Back In Dr Xenakis' Arms

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Now she was fresh-faced, and somehow she looked younger to his eyes. Anytime her gaze fell on him her dark eyes were a string of long, empty nights and full of something even darker. Disappointment. Anger. Hatred...

Something bruised and broken dimmed the sparkle in those midnight eyes. How other people wouldn’t see it, he couldn’t imagine. Anyone with vision and human emotion would see right through her.

He checked Jacinda’s vitals, then the baby’s, and sat down.

If the three weeks he’d planned on staying was too long—and it was, even though the first week had already flown by—the three months he’d actually agreed to when Theo had called him was dramatically beyond the limits of what he was willing to subject himself or her to.

The second he’d seen Erianthe again—when no one had thought to warn him she’d arrived and was treating a patient—he’d seen her face and had only been able to imagine how he’d looked. God help them both if he’d looked half as distraught as she had.

When Theo had called him home, the need to be there for the friends he considered his family had made him agree to the three months requested of him.

Then his survival instincts had kicked in when he’d spoken with his boss. When he’d been asked when they could call him for his next assignment, he’d said three weeks. He’d even heard the word leave his mouth, known it was wrong and hadn’t corrected it. The word choice had been an accident, but letting it stand had been a conscious decision.

Three weeks, and now he had to keep it together only until the final two were finished, then find a way to bow out quietly when his office called him for reassignment.

A lot could go wrong in two weeks.

The door opened behind him.

Dammit, Erianthe.

He surged to his feet and spun around, readying himself for another argument, but instead saw Deakin standing there, his brows halfway up his forehead.

“Do you greet everyone that way, or did I do something?”

“I thought you were Erianthe,” Ares muttered, sitting back down. “I made her leave to get some sleep. She wasn’t best pleased with me.”

Back when they’d been together, hiding their relationship, pretending to pick at one another had actually been fun. Now lying to the men he considered his brothers stood out as the lesser of two evils. Hiding the ugly truth from people he loved was better than being the one who delivered the information that would burn everything down.

No sooner had the fire reference occurred to him than his conscience pinged as he recalled Deakin’s extensive burns; he must be getting callous to forget that about his friend.

“No one ever riled Erianthe like you could. Just like old times.”

Deakin rounded his chair to head for the patient monitors, doing what they all did with every patient—checking in. Ares took no offense and, considering his preoccupation, was even glad for Deakin’s diligence.

“She’s never been one to take orders easily. But she must’ve been tired, because she got a ride with Theo a few minutes ago. Either that or she just really wanted to get away from you. How did you make her leave?”

“I told her I didn’t want her here,” Ares answered. He could be truthful about that at least. It fit their pattern.

“Harsh.” Deakin’s one-word pronouncement came with a frown.

“I wanted to sleep for a year at the end of my residency, but she arrived in a crisis and was immediately drawn into emergency surgery.”

Ares listed what he knew, leaning back, trying to will the tension from his frame.

“She needed to go and rest, and making her mad was the fastest way to assure she went.”

“So it was for her own good?”

And his.

“Is there something you want to say, man?” he asked Deakin directly.

“Just trying to figure you out.”

“She’ll thank me tomorrow.”

They both knew that was a lie, and Deakin’s arched brow called him on it, but Ares ignored it.

“You’re grouchy as hell.” Deakin printed a short record of the EKG, dated it and went to slip it into the chart. “You sure you don’t want someone else staying with the patient?”

Not sure. The only thing he was sure of was that he needed to get off the island—even if it meant going to the tiny adjacent island where his family’s estate was. But that baby—let alone the mother—deserved his diligence. And it would be one less thing to quarrel about with Erianthe tomorrow if he stayed.

“I’m sure.” He scrubbed his hands over his face, sloughing off some of his weariness but none of the lingering agitation. “This is a walk in the park after the Sudan.”

“Unconvincing...” Deakin said.

He needed to work on his poker face as badly as Erianthe did. “Tough. I don’t need you to be convi—”

Jacinda stirred, shutting down the grumbling between them. Ares stood over her, took her hand and said her name. She woke and he repeated what Erianthe had told her—anesthesia had amnesiac qualities.

“The surgery went very well. You’re doing great. Both of you did really well.”

“The baby’s okay?” she asked, her words still a little slurred, but her confusion might be the first thing not to annoy him today.

“The baby is fine. I’m staying with you to keep an eye on you, but all I expect to see is you sleeping peacefully. Okay?”

She nodded, squeezed his hand and then was already drifting back off.

“Don’t stay up all night,” Deakin said more quietly at his side, reminding him of their previous conversation, “Get her past recovery from the anesthesia, then get some rest yourself. We’ve got a breakfast meeting at Stavros’s Taverna. That’s what I actually came here to tell you.”

“Breakfast meeting? Why?”

“Because for some reason we want to see you there with the rest of us. Full group.”

“With girlfriends?”

“No. Just us.”

Staying up all night with a pregnant postsurgical patient would be a perfectly acceptable reason to skip that land mine. He’d met with all the guys since his return, but doing it again with Erianthe there... Bad idea—at least before they’d had a chance to work out how to be normal around one another. In fact, it was the worst idea he’d heard all day.

He couldn’t even imagine them pretending to snipe at one another and squabble, in order to keep anyone from suspecting they had genuine painful issues and memories to be raw about.

“I’ll try to make it, but I’m not making any promises.”

“Barring emergencies, you’ll be there.” Deakin gave his head a small, affectionate shove from behind as he passed on the way for the door. “You should also think about shaving, if you don’t want all of us thinking you’re suffering from exhaustion. Logic says that anyone with even a small amount of extra energy would have tamed that thing as soon as they could. And it will have to be gone by the time the auction comes around or we’ll be paying someone to take you.”

“Just because you and Theo got out of being auctioned off to bored socialites, it doesn’t mean Chris and I have to carry your weight.”

There was a lot Ares would do for the clinic and Mythelios after the quake, but there had to be a line drawn somewhere. Perhaps he could buy himself...

Deakin’s soft laughter creaked through the closing door, and he added something rude about posing for the next calendar.

That bullet he had dodged, by being so far removed from civilization they hadn’t been able to find a photographer to come meet him. And he’d made a bit more of a donation to the clinic to make up for it. But the charity bachelor auction was still a few weeks away.

He’d be gone by then, if anything in the universe could go in his favor where Erianthe was concerned.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_2612760c-c74d-5e3b-b4ba-0284053af2e5)

ERIANTHE DROPPED HEAVILY onto the side of a guest bed at Chris’s gorgeous cliffside villa. How long had it taken her to become adept at hiding her feelings? And had it ever been this hard?

If the inevitable confrontation with Ares hadn’t sucked every drop of energy from her, her time with Chris and Chris’s baby afterward had consumed the last of it.

Theo had taken the news that she didn’t want to stay with him pretty well and, after some initial resistance, had driven her to Chris’s home. He’d refused to be convinced to go home until he’d seen that she was settled in, so they’d all sat down to share coffee as he’d snuggled with little Evangelos, Chris’s seven-month-old son.

Soon Theo would be a baba himself, and if the way he reacted to his honorary “nephew” was any indication, he’d be a natural at it. Far better than their father had ever been. He would have been a wonderful uncle to her own child too...

And at that thought she’d begun to feel the weight of every atom in her body. Her movements had become jerky, sluggish, and even her smile had trembled when she’d tried to force it. The trembling was the worst part of this strange exhaustion.

It was probably a blessing that today had been a travel day—she had something to blame for her exhaustion. Everyone had certainly put her oddness down to that today, and maybe they’d let that excuse carry for a couple of days if she was lucky.

It was easy to control the expression on her face, but her body was out of control. That feeling of helplessness was how she’d lived for the duration of her pregnancy, and she’d never wanted to return to it.

First seeing Ares again, then being watched by Theo and Chris, and all the while trying very hard not to think about Chris’s beautiful baby son—who somehow managed to look like his stupidly handsome father even whilst hiding Chris’s strong jawline under chubby cherub cheeks...

None of that was within her control. Nothing felt within her control right now—no matter what she’d all but shouted at Ares about making her own decisions.

She stared out the window at the play of light and shadow of the late-afternoon sunshine through the trees in the yard in an effort to control the trembling she felt inside. At least she’d gotten beyond the point where it showed in her face and hands, but it was still there in her belly, in her chest, deeper than anyone could see. Right where she’d always tried to keep everything hidden.

Pretending that Chris was only babysitting felt immature and cold. Plus, it didn’t help. If he’d babysat for anyone, it would have been one of theirs.

Theo’s future baby. Deakin’s future baby.

She had no one to tell about her daughter, how she should have been a mother ten years ago. That she should be in the process of being driven mad by a willful tween who refused to listen, plastered her walls with posters of pop singers and thought her mother was an idiot.

Theo’s extremely helpful big-brother thing meant she had nothing to do now but sit and stare. And think. And that was the thing that would drive her mad in the end. It broke all her rules about self-preservation. Thinking about the past and what she should have had: a daughter to love and protect and nurture. A decade of memories of bubble baths in the sink and frilly toddler bikinis, living in a world of pink.

Erianthe had rebelled against all those girlie things when she was growing up, but for her daughter... She’d have done her whole house up in shades of pink for her daughter.