She hurried around to throw herself against him in a shaking mass of every emotion—joy and relief and things he couldn’t identify.
“It’s okay.” Leon reflexively closed his arms around her and ran soothing hands over her back. “Yes, she’s yours now.”
“I feel terrible for being this happy,” she said through her sniffles. “I mean, her mother should have her, right? And Brahim is still out there—”
“You’re still allowed to be happy, Tanja.” He wondered sometimes how such a slender body could contain such a big heart.