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“I simply decided to keep our private business private.”
“Good. I’ll help you carry your stuff into my room.” He turned to the stairs.
“No, thank you,” she told his back. “I’m staying where I am while we sort this out.”
He stopped on the second step, looked down at her, and sneered a spoiled brat sneer. “Like hell.”
It didn’t surprise her that he was being difficult about this, since he was difficult about everything that had to do with her. “It’s for the best. I don’t have any illusion that you’ll understand, but I’ve discovered that I don’t seem to possess the proper temperament for uncommitted sex.”
“We’re married.”
She fiddled with her wedding band. “Yes, well, that’s only a bit of paper. We’re not married in our hearts, are we?”
He descended one step and studied her. “I see where this is going. You want to tie me up, don’t you, in some needy little slobbering package you can take out and play with when it suits you, then tuck away when it doesn’t.”
Looking into those bleak, hard features, it was hard to believe this was the same lazy fool she’d met two weeks earlier. She spoke quietly, “You’ve just described your own motivations, not mine.”
“Yeah, right,” he scoffed.
“Oh, Kenny . . .” She sighed, threw up a hand, then let it fall to her side. “I can’t do this all by myself. You have to help a little.”
“I’m not the one locking the bedroom door.”
“But sex is all you want from me. Don’t you see how that hurts?”
“Even if that were true—which it’s not—I don’t see what would be so terrible about it. Since we didn’t go about this marriage in the regular way, we have to build on our strengths.”
“That kind of havey-cavey thinking might work with your old girlfriends, but not with me. Our sexual activities allow us to pretend everything is fine, but we both know it’s not.”
“Now, see, that’s where you’re wrong. Everything is fine if you just stop and let it be fine. You spend so much time worrying about what’s wrong with us that you never stop to consider what’s right.”
“Sex.”
“Is sex all you can think about? How about the fact that we enjoy each other’s company, that we like history, and Texas, and riding horses. We enjoy good wine, we both see right through Torie, Petie likes you, and you seem to be able to tolerate my father and Shelby. Neither of us is a snob, and we don’t have much patience with hypocrites. I happen to think there’s a lot that’s right between us.”
She’d always focused on their differences instead of their similarities, and she was so taken aback that she didn’t realize he’d been edging closer until he touched her elbow with his fingertips. Just like that, her insides turned to pudding.
His fingers skimmed her arm and brushed the outer slope of her breast. Her skin prickled, her limbs felt heavy, and her body urged her to give in to him. Would it be so bad to do it his way? Would it be so bad to go through the outward motions of having a real marriage, even though there was no lasting connection between them? What difference would it make? She reminded herself that she was accustomed to spending her life with emotional leftovers, but she didn’t want that from Kenny. More important, she didn’t deserve it, and she stepped back.
His arm dropped to his side, and his eyes darkened. She watched his lips thin and knew he was furious, just as she knew he would walk away without saying a word.
Not long after, he left for the practice range, and she forced herself to go to work on the laptop computer she found in his office—an office that, as far as she could tell, only Patrick used. For the rest of the morning and into the early afternoon, she alternated between working on her article about Lady Sarah Thornton and making notes for Penelope Briggs detailing the information she would need to get the spring term off to a smooth start. She stopped when Torie arrived for her driving lesson.
Emma made it into town and back to the ranch without hitting anything. As she carried the laptop out onto the sunporch to resume work, she decided that Torie’s happiness was the single bright spot in an otherwise depressing day. Patrick emerged from the kitchen with two glasses of iced tea topped with orange slices.
“The word’s out. The International Sports Channel just broadcast your wedding announcement.”
She could see that he was worried as he set her glass on the table, then carried his own over to the couch. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, exactly. I’m probably just being paranoid.” He took a sip of tea, then straightened the lamp on the table next to the couch. “The announcement was short, no comment on the fight at the Roustabout, just a brief statement that Kenneth had married a member of the British aristocracy, Lady Emma Wells-Finch, daughter of the fifth Earl of Woodbourne.”
“The press was bound to find out sooner or later.”
“That?
?s not what worries me.” Patrick slid his finger around the rim of his glass. “There wasn’t any mention of your occupation, no sense of the type of person you are. The announcement made it sound as though he’d married a flighty piece of Eurotrash.”
Emma finally understood why he was upset. “And so the legend of the spoiled playboy golf pro only grows bigger.”
