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She bit down on her lip, and shrugged her slender shoulders. “I suppose I feel like we should ask each other questions like that.”
“Why?”
“I know nothing about you,” she murmured, still staring at her fridge.
He came to stand beside her, not touching her, not looking at her.
“You know I’m a confirmed bachelor with a billion notches on my bedposts,” he drawled, a cynical undertone to the words that had her lifting her gaze to his slowly.
“Yes, I know that,” she said, scanning his face, wondering then how she was going to survive their marriage. He was too much. The essence of her equilibrium felt like it might swallow her up if she wasn’t careful.
His lips twisted into a tight smile and then he lifted a hand to cup her cheek. “Does what I am, what I was, before we met matter?”
Her frown showed confusion. “I… don’t know.”
“My father married in his fifties. My mother was much younger. I was born just before his sixtieth birthday.”
Something locked in Bella’s mind – a memory, of a long time ago – but when she tried to grab it, to focus her mind on its translucent quality, it disappeared again, like a ribbon flying into the sky.
“I never gave much thought to marriage and children. Family. I suppose if I had, I would have seen myself doing what he did – waiting until much later in life. I didn’t hurt anyone by staying single. I don’t lie to women. I don’t cheat. I don’t have affairs. And I will treat our marriage with respect. I will treat you with respect.”
And, as ludicrous as it might seem, Bella fought a wave of emotion, a throbbing of tears that sparked inside of her at his simple statement.
“Besides,” he said, dropping his thumb to her lip and parting them, so she husked out a slow breath. “I am infinitely more interested in learning about you.”
“Me?” She asked huskily, her body already trembling with his proximity.
“A divorced virgin? There must be a story there…”
She swept her eyes shut, Xavier, Ellie, their mixed, sordid past was one she didn’t like to revisit. “Yes,” she said simply, swallowing. “But it’s not really something I’m at all proud of.”
She opened her eyes in time to see him blinking, showing his own confusion, and then he was Vitalo Katrakis once more – confident, powerful tycoon.
“Why not?”
Her smile was enigmatic – sadness frayed at its edges. “You told me a moment ago that your past doesn’t matter. I think the same can be said for mine.”
“Ah. But an ex-husband is more to contend with, I think. Is it over between the two of you?”
“Well and truly. He’s married.”
Vitalo’s eyes darkened. “You are still in love with him?”
Bella shook her head, and now her smile was genuine, if somewhat muted. “Yes. As much as I ever was.”
Sympathy crossed Vitalo’s features. He cupped her cheeks, holding her face still, his eyes locked to hers. “Then I will enjoy driving him from your mind, agape mou. I will make love to you until you are weak and his name is impossible for you to recall.”
Bella’s stomach churned and she didn’t add that she had never loved Xavier romantically; she didn’t add that she adored his new wife, and their children.
“This is crazy,” she said again.
He straightened, dropping his hands to his sides. “And yet it also makes all the sense in the world, no?”
“Yes,” she murmured, nodding her head. “It does.”
He pulled away, striding to the edge of the kitchen, and for a moment he was still, staring at the door. “I will organize everything. Ordinarily licenses take a month or so to procure, but my assistant is liaising with the embassy. I believe special dispensation will be granted allowing us to marry early next week.”
“Next week?” She blinked, her eyes huge. “So soon?”
