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It’s because you know this is temporary, she told herself now, watching the city melt from shadow into dancing light and back again on the other side of the glass. When there was no escape, when you had no choice, it was easier to simply do what had to be done.
Her headaches had only gotten worse as time went on. It seemed all she wanted to do was lie down and sleep, except even when she forced herself into a long and uninterrupted night’s rest, she never woke refreshed. She felt thick all the way through. Underwater, somehow.
She’d been toying with the idea that she was allergic to Leonidas.
But the thing she felt when she was close to him, doing as he’d asked and helping him navigate the cutthroat world he occupied as if he’d never been away, was not an allergy. It had a great many similar symptoms. Breathlessness. A pervasive flush. A sort of restless, itchy feeling all over…
If it was an allergy, she could take decongestants and be done with him. With this. But there was no remedy for the intensity that Leonidas exuded the way other men wore cologne.
God help her, all she wanted was to be done with this.
She’d spent her entire life training to be married off to a man like Leonidas. Then the whole of her marriage training to be as ruthless and powerful as the husband she’d lost. Susannah had no idea what it was like to be on her own.
No one had ever asked her what it was she wanted. Which was probably a good thing, she thought wryly, because she had no idea.
“You seem drained yet again,” Leonidas said from beside her, as if in answer to the question in her head, but she knew better than to think he could read her. Or would want to read her, for that matter, as if they shared some kind of intimacy. The truth was, she might be married to him, but he wasn’t hers.
A man like Leonidas would never be any woman’s.
Susannah hadn’t realized he’d finished his call. She turned from the rain-lined windows and the gleaming lights of Paris just there on the other side, and tried to arrange her face into something pleasant. Or calm enough to be mistaken for pleasant, anyway.
“I’m not drained,” she said, because it was polite. But he was watching her, his dark eyes brooding and entirely too close, there in the backseat of the car, and she didn’t feel particularly polite after all. “I find I am less interested in this endless game of playacting with every day that passes, that’s all.”
His brows rose and she thought she saw something glitter there, deep in his dark gold gaze. But when he spoke his voice was even.
“I regret that my presence is such a burden upon you.”
It occurred to her that he was playing a role just as much as she was, and she couldn’t have said why that realization sent a bolt of something like shame spinning through her. But she didn’t let it keep her quiet.
“Yes, thank you. It always helps to be sardonic, I find. It makes everything so much better.”
“As does sarcasm.”
“You asked me to help you, and I agreed to do that,” Susannah reminded him tightly. “I could end that agreement at any time, and whether you recall the name of every assistant in the Malaysian office or not is no concern to me either way.”
Leonidas didn’t look chastened. But then again, he never did. He might not remember the many people who tried to speak to him over the course of a day, but he certainly seemed to remember that he was the one in charge. Of everything. It galled her that she’d allowed him to take charge of her as well, when surely she simply could have left.
Why hadn’t she left?
“Let me hasten to assure you that this extreme torture will end soon enough,” he told her, and there was a note in his voice she didn’t like. One that made it seem impossible that he was doing anything but indulging her, with no intention whatsoever of keeping his promises.
But there was no point debating possibilities. And her head hurt too much anyway. Susannah didn’t respond. She rubbed at her temples instead, listening to the music her bracelets made as they jangled on her wrist.
“If you continue to get these headaches, I think you should see the doctor,” Leonidas murmured after a moment. In that way of his that would have made an apology sound like a command.
Not that Susannah could imagine this man apologizing for anything. Ever.
“I don’t need a doctor to tell me that I’m under stress,” Susannah said tautly. “Or that what I need to recover from such stress is a solitary retreat. Far, far away the intrigue and drama of the Betancur Corporation.”
For once, Leonidas did not respond in kind. Instead, he reached over and took her hand in his. And Susannah wanted to pull it back instantly, rip her hand from his so that she wouldn’t have to sit there and fight the surging sensation that rolled through her at even so small a touch.
