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Conrad only gazed back at her, as unreadable as before.
“I certainly never anticipated that you would see...that.” Jenny knew she should start apologizing, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Because she wasn’t sorry. If anything, she was sorry that Conrad had interrupted them. “I realize that we never spoke directly about fidelity, but it can’t have been pleasant to look up and see...” She blew out a breath and stared down at her tea, not remotely tempted to take a sip. “I take it you’re a member of this club?”
“I stay here often when I arrive in Sydney too early to conduct business,” Conrad said, his voice as devoid of emotion as the rest of him.
Jenny lifted her gaze to his. And even as some part of her told her she didn’t owe him anything, that theirs was an arranged marriage and surely he couldn’t expect anything of her, another part of her cringed in shame. Because she’d promised to marry him, and the promise had meant something to her. And then she’d gone to such lengths to tell herself that promise didn’t matter when she was down here in Australia.
Was that really who she was now? Just...a liar?
Once Jenny started questioning the lies she’d told, they all seemed to crowd in on her. Stretching all the way back to a beautiful Irish boy with eyes of the deepest green, who’d appeared in front of her out of nowhere one day when she was barely eighteen.
And had stolen her heart in an instant.
But Jenny had never planned on falling in love. It was the one thing her otherwise indulgent father forbade her—and she’d agreed, because she never again wanted to feel the way she had after her mother had died. She’d done everything she could to make sure she never would.
And yet here she sat, with a cup of tea she didn’t want and a sea of grief inside her anyway.
Jenny had ended up right where she’d never wanted to go.
“We have no sexual relationship,” Conrad was saying, his voice as remote as the rest of him. “As little as I might enjoy seeing a woman wearing my ring in the arms of another man, I can’t claim the sight hurt me in any way. I do not feel betrayed.” He studied her for a moment. “I do feel curious, however. Do you plan to continue this affair after our marriage?”
And somehow, that made it worse. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
She cleared her throat, then tried again. “I haven’t actually given the matter any thought.”
One of Conrad’s eyebrows rose. “I don’t object. In theory. But there’s the issue of paternity.”
Jenny could remember, so vividly, standing out there near the Opera House Bar, blithely assuring Dylan that this would all be fine. That even if she fell in love, ha ha ha, she would scamper back off into the arms of the husband her father had arranged for her, and all would be well.
How had she ever imagined that she could do that?
She barely knew chilly, controlled Conrad. And she couldn’t imagine, now, allowing a man she barely knew to touch her body. To pull out his cock and put it inside of her. The very notion made her feel ill.
Which put rather more of a damper on the issue of the paternity of their potential children than she thought he meant.
And Conrad was a decent man, as she told anyone who dared question her on her choices. Kinder than she’d imagined, if this calm response to finding her with Dylan was any indication. Then again, perhaps that only meant he was significantly more controlled than she’d thought.
But most of all, he was Erika’s older brother. And even Erika had softened toward him recently, mostly because she happened to be shacked up with Conrad’s best friend.
Whatever the reason, Jenny found herself leaning forward, over the table between them, so she could take his hands in hers.
Something flashed over his face and made those cold eyes of his look silver for a moment. She had the shocking notion that there was a different man in him, too. And one she would likely never see.
“Conrad,” she said softly. “Why do you want to marry me?”
“You’re Lady Jenny. Who wouldn’t want to marry you?”
Jenny could think of one person who didn’t want to marry her. One person who’d looked at her with something like torture in his eyes and talked to her about how to let go of him.
“You mean, because of my father,” she said, concentrating on the man before her. Not the man she’d already lost.
The faintest shred of amusement moved across Conrad’s face. “If you mean your father’s money, I have my own.”
“Then why?” Conrad’s hands were warmer than she’d expected. And a whole lot tougher. “If I’m not mistaken, this is the first time you’ve ever really looked at me.”
Conrad turned her left hand over, and fiddled with the ring he’d put there.
“In the spirit of this sudden attack of honesty,” he said, and his voice was so dry that she couldn’t tell if he meant to sound that sardonic, or if it was simply a byproduct of the chill, “I didn’t need to look at you. You were good on paper. And I wanted to make the right choice. To live up to what was expected of the head of the Vanderburg family.”
