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And the contrast between the man who had just walked out of this room and Crete there before her was almost too much to bear. Especially when all he did was stand there instead of moving closer, that blue gaze dark and intent on her.
Meaning she could not help but compare the man she loved with the man she would marry.
It was painful.
More than painful. It made her stomach twist viciously, so that she almost doubled over. It made a kind of sick shame wash over her. It made her feet seem to lose their grip on the floor beneath her, like she might tumble off into nothing, and she did not know if she wanted to scream or cry. Or both.
She had known the differences between the two men, of course. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t noticed them before. How could anyone fail to notice them?
But she had never gazed upon Julian with Crete’s taste in her mouth.
“Well?” she demanded, because that was better than the silence. “Will you delight me with more trenchant observations about who I am and why I’ve made the choices I have?”
His mouth flattened. “I think your choices speak for themselves.”
And that was worse.
Timoney’s eyes eased closed and she found herself wrapping her arms around her middle, as if that could do something. As if she could hug herself out of this.
“Do you require that I say this again?” came his voice. Dark. Silken and rough at once and worse, inevitable. Irrevocable. “You cannot marry that man, Timoney. You must know this.”
Timoney had never known anything more. And she sucked in a breath, prepared to tell him that, no matter how reckless—
But she stopped herself.
Because there were other things she knew.
And one of them was him.
She had long wanted to ask him about his childhood, and while he hadn’t told her anything tonight she hadn’t known already, that he’d told her anything at all felt like a revolution. Because while he had spent their time together splitting his focus between her and his many businesses, she had done absolutely nothing but study him. It was one more thing she’d beat herself up about once he’d dropped her.
But her studies hadn’t been in vain—because he’d shown her that he did feel. As deeply as she’d known he did. She’d heard his battered heart in every gruff word he’d uttered.
Timoney still believed with everything she was, every bone in her body, that he loved her. But so what? What did Crete Asgar know of love?
Not only did she doubt that he could identify his own emotions, she doubted it would matter if he did. If she were to do as he asked, walk away from this wedding, move in with him again, even attempt to hammer out some kind of relationship that was less one-sided than the one they’d had before... What would it accomplish?
There would be more time with him, yes. And that was no small thing. She thought there was a part of her that would gladly sell her own soul for even one day more. At her lowest point, she would have made that bargain for a mere glimpse of him from across a road.
But she already knew how it would end.
And what she’d told him out in the garden had not changed.
It was a shame that she felt alive again, so that the devil she knew seemed a whole lot more like a demon she hadn’t fully comprehended until now.
But Julian had already given her the schematics to the marriage she expected. All she had to do was follow the rules. There would be no emotional cost. Sex would be unpleasant, but then, wasn’t that what she wanted? Because she’d already had far too much of the kind of lovemaking that made her soul feel too thin. That had not only taken her apart with pleasure, but had made her wonder how it was possible to exist in a world when she was so profoundly changed.
She had to think it was better for her to subject herself to Julian’s attentions rather than go back to Crete only to lose herself, then him, all over again.
Because she also knew that Julian’s attentions would also end. The diplomat’s wife was young and Timoney would inevitably age out of his interest. Once that happened, she assumed he would be perfectly amenable to living separate lives.
Maybe Crete was right and it was a sad little life. But at least she would beherself. Not that mess of raw emotion and no spine to speak of that she became around Crete.
That had to be better. She was sure it was.
“Why are you smiling?” Crete asked her then.
And Timoney might regret what she was about to do. She knew she would. It had been bad enough to look upon the reality of Julian with Crete here in the room. It would be nothing short of a horror to truly let herself experience Crete once more only to walk down the little aisle in the chapel here tomorrow.
