“You said you were working late. I didn’t want to bother you, since it sounded important.”
He hesitates for a moment, then lets out a soft sigh and nods. “My fault. I should’ve made it clear that it’s no bother. Nothing is more important than you.”
Sweetness starts to shiver through me, until shock flares in his eyes. Suddenly I realize he didn’t mean to put it that way. He probably regrets it now.
Sudden resentment surges. I hate it that he’s confusing me, telling me he wants respectful indifference, but then acting all caring…and regretting it. I think of all the things he’s done for me without my having to ask. Is he sorry he did them?
But right now, I don’t want to talk about it. That’s not why I stayed up, and I have a feeling that if I broach the topic we’ll end up arguing.
“There’s an art auction next week. I want to go,” I say. “Not sure about the protocol for something like that in a marriage like ours, but I’d prefer to go with you. But if you don’t want to, that’s fine.”
He stares at me as though I just slapped him. Then he runs a hand over his face. “Of course we’ll go together.”
“It’s okay if you’re busy—”
The muscles in his jaw bunch. “I’ll go with you.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Ares
Lareina is acting strangely for some reason. I agreed to take her to the auction. So why behave so stiffly, like that wasn’t what she wanted after all?
I didn’t say anything I didn’t mean that night. I find her even more important than my work. As soon as the words slipped from my lips, I froze in shock. I hadn’t realized it until I said it, but somehow she’s become more important than I can imagine.
“What do you do when your wife is upset?” I say over an after-work drink with Huxley Lasker, my cousin. Despite having graduated Harvard Law with honors, he refused to join the firm because he’d rather be in advertising. Grandmother and Aunt Jeremiah still can’t believe it, but nothing they said or did changed his mind.
Most people don’t realize we’re related when we hang out together. Huxley looks more like his degenerate Hollywood mogul father than his mother. He got his dark hair and square jaw from the old man. The brain and good taste, on the other hand, are all Jeremiah. His father was so unbelievably lazy and stupid, he named his child after our family’s last name. Who does that?
On the other hand, he didn’t kidnap his own child and leave him to die in a forest fire. So on balance…
“Why? You in the doghouse already?” Hux says.
“No, there’s no doghouse.” I still sleep in the same bed as Lareina. “I just feel like we got off on the wrong foot.”
“Okay. How did it happen?”
I glare at him. I hate it when people ask me a question I can’t answer. He purses his lips, then clears his throat.
“Maybe you should start over,” he says.
“Start over? How?”
“Buy her some piece of jewelry that symbolizes a new beginning.”
I snort. “You sound like your half-brother.” Sebastian Lasker is the CEO of Sebastian Jewelry.Again—that father of theirs naming kids after their mothers’ family business or names.
“Seb isn’t usually wrong about things like this. There’s a reason he runs one of the most successful jewelry companies in the world.”
“She won’t accept a ring.”
“For a good reason. Too cliché. Buy her something she wants.”
“Like…?”
“I don’t know. She’syourwife.” He shrugs and spreads his hands. “A yacht?”
So she can sail away by herself? I don’t think so.
