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“I would hardly make such announcements in jest.”
“She is a Connolly.”
“A fact that does not become less appalling the more you repeat it, brother.”
Constantine had shaken his head. “What can you possibly be thinking? After everything—” He’d stopped then. The canny look that Balthazar sometimes thought only he had ever seen changed his brother’s face. Constantine suddenly looked every inch the shark he was. “Let me guess. You got her pregnant. Good god, Balthazar. How could you be so careless?”
“A simplecongratulationswould do. As you will shortly become an uncle.”
Constantine had let out a bark of laughter. “Never let it be said you are not prepared to think outside the box when it comes to taking revenge on our enemies. I am inspired, truly.”
And he’d smiled in a way that had distracted Balthazar for a moment, wondering who his brother considered worthy of enemy status—and a revenge scenario to match. He did not fancy that person’s chances against the wolf-in-playboy’s-clothing Constantine played up for public consumption.
“Prepare yourself,” Balthazar had advised his brother that night. “You will be thekoumbaro.”
If Constantine had any further feelings about taking his place at his brother’s side in the traditional role ofkoumbaro, combining best man, future godparent, and witness in one, he had wisely kept that to himself.
Possibly too busy concocting his own form of revenge, Balthazar had thought then.
Now Balthazar waited in a riot of blooms and his body’s greedy responses to the enemy he planned to take as his wife, forced to remind himself that revenge was the point of this. Revenge had always been the point.
It was simply taking rather a different form than he’d expected it would when Kendra had asked for that appointment with him months back.
He had never imagined how close a Connolly would come to ruininghim.
Do not allow temptation to change your path,he told himself dourly, despite the sunshine and the bright explosion of pink flowers all around him.Stay the course.
And later—after the doctor had announced that Kendra and the baby she carried could not have been in better health, then left them to an evening meal out on one of the terraces over the sea—Balthazar did not bother to wait for the good food or a full belly to dull her temper. He shouldn’t have cared what mood she was in. He slid the folder he’d brought for her across the table.
“What is this?” Her voice was clipped. It was at odds with that glow she had about her, and Balthazar disliked it, but he tapped his finger against the thick file anyway.
“These are the agreements that require your signature.”
She sniffed, poking at the food on her plate with rather more violence than strictly necessary, to his mind. “I will not be signing anything.”
“That does not sound like the new song I suggested you sing,” he said, mildly enough. He studied her mutinous expression. “Was I unclear?”
Balthazar expected her to argue with him. If he was honest, he was looking forward to it. Though he wasn’t certain he truly wished to acknowledge that what kicked around inside of him was more of that anticipation and hunger than the righteous fury he would have said was guiding his every word and deed.
There was something about this woman that got under his skin. That was the sad truth, no matter how he fought against it. Any hope he might have had that she had released her grip on him in the time he’d spent away from her had disappeared the moment he’d seen her curled up in a chair with the sunlight in her hair, turning it to flame.
Maybe it was time to admit it to himself.
But Kendra didn’t make it easy on him. She didn’t leap into the fray. Instead, she looked away, her gaze off toward the blue line of the horizon, far in the distance. He imagined she was dreaming of ways to escape him, to avoid the consequences he had been forced to accept.
He resented it.
“I have no interest in your money,” she said after a moment, as if studying the inevitable way the sun dipped toward the edge of the world. “You know full well I have my own. There is no need whatsoever to sign agreements to that effect.”
“You mean you have your father’s money,” Balthazar corrected her, sitting back in his chair and absolutely not giving in to his temper. Just because she got to him, it didn’t mean he had to lose his grip. He was furious it was even in question. “That is not quite the same thing, is it?”
Her gaze shifted back to him, glittering hot and gold. “Remind me, whose money is it that you were given?”
He found himself smiling. Almost. “Fair point. Though, unlike me, I am unaware of any great financial ventures you’ve been involved in on your own since you came of age. Please enlighten me.”
“I was happily working in a winery in Provence until six weeks ago.”
Balthazar lifted a brow. “Are you so divorced from reality that you imagine waiting tables is a wealth-building exercise? Unless, of course, you went about getting your tips in the same way you approached your business meeting with me?”
