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He eyed her thoughtfully but didn’t take the bait. “You wanted to get to know me,” he said instead, crossing to the table and holding a chair out for Chloe. She frowned but eased herself into it.
He was close, though, and as he pushed her chair nearer to the table, she inhaled, catching his masculine, uniquely ‘him’ aroma and her nerve endings quivered in response.
“So I thought we would have dinner together,” he concluded, taking the seat opposite, and watching her with undisguised interest.
He was trying to understand her, she realized. She’d surprised him, and a whole day later, he had no idea how to manage her. Good!
“Fine.” She reached for her napkin, laying it in her lap then fixing him with a cool gaze that didn’t falter, despite the knots forming in her stomach.
A frown passed his face. “I know everything about your brother,” he said, reaching for a bottle of wine and half-filling her glass before doing the same to his own. “But surprisingly little of the woman I married.”
“You’re one of his closest friends,” she admitted. “Apollo thinks highly of you.”
“And I of him.”
“You’re very similar.” Her tone was clipped, so it was impossible to know if she meant it as a compliment or not.
“In what ways?” He handed her a serving spoon, watching as she lifted it into some of the spiced rice and lay it carefully onto her plate. She added a little of the green mango chutney then a single piece of fish.
“Well, you’re both smart, driven, confident to a fault,” she remarked, sitting back in her chair.
“You’re all those things,” he responded, taking the serving spoon and easily tripling on his own plate what she’d served herself.
“Hardly!” She refuted, but clamped her lips together before she could make a self-deprecating comment on her own intelligence, or lack thereof.
“I think we’re different. Apollo and me,” he clarified. “More than we are alike.”
“Perhaps you can’t see it clearly because you’re too close to the subject matter.”
“I am your husband and he is your brother – do you claim to have the requisite distance to be objective?”
She frowned. “He’s my half-brother,” she corrected thoughtfully. “And you are…”
“Yes?” He waited for her to finish.
“Not my husband in the traditional sense.”
He arched a brow. “I was in the Hallam when we said our vows. I was also there when we signed the contract, and when we were bound together by the ancient threads of halisham. How are we not a traditional couple?”
Chloe was glad then that she didn’t easily blush. “You know what I mean.”
He lifted his wine glass and sipped it thoughtfully. “Why did you agree to this?”
“To marry you?” She fixed him with a cool stare that hid any emotion easily.
“Your father was traditional,” he answered his own question. “And my father’s dearest friend. But you were raised in America. By all reports --,”
She interrupted him. “You mean, according to Apollo?”
He dipped his head forward in silent concession. “You were raised by your mother. You are American. You are independently wealthy. I cannot see why you agreed to this.”
“Does it matter?”
He expelled a sigh. “You are the only person in my life who does not answer me when I ask a question.”
“And you don’t like it.”
His frown was just a flick of his lips. “I wouldn’t say that.”
