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She startled. “What do you mean?”
“Is this an invitation for me to tell you that you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met?”
Heat stained her cheeks. “Absolutely not. I was asking about the kind of woman you usually go for. I’m not—I don’t think—,”
He scrutinized her, reading too much, understanding her in a way she wished he wouldn’t. “There is no type,” he said after a beat. “With the exception of one feature, the women I’m with are very different.”
“And what feature is that?” She asked. “Are they all above six feet tall? Blondes?”
“They all see sex and relationships as I do,” he said. “They want a brief fling, no strings, no promises, no emotions, just light-hearted fun. Beyond that, I have no type.”
Mila’s heart twisted sharply at the unexpected response. Then again, she’d asked the question. What had she been expecting?
“And you really have no trouble separating sex from any deeper feelings?”
Was she imagining the slight pause? The way his eyes narrowed? “No. It is just like this,” he said slowly. “The physical side of the relationship is completely separate to any other…friendship.”
NO, she wanted to scream. That wasn’t what it was like for her. She was falling apart at the seams just trying to hold back that cry, that fierce, staunch denial, even when she knew how necessary it was. And what did that mean? She forced an expression of non-concern to her face, trying to look as she knew she should—as if none of this mattered very much. “So won’t your family wonder why you’re bringing me to your home?”
He considered that a beat. “No.”
“You don’t suppose they might think there’s something more going on between us?”
“They know Benji,” he said after a pause. “When I explain that you’re his cousin and that you needed my help, they’ll put any other fantasy out of their mind. They know I’d never betray him like this.” His features tightened when he looked at her.
“You think Benji would be annoyed about this?”
“I know he would be.” He hesitated. “He told me not to let this happen.”
Her lips parted. “What?”
He nodded slowly. “He was looking out for you. He knows, better than anyone, what I’m like.”
Her heart felt strangely heavy. “I see.”
“He was looking out for you.”
“I didn’t ask for that,” she said sharply. “I can handle myself.”
“Perhaps, but he worried you could not handle me.”
“He was wrong.”
“Yes,” Leonidas said, but the word was heavy with darkness.
She turned in her seat, pretending fascination with the view she could see from the window—the outskirts of Paris stretched beneath them like a little model. Her eyes stared at it until it was barely a dot, and then, she pretended to sleep, all the while her mind ticked over the stipulation Benji had made. She understood that he was trying to protect her, but Mila didn’t want that kind of protection. She wanted to live her own life, to make her own decisions, even if they turned out to be mistakes. Even if she had to bear the pain of that mistake for the rest of her life…
