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If only she did not love him.
“I can see your brain working overtime,” Nikos said, tilting his head slightly as he gazed down at her. “What can there be to think about, Tristanne? We both know there can be only one answer.”
If only she did not love him.
But she did love him, every arrogant, demanding, exasperating inch of him. She loved the way he moved through the world, using that powerful body and his far more impressive mind to cut a swathe before him. She loved the way he held her so tenderly sometimes, though she knew he would deny any and all softer emotions—or any emotions at all—were she to say such a thing aloud. She loved the defiant way he spoke of his past, as if it did not hurt him, as if it had not shaped him. She loved. She loved with every breath, with every caress of pencil against paper, with every touch of skin to skin. She loved him more than she had ever loved another person in her life, more than she could ever say, and she knew that she could not marry him. Not when almost everything she’d said to him, more or less, was a lie.
He had not spoken of love, she knew, nor would he. But did that matter? She knew the truths between them that only their bodies could speak. He did not have to feel as she did. She was not certain that he could, even if he’d wanted to do something so anathema to him.
Which only made it more clear what she must do, though every part of her rebelled. Every cell rose up in revolt, almost choking her to keep her from saying what she resolved she must say. She felt a sharp heat behind her eyes, but she would not cry. She would not.
“I cannot marry you,” she said at last, the words ripped from her, seeming to tear at her throat, her tongue, her lips. She was not sure how she managed to do it. But she could not lie to the man she loved, not any longer. She simply could not. She would find some other way to save her mother, somehow, but she could not do this anymore. The fact that she had done it at all was something she would regret for the rest of her days.
“No?” He did not seem particularly taken aback by her declaration. “Are you certain? I feel sure that you can.”
“I mean that I will not marry you,” she amended, with every last drop of bravado she possessed. As if it did not kill her to say it. As if it were not a supreme act of sacrifice to say such a thing to him when she knew, she just knew, that she could love enough for both of them. She could feel the force of it, thudding heavy and hard against the walls of her chest.
“Ah.” He studied her. “Have you gone over all romantic, Tristanne? Has talk of marriage led you to fantasize about notions of forever and matching rings?” He laughed, shortly. “I assure you, I will have my lawyers bury us both in prenuptial contracts. I imagine that will prove a cure for any lingering romantic fantasies.”
“That would be a relief, I am sure,” Tristanne somehow brought herself to say, even managing a certain level of dryness. As if she could be as cynically detached as he was—as he expected her to be.
“Then what is your objection to my proposal?” He shrugged with the supreme confidence of a man who knew himself to be one of the world’s greatest catches, wanted by untold numbers of women on innumerable continents. “You cannot say we do not suit.”
“You just spent some time detailing the ways in which we do not suit,” Tristanne said, almost testily. She did not know why she continued to spar with him. She should simply leave him, she knew. She should do it now, while she still felt virtuous for refusing him. Before the pain caught up with her and laid her out, flat, as she suspected it would. As she feared it would.
She had always known he would haunt her—and that was before she’d been foolish enough to fall head over heels in love with her.
“A man does not expect to argue with his mistress,” Nikos said, his mocking half smile appearing again. “But that is the province of a wife, is it not?”
“I do not think you believe half of the things that come out of your mouth,” Tristanne threw at him, fighting the swell of her own emotions. She wanted, too badly, to be the woman she’d pretended to be. The woman he’d actually proposed to, instead of the woman she was. “I think you simply say these things for effect!”
“Marry me, and see for yourself,” he suggested, completely unperturbed. Daring her, in fact, to marry him!
Tristanne felt something break inside of her, and had to bite back a gasp that she feared would come out more of a sob. She could not cry. She would not cry, not now, not in front of him. But she felt all of her fight, all of the bravado she’d clung to as her only defense against this man, go out of her in a great rush.
