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‘Is that what you call it?’ she questioned.
‘It might help if you tried to relax a little, instead of looking like a moth dazzled by bright lights. Pretend they’re spotlights instead. You’re used to those.’
‘Not any more, I’m not!’ she retorted.
Slowly, she walked around the room, running her fingers across pieces of furniture as if she were reacquainting herself with them, but in reality moving away from the infinitely more disturbing spotlight of his gaze.
She felt like someone visiting one of those museums where rooms were created to represent different eras. She felt as if she’d stepped back into the past. There was that exquisite bowl from China and a carved piece of African wood, which she remembered from her days as mistress of the house, but the silver gleam of a photo-frame was a new addition and contained a photo of a baby. A tiny baby with jet-black hair and a snub button for a nose.
‘That’s Ianthe,’ Xenon was saying. ‘My niece.’
Sadness welled up inside her and there didn’t seem to be a thing she could do to stop it. She wondered if he had somehow forgotten, or whether he just never stopped to think that their own little boy would be two now. That if things had been different, he might have been running around in that garden—swiping at the tall daisies with a chubby little fist. If he had lived.
But no—Xenon didn’t seem to have made that fundamental connection. It didn’t seem to have occurred to him that a new Kanellis baby might make her yearn for the babies who would only ever be memories. He had never talked about it at the time. He had closed himself off from her and she had felt as if an invisible wall had slid down between them. Why would he want to talk about it now, when to him it was simply something from the past? A disappointment, yes, but something he would have moved on from with that restless shark-like nature of his.
‘She’s beautiful,’ said Lexi brightly.
‘Yes. She is very beautiful.’
But Xenon couldn’t help noticing the distracted way she was pushing her fingers through her hair. And some age-old instinct made him want to take her in his arms and stroke away some of the brittleness which was making her hold herself like an unexploded grenade.
He hadn’t touched her since she had lost the second baby. She hadn’t wanted him to and, if the truth were known, it had seemed somehow obscene to touch her intimately after what had happened. He had found it easier to give her the space he’d thought she’d needed and she had seemed to want that, too. Until he’d realised that they’d each been locked in their own, private sadness. That it had made a wedge between them which could not be filled. She had left him soon afterwards and for a long time his anger at her desertion had eclipsed all other feelings. But later they had returned, and when they had...
His determination to get her here had been fuelled by those feelings and for once in his life he hadn’t really thought beyond that. He hadn’t thought past that first moment of triumph of having her exactly where he wanted her.
But now?
Now he realised that it was more complicated than he had anticipated. He still wanted her, yes—he just hadn’t realised quite how much. And deep down, he wondered if it was too late. She was staring at him with a mixture of defiance and wariness, like a small trapped animal—and he wasn’t quite sure how to handle her.
‘You might want to go and freshen up,’ he suggested. ‘And decide where you’d like to sleep.’
Their eyes met and Lexi felt the sudden tension between them as he dropped the word into the conversation like a rock into a pool. She forced a smile. The kind she used to use if she was being interviewed and wanted to keep the journalist at a distance. A smile which said don’t you dare come too close.
‘And where are you sleeping these days?’ she questioned in a voice so careless she almost convinced herself it was genuine. ‘Still in the guest bedroom, or have you moved back into the marital bed?’
Xenon’s mouth hardened, her remark making him feel as uncomfortable as no doubt she had intended it should. Would she be surprised to learn that he had never slept in their old bed again? That it had been too full of memories of her. That the fragrance from her skin had still lingered there; the memory of her body beside him too vivid to be tolerated.
He gave the ghost of a smile. ‘I’m in the blue room these days. Or should I say, nights.’
‘Then I’ll have the rose room,’ she said, choosing one at the other end of the upstairs corridor. ‘That’ll be perfect.’
