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“At first, yes, but I needed you when I woke up in the middle of the night with pain in my chest, and you were nowhere to be found because you were working late. You did your duty those first few weeks, and then you were done.”
“You never said?—”
“I lost my mother! I shouldn’t have to say. How could you have thought I was over her death?”
Pain coated her words and ripped his heart to pieces.
“I didn’t think you were over her death. I assumed you had learned to cope. Is that why you left? Why you told me that you were going to spend a few days with your father and then never came back? One day I came home, and all your things were gone.”
Her lips tilted upward as if she was amused, but he saw the bitterness in her smile.
“Do you know how many days it took for you to realize I was gone for good? Three. I remember exactly. I moved out on a Wednesday. You didn’t call until Saturday.”
Shame burned his cheekbones. He had been consumed with gaining more and more, and Saturday arrived before he noticed her primary toothbrush was missing. She hadn’t taken her travel brush. The one she kept in the bathroom was gone. Once he noticed, he rummaged through the drawers. Empty. Checked her closet. Empty.
“You were such a great husband. Well done,” Annabelle added with deep sarcasm.
She turned away from him, but Dante moved with lightning speed. As she opened the door, he slammed it shut.
She spun to face him.
“I am not done talking,” he said in a low, slow voice.
One hand on the door above her head, he gazed down into her face, noting the mutinous set of her lush mouth and the way her breasts rose and fell with each deep breath.
“I’mdone. Let me out of here.” Her eyes flashed with anger.
“You will leave when this conversation is over.”
“And I guess only the great Dante Escarra gets to decide when I leave, is that correct?”
He flashed a grin. “Correct.”
If her glare was a sword, he’d be chopped into tiny pieces.
Annabelle stepped away from him with her hands on her hips and went to stand in the middle of the room. “If we’re going to talk, let’s talk. Let’s get everything out in the open, shall we? I want to know why you married me the first time. The real reason.”
“Because I loved you.”Worshiped you. Adored you.
She had consumed him and had been his world. His highs and his lows. Nothing else mattered.
“It’s not the real reason, and you know it.”
“There was no other reason.”
Annabelle laughed in a dry, humorless way. “You can’t admit the truth, even to yourself. Here’s what I know. You married me because you saw an opportunity to enter the world I occupied. My father and I had connections to people you wanted to be in contact with. That’s why you married me, and you took full advantage of those connections. So excuse me if I had doubts about your so-called love for me.”
“You doubted my love for you?” Dante had never suspected. He couldn’t believe it.
“All I know is what I saw.”
“That is ridiculous! Why didyoumarryme?”
“I loved you.”
“But once we married, you realized being married to a poor man and walking away from the life you’d grown up in was not so great. Is that it? The money, the wealth, the parties. The chauffeur, the servants.”
“There you go again making untrue accusations. I never cared about any of those things. I wantedyou.”
