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“So, a gala could be a date, but only if our focus remained on each other.”
“However, as it stands, you and I both end up talking to different people, socializing in different circles.”
“Yes. You to advance your business interests.”
“And you to make connections for your charity work.”
“Some of the time. Others, I’m just catching up with friends,” she informed him. “But regardless of our reasons, we are both in the habit of going our own way once we arrive at a function.”
“That used to bother me about you,” he informed her.
“What? You expected to me to stand by your side in silent companionships while you talked business and political interests related to your business?” she asked with a tinge of mockery.
But his serious nod stunned her. “Yes.”
“Faithful Penelope, I am not,” she informed him.
“So I learned. Not that you lack fidelity, but you do not see yourself as a satellite to my life.”
“I’m not.” What a strange thing for him to say.
“My mother was, to my father.”
“But she has so many charity interests now. Are you saying she didn’t when he was alive?”
“She did, but she still spent most of their evenings out in his near vicinity.”
“I’m not sure how she managed that, but I’m not her.”
“No, and I do not expect you to be.”
“Are you sure?” Because that was something she’d often thought he did in fact expect and was destined to be disappointed by.
“Let me rephrase that,” he said with one of his devastating smiles. “I have learned not to expect you to be. I have come to realize that if you were like my mother, I would have had no more interest in marrying you than the women she’d been throwing at my head since I became an adult.”
Polly’s own smile was tinged with mockery. “Sexual chemistry has a lot to answer for.”
“Our relationship is not just sex.” His dark gaze bored into hers.
“Of course not. We have a daughter together and a son on the way. We have a family.”
“It has never been just sex.” He sounded really offended.
“I didn’t say it was?” she asked, rather than stated, because something she said had garnered this reaction.
“You said I married you because of sexual chemistry.”
“Didn’t you? I mean if we hadn’t been so explosive in bed, I don’t think you would have made the effort, considering our differences and your busy schedule.”
He opened his mouth, like he was going to deny her assertion, but then he shut it with a snap. “That may be true, but I proposed because I was in love with you.”
She’d thought so too, at the time, but Polly had long since realized what she’d thought was love was a mixture of genuine liking and sexual compatibility.
“I’m pretty sure that if you loved me, you wouldn’t have been so content to be away from me so much. You wouldn’t have expected me to do whatever your mother wanted, no matter how miserable it made me.” She sighed and stood up, needing to put some physical distance between them. “I learned to accept that you like me. A lot. I know you’re sexually attracted to me, more than you have ever been to another woman.”
“I hear a but coming.”
“But I think what you call love, I might call affection.”
