AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yes?” He wasn’t prone to making concessions, but she’d already given him one, so he could at least listen to her terms.
“We’ll eat in the kitchen. That State Room gives me the creeps.”
Another laugh. It felt good to laugh. To express something other than anger and impatience.
“Fine. Deal.”
He began to move towards the kitchen but he realized, after a moment, that she wasn’t following. He turned around and found her staring after him, a mix of bemusement and terror in her face.
“What now?” He asked, weary frustration creeping into his voice after all and, yes, a scowl to his face.
“I just… I’d forgotten your laugh.” She shook her head, as though clearing memories. What a luxury to have – to be able to clear memories rather than hunt them ruthlessly and never quite succeed in their capture.
“So had I,” he drawled, indicating that she should precede him into the kitchen.
She nodded, but as she passed, she gave him a wide berth, and he didn’t laugh at that. The muscles in his stomach clenched and he ground his jaw, facing head-on how many problems there were with this marriage he’d proposed.
He wanted to ask her about the weekend they’d shared. He wanted to ask her to flesh out the skeleton of knowledge he possessed, to make the weekend come alive for him so he understood what had happened, and all that he’d said. But those questions invariably led to recriminations and anger, and he was hoping they could find a way to speak without lashing one another with their vitriolic arguing.
“You don’t approve of the State room?” He prompted, opening the fridge and removing the paella Janice had left.
“It’s like a tomb,” she said with a shake of her head, taking a seat at the kitchen bench. But it was not a relaxed seat. Her knees were jammed together firmly and her hands clasped in her lap, her lips pressed tight.
“It’s just a room,” he said.
“It’s the size of Nell and my old apartment,” she said with something a lot like disapproval.
He pulled a face. “Tiny apartment.”
She was quiet, and he wondered at that. For some reason, he suspected she wanted to say something. “You’re thinking it’s all you could afford and that I, who was born with the proverbial silver spoon in my mouth, shouldn’t pass judgement?” He prompted, pouring her a glass of wine and sliding it across the bench.
She studied him for several seconds, her expression frustratingly difficult to interpret. “Yes,” she agreed finally.
His laugh showed surprise. “I wasn’t judging. Just observing. The room is not so large. For that to be your apartment, and to have had Joshua there…”
Elizabeth’s smile was nostalgic and her eyes held a faraway look. “It was cosy,” she agreed after a beat. “With nice neighbours and a dinky outlook.”
“Sounds…charming.”
“It was.” She was stiff again. Offended.
He muffled a sigh as he pulled two plates from beneath the bench.
“I thought about Casa por Azul a lot you know,” she said, her eyes downcast.
Xavier was instantly still. “How do you know about my family home?”
She lifted her gaze to his, her caramel eyes showing layers of emotion, her lips twisting into a tight grimace. “You told me. Before.” The word was injected with feeling.
“Did I?” It made no sense. He never spoke of his family home to anyone. It was a sanctuary – a private place, distinct from his high-profile life as a billionaire tycoon. He liked the fact no one knew where it was or what its significance was.
Why the hell had he mentioned it to a random woman he was sleeping with? Hell, he must have taken leave of his senses not to recognize the inherent danger in giving some woman he’d picked up for the weekend a way to find him.
“You spoke about it in great detail,” she continued, with no idea of the turmoil her statement had plunged him into.
“What did I say?” It was a test, but he concealed that by speaking in a calm tone, his face carefully blanked of anything that might show his incredulity.
“That you grew up there, and that it’s the only place on earth you felt at peace,” she said, running a finger around the base of her wine glass. “That you don’t get there as often as you’d like, but that, when you do, you’re instantly relaxed. You described the building as being huge – far bigger than your family ever required – with rendered walls the colour of sunshine and a red terracotta roof. You said it sprawled all the way across the top of a mountain, with grape vines on one side and pomegranates on the other. That the ocean sparkled beneath you and that, as a boy, you used to run from the house to the beach and swim for hours, and then, on the way back home…”
