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“Didn’t you?”
“Maybe at first,” she admitted. And she’d liked it, the possibility that she could influence someone so powerful because of his affection for her.
“I did listen and I did change.” He looked at her like he wanted her to hear the unspoken message behind those words.
He was listening to her now, and he was trying to change.
Polly didn’t stifle her urge to touch him as she might have done recently, but reached across the table and brushed her fingers over the back of his hand. “Noted.”
Alexandros’s smile was brilliant. “Good.”
“I should have realized you were building walls around your heart.” The lines of his face moved into a serious cast. “At first, though, I was just relieved you had stopped arguing about every little thing.”
He sounded ashamed of that fact.
“You don’t like being in conflict with me.” Recent willingness to the contrary.
He grimaced, looking a little ashamed. “It makes me feel powerless.”
How could this man ever feel powerless? “I would have said that you had all the power to bring peace between us.”
“Not when I was just waiting for you to settle into our life.” His wry expression acknowledged that might have been a shortsighted attitude.
But suddenly she wasn’t feeling as much bonhomie as before. “You thought I’d get used to being dictated to by your mother and mocked by your sister?”
He grimaced, his shrug almost self-effacing. “That was not quite how I saw it, but yes.”
“In a way, you were right. I did make my peace with our marriage,” she acknowledged.
“By relegating me to a place outside your heart, I would have said even outside your intimate circle, but—”
“There was still the sex.” And that sex had made him think things were fine and allowed her to pretend they were too.
He winked, a bit of his usual arrogance flashing. “Very good sex.”
“Terrific sex,” she teased back and then sighed as the brief flash of humor faded. It was time for more honesty. “Emotionally, you were outside that intimate circle.”
He nodded. “You stopped trusting me with anything but your body.”
Polly had no reply. They both knew it was true, but hearing the words hurt.
Both of them, if his expression was anything to go by.
“I’m not going to see my mother, or my sister, until you are ready to see them too,” he announced, like he was making a major concession.
Anger gripped her and she gasped. “That’s not fair.”
“How?” he asked, looking genuinely confused.
Could he be that dense?
“Because I’ll feel pressured to see them, so you don’t suffer the loss of them in your life.”
“I do not want you feeling pressured, but surely you realize my family has to mend bridges with you as well.” He sounded so rational, so pragmatic.
But he was once again ignoring every need Polly expressed and putting the needs of his family ahead of her. Or at least, that’s what it felt like.
Filled with unexpected fury, Polly surged to her feet and tossed her napkin on the table. “How about we see if we can even mend the broken bits between us before you start pressuring me into making happy families with the Kristalakis Harpies?”
