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Letty faked a greater interest than she truly felt in her tiny portion of red pepper, feta and olive frittata. In fact, hungry as she was, she was feeling nauseous about the situation she was in and crushingly, horribly hurt. As if Leo’s refusal to commit was a personal rejection.
‘You’re making far too much of that clause.’
‘I saw it being deleted from the agreement as a pledge, as proof that you were serious in your intentions.’
‘I am serious in my intentions!’ Leo snapped back at her in frustration. ‘I said I would try.’
Letty leant back in her chair, the delicious bite of pie turning to ashes in her dry mouth. ‘And that’s not enough for me. We’re at a crossroads here. I suggest that we agree to differ, rather than argue a non-negotiable point and—’
Leo thrust away his plate untouched, his dark golden eyes mirroring his turbulent emotions. Letty was putting him through the mill and he hadn’t expected that, but this time around he didn’t mistake his sense of reprieve for anything other than what it was. ‘That would be sensible,’ he conceded.
Letty sighed. ‘You didn’t let me finish, Leo. For us both to be happy in this relationship, we have to compromise. But, since I can’t share a bed with a man I can’t trust, you will have to embrace your sexual freedom…and we’ll never discuss this thorny and distasteful subject again.’
Leo was shattered. He certainly hadn’t seen that offer coming. He breathed in deep and slow. ‘That’s not a reasonable compromise, Letty.’
‘I can’t be reasonable about everything,’ Letty said quietly. ‘We’re compromising. You’re getting what you want.’
‘How? I want you!’ Leo slung back at her wrathfully, the temper he controlled rigidly breaking free.
‘Not as much as you want a get-out clause for when you get bored with me,’ Letty qualified without a shade of expression. ‘That’s how it is. I’m not going to quarrel with you about it.’
‘No!’ Leo rasped, expelling his breath and thrusting his hands down to rise from his seat, a deep sense of injustice powering him. ‘You’re only kicking me out of the marital bed for a sin I haven’t committed yet!’
‘Yet.’Letty stressed his use of that word. ‘You see, in your mind you’re still a free man, not a married man. Even worse, you view yourself as a man who cannot be faithful. I would have to be a very stupid woman not to steer clear of that accident waiting to happen…and I’m not stupid, Leo.’
Tied into knots by her words and his own and infuriated by her tranquil attitude when he was ready to punch holes in walls, Leo scrutinised his wife with outraged, dark as jet eyes, faint colour scoring his hard cheekbones. ‘I’ll have your stuff moved back up to the main house immediately.’
‘There’s no rush,’ Letty told him uneasily.
Leo ate with appetite, even offered occasional conversation. To give him his due, he didn’t brood or give her the silent treatment. Letty, however, was under no illusion that what still powered him was anger: he was determined to keep his freedom and she wanted to take it away. There was no possible conciliation between such far-removed objectives. Maybe he needed time and space to consider those facts before he would be willing to acknowledge the good sense of leaving sex out of their marriage. That was what he had first wanted and what she had been happy to accept, but then he had changed his mind and decided he wanted her…and fatally, foolishly, she had decided to give him a chance.
Why?She wanted to box her own ears for her stupidity. She had taken a risk on him, but he had quickly brought her crashing down to earth again.
Her luggage was discreetly carted out while they finished their meal with coffee. It was all very civilised but Letty still felt as though she were the one being kicked out and when Darius drove her back up to the main house his diplomatic silence warned her that, like the rest of the staff, he also knew that the brief honeymoon was over and Letty was mortified by Leo’s intransigence and his disinterest in what other people might think. Evidently the pretence that theirs was a normal marriage was already over.
Tears leaked out of the corners of Letty’s eyes and stung her quivering cheeks that night as she lay in her new bed. She wouldn’t let herself sob or grieve for what had proved to be an empty illusion. She was hurt and she acknowledged that while also acknowledging that she had already become far too attached to Leo in spite of his ferocious stubbornness. She was doing the sensible thing in protecting herself, she told herself.
Leo couldn’t sleep. He paced the bedroom floor, trying to pin down the exact moment when everything had gone pear-shaped. It was the first time in his life that that had happened to him with a woman. He was accustomed to calling all the shots, to having exactly what he wanted but Letty didn’t work that way. She wanted pledges, sacred bonds, all the rest of that nonsense, he fumed in measured annoyance as he fought a growing sense of injustice.
He couldn’t imagine being faithful all his life to one woman. But his overriding belief remained that he did not want to hurt Letty or any other woman! As he suspected his mother must often have been hurt by his father’s infidelities. Leo had never in his life cheated on any woman, choosing to be honest when he knew he wanted to move on, had never had a desire to have more than one woman at a time in his life.
None of his ancestors, his grandfather or his father, had pledged fidelity. Even so, as far as he knew, his father had always been slavishly faithful to his stepmother, Katrina. But that was only because his father, weak and pathetic man that he was, worshipped the ground that Katrina walked on. And look where that had got the older man: a wife who was well known for her extra-marital affairs! No, he certainly wasn’t ready to follow that unpleasant and humiliating example as a blueprint for his future, he assured himself squarely, while stamping firmly down on the knowledge at the back of his mind that Letty wasn’t that sort of woman.
Letty had given him one fantastic night and he would have to be content with that. He studied the bed that they had shared and gritted his teeth. He wanted her, he wanted her there now, ached just at the thought of reliving that pleasure. But he would get over that, the sneaky type of sexual infatuation she had somehow plunged him into. Because he had been her first? Was that the secret of her intense attraction for him? He didn’t know; he only knew he felt angry, frustrated and frazzled and most unlike himself and he hated it—absolutely bloody hated it!
The following morning, all the clothes and accessories arrived for Letty to try on and consider and she was trying to decide between two black cocktail dresses when Leo entered the room with a small warning knock that made her spin round in dismay, the zip she had been struggling with still open and exposing her bare back.
‘I’ll call your maid.’
Letty laughed. ‘No, now you’re here…you can make yourself useful. Are you still taking me to that club opening on Saturday?’
Leo raised an ebony brow, clearly surprised that she had assumed that he might have changed his mind on that score. ‘Is it still your birthday on Saturday? Then yes, but don’t pick a black dress. You need something more…’ He rifled through the rack of clothes and dragged out a scarlet dress that she wouldn’t have considered in a thousand years for her wardrobe. It was stretchy, glittery, low-necked and low-backed, in short everything she avoided.
‘Er…no…’ She didn’t want to hurt his feelings when he was trying to help. ‘That’s a little daring for me. I mean, look at that neckline.’
‘I’m a man—of course I’m looking at the neckline,’ Leo reasoned. ‘You’ve got a terrific figure. Wear colours and show it off.’
Letty flushed. ‘I’ll try it on and see,’ she conceded, still doubtful but knowing that that accolade from him would make her more than consider wearing it. Was she a people-pleaser? Or a Leo-pleaser? She only knew that she craved his admiration, which was childish and rather unfair to him when she had refused to sleep with him again.
