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What did she have left except the truth, no matter how unvarnished?
“I cannot bear it if you use this as one more weapon against me,” she said, feeling stripped and naked in a way she never had before, not even in the worst ugliness of their previous battles. Her hands fell, empty, against her thighs. “I cannot bear it if you mock this too.”
His dark eyes glittered with something heavy and intense, but he did not look away. She respected him more, perhaps, because he did not rush to give her assurances she would have questioned anyway. She did not know why she trusted him more in this strange, bare moment than she ever had before. She did not know why it mattered, but it did. Something hard and bright kindled to life in her broken, battered heart, though she refused to look at it closely.
“I cannot promise you anything,” he said after a long moment, still looking at her as if she was made of glass that only he could see through. “But I can try.”
Bare feet and a picnic basket, of all things.
Those were her first two demands the following morning when she met him at breakfast with a sparkle in her bright summer eyes. Leo had not seen her eyes dance like that, merry and mischievous, in far too long. He did not wish to speculate about the surprising depth of his own reaction.
“I beg your pardon?” he asked, but he was only feigning his customary hauteur. She smiled, that lush mouth curving in a way that sent heat straight to his head, his groin. Oh, the ways he wanted her. But he could not take her as he yearned to do. He could only wait, though it rankled more with each passing second. “You wish for me to scrabble around in the dirt?”
“Like the common peasant you will never, ever be,” she confirmed with no little satisfaction and arched her fine, dark brows challengingly when he laughed.
“And just like that a lifetime of assumptions about the fairer sex disappears into the ether,” he said dryly. He let his eyes trace a longing pattern along her delicate neck, deep into the shadow between the breasts her blouse concealed. His fingers twitched with the need to touch her, to suit action to yearning, but he shoved it aside. “One would think they’d all prefer the prince to the frog, but not you, Bethany. Of course not you.”
His words sat there between them on the gleaming breakfast table, shining in the morning light, weaving in between the platters of food and carafes of steaming coffee, hot tea, and freshly squeezed juices. He had meant them playfully enough, but her expression changed, becoming more guarded as she gazed at him. She cleared her throat and shifted slightly in her chair.
“There is no point playing these games,” she said, her voice stiffer than it had been before. And, he thought, far sadder. He wished he did not feel both as a personal loss. “I don’t know why we are bothering. Nothing will change the facts of our situation.”
“Indeed, nothing will,” he agreed, aware that he and she had very different ideas about what those facts entailed. But this was not the time to explore those differences. This was no time to feel.
What was the matter with him? This entire situation was about the fulfillment of obligations—hers. He did not know why he was entertaining her requests, worrying about whether or not he had treated her fairly. It did not signify; no matter how she had been treated, it was time to take her rightful place at his side. He was not a man who failed twice and, having accepted his first failure, he knew he would not repeat it. He should not allow anything else to keep him from securing her—or, at the very least, explaining to her exactly what he planned.
Annoyed with himself, and his own inability to say what he should, he rose and headed toward the door.
“Where are you going?” she asked. He was sure it said things about him he was better off not examining that he was pleased to hear the uncertainty in her voice.
Why should he be the only one left unsettled by these seething, unmanageable, unspoken issues that swirled between them, making every moment fraught with tension? History? Longing? Perhaps that was why he did not call this ill-conceived game of hers to a halt. Perhaps that was why he continued to indulge her.
He turned at the door and let his gaze fall on her. She was so artlessly beautiful, this faithless wife of his, with the light streaming in to light up her face, make a symphony of her glorious eyes and wash her dark curls with gold. He had never been able to control this need for her that ravaged through him, that compelled him, that never, ever left him.
She bit at her lower lip, and he felt it as if she’d sunk those white teeth into his own flesh. He wanted to taste her more than he could remember wanting anything else. But first he was going to play this game of hers. And he was going to win it.
