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CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
“Are you alright?” Leo placed a hand on my knee, which seemed to have a mind of its own that evening; it wouldn’t stay still as we sat in the drawing room of my father’s house. I was sipping on a glass of white wine, which was the only thing my grandmother let me have, and Leo was nursing a scotch.
His fingers on my skin were still cold from the ice in the glass, and I felt myself shiver at the contact.
“I’m fine.” I wasn’t. I had been avoiding Leo since I returned from Boston, which had been just a few days ago. In that time, I wanted nothing more than to find more information out about Maddy, the mystery woman who might be my ticket out of an arranged marriage.
The problem was my cousin.
Not actually. True to her word, Natasha said nothing about Boston, even when the guards interrogated us about our whereabouts. She covered for me, which I suspected was the only reason they had not called my father. That and the fact that he would have been pissed if he knew they had been sleeping on the job.
A smirk graced my lips at the thought.
“You aren’t acting like yourself.”
The sensation of Leo’s breath playing against my skin made me jump. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Leo came closer. The feeling of his lips against my skin nearly made me melt right then and there. “You haven’t insulted me once tonight. If this keeps up, I might need to rush you to the hospital to make sure that you haven’t been body snatched.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed.
Leo smiled at me, and for a moment, the tension in my shoulders eased slightly. I’d avoided him since my return, claiming to have a pile of school assignments that needed to be done, which was not entirely untrue.
The truth was that I did not know how to act around him.
It shouldn’t matter, but he was hiding a massive secret from me. He might have a child out there. His ex-girlfriend, who everyone thought was dead, was actually alive, and worst of all, I felt a twinge of disappointment when I wondered why he would want to even be Pakhan.
It was obvious that he was marrying me for the position. He might have tried to hide it from me, pretend that he didn’t want it, probably so I would be more compliant. After all, the enemy of my enemy was supposed to be my friend.
I kept thinking back to that postcard. Was Maddy waiting for him somewhere with their love child? And worst of all, was he marrying me so that he could find a way to be with her?
For days, I had considered nothing but that, and the uncertainty of it all was driving me insane.
“Kat?”
“Yea?” I looked into Leo’s dark eyes, wondering why I suddenly cared so much about his motives.
They didn’t matter. Whether he was marrying me because he wanted someone else or because he was being forced by my father, the fact remained that when we wed, he would be first in line for my birthright.
That fact alone meant that there could never be anything between us.
“You’re a million miles away tonight.” His voice was soft as he brought his fingers up to my cheeks. “What are you thinking about?”
I contemplated just asking him. Maybe, the shock of everything would get him to admit the truth, and we could stop pretending.
I opened my mouth, preparing for the words to slip out, but before I could release them my grandmother entered the room.
“Katarina, why are you sitting there with your mouth hanging open like a gaping fish?”
My lips snapped together so quickly, I felt the reverberations in my jaw as it immediately tensed.
“Your father is running behind. He had to see to some business.” She was talking at me, but her eyes were on Leo. He had stopped touching me, and now, his hands were casually dangling off the side of the couch. It amazed me how quickly he could change his mood. One moment, it felt as though he saw nothing but me, and the next, he was charming my grandmother like he thought she was the belle of the ball.
He was an adept player, and I was starting to see why my father chose him. “
The three of us sat there in an uncomfortable silence, and I glanced over at the clock praying that we would soon be done with this farce. In the last few weeks, I had had to be in my grandmother’s presence more than I ever cared to be. When I left the house, I planned to only come back when I was pulled back by force.
The sound of my father’s footsteps straightened my back. I had not seen my father since the last time that we had dinner together, which had been a nightmare in and of itself.
