Phoebe didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when she returned home from visiting her sister to find her husband waiting for her.
“Phoebe,” he said, offering her a sheepish sort of smile from where he sat in the library, his ankle draped over his knee, his posture suggesting that he’d been sitting there for a while.
She… didn’t know what to make of that.
She had just been complaining to Hannah about the way that Aaron had been blowing hot and cold. Then hot. Then cold. Then back and forth a few more times, just for fun—just to keep Phoebe feeling as though she was well on her way to madness.
“I am fairly certain that he isn’t doing it just to annoy you,” Hannah had argued as she reclined on a settee, her hand draped over her stomach, which was now visible unless Hannah stood just so. She hadn’t bothered to do so when she was alone with Phoebe, and the curve of her stomach was a stark reminder of the timeline for Loyd to get himself in order.
But Phoebe was going to focus on that later. Right now, she was going to whine a bit more.
“You don’t know that,” she’d objected. “You don’t know him. He might have a secret passion for driving women to bedlam.”
“Oh, right, because you married a gothic villain?”
Phoebe had waved at her sister. “I don’t like this. I don’t like this whole thing you’re doing right now. Be on my side, please.”
Hannah’s look was fond in a maternal sort of way. It was very irritating.
“I am on your side,” she said. “I am trying to show you that the root of your problems isn’t actually about how the Duke reacts.”
She dangled this in front of Phoebe like a morsel of meat in front of a dog.
Phoebe was extremely angry with herself for taking the bait.
“What is it about, then?” she asked wearily.
Hannah smiled. “It’s about howyoureact. It’s about how youfeel.”
This had been so preposterous that Phoebe had been unable to speak for a full minute.
But now, home and staring at Aaron, she couldn’t help but hear her sister’s words ringing in her ears.
How she felt. How shefelt.
She didn’tknowhow she felt; that was a good part of the problem.
“Good afternoon, Aaron,” she said for lack of anything wiser to say.
“Would you sit?” he asked, and when he gestured, it wasn’t to any of the chairs around the room—it was to the other side of the same settee where he was seated.
Choosing any other place—or refusing to sit entirely—would have sent the kind of message that she didn’t think she wanted to send. Not, of course, that she knew what she wanted to say.
But she was afraid of closing a door before figuring out what was inside it.
So she went where he indicated, tucking her skirts around her without trying to seem as though she was avoiding touching him. Touching, however, always led them to… other things, and while she enjoyed those things immensely, they never seemed tosolveanything.
Instead, she only got more confused every time.
He didn’t speak at first. When he did, he was looking down at his hands. Phoebe had to focus hard on not thinking about those hands felt against her—inside her.
“Thank you,” he said eventually.
Her head jerked up in surprise.
“For what?”
His smile was rueful, but it was still almost breathtakingly lovely. His smiles always were. It was like someone had peeled away the outer shell of him to reveal the man beneath. She wished he wouldn’t hide that truth inside so much of the time.
