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She stared at his hand, extended between them. The long, elegant fingers with square nails. The rough, abrasive texture of his palm. The sprinkling of hair over his arms. The corded strength in his arms.
“I don’t know,” she said, clutching her neck where a giant boulder seemed to have lodged, cutting off her air. “I should’ve known making a deal with you is tempting the devil itself. I shouldn’t have—”
His hands clasped her cheeks and she jerked at the warmth of him. “Look at me, Mira. The injuries look worse than they are right now.”
“I should’ve never gotten involved with you—”
“It’s too late to back out now.”
Mira buried her face in his chest, drawing long, deep breaths to quiet the building hysteria.
“You’re scaring me to death right now—”
It was the fear in his words that did it. And the thundering beat of his heart at her cheek. And the solid hardness of him around her. She laughed, wiping her hands over her cheeks again. “Serves you right. Because that’s what you did to me when it should’ve been the opposite. When you should be making things easier for me. When you should be...” Wrapping her arms around his waist, she burrowed into him. If she could lodge herself under his skin, she’d have done it. “You could have died, Aristos. Where would that have left me?”
“A wealthy widow.”
Her hands on his chest, she pushed him, anger sending her to the other end of the seesaw. “I’m pregnant. Do you still want to talk about leaving me a wealthy widow, you bastard?”
Whatever color remaining in his face fled, leaving the colorful bruises to stand out even more. “You’re pregnant,” he repeated, his gaze going to her belly and then combing back up to collide with her gaze.
Mira nodded. “Not just...” She licked her lips, the intensity of his scrutiny making the words harder to come. “It’s twins. We’re having twins.”
His features were frozen into a mask, and tension thrummed through him. “Two babies?”
She smiled then, and the joy of sharing her news washed away everything else. “Yes, twins means two babies.”
“And everything is okay with you? With...them?” he said, waving a hand around her midsection.
“Yes. Everything’s fine and as it should be.”
His throat moved on a hard swallow and a part of her wanted him to wrap her up in his arms. Wanted to burrow herself into him until she didn’t have to be strong. Wanted to give herself over, completely.
She’d been prepared for the news and still, it had been a shock. What was he thinking? What was he feeling? Why did he look...trapped? Or was that her own fretful mind adding fuel to the fire?
But even the sudden tension that seemed to bathe him couldn’t help Mira shed the wretched feeling when she imagined him gone from the world. She couldn’t even grasp the deeper meaning of that feeling just then.
“I just lost my grandparents in the last year. And even though there are times when...” Deflection escaped her. “I’d be devastated if you died, Aristos. Especially now.” She gathered her tattered composure and raised her chin. “So if you plan to continue on this...reckless path and end up dead sooner or later, then tell me now. Because I can’t go through that again. I won’t go through another death, another loss. I won’t put my children through it. It’s better they don’t know you than lose you because you have to constantly prove yourself. That contract means nothing to me then.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’ll walk away now and never return if you don’t put a stop to your ridiculous, death-defying stunts.”
CHAPTER FOUR
ACOUPLEOFhours later, Aristos walked slow laps around the manicured gardens, his thoughts refusing to settle.
Before Mira could make real on her threats, they’d been interrupted by an excited Stella and his grandfather, who’d heard that Mira had returned. Returned to their marriage, returned to him. At least, his grandfather and his cousin seemed to view Mira’s return as an inevitability and were happy for them.
He’d half expected Mira to start their argument back up again when he’d suggested that she was tired, and refuse to come home with him. As much as he’d wanted to think that she’d pounced on a new excuse to break their arrangement, her tears and the fracture of her even temper had been far too real.
God, he’d never seen her like that. And he never, ever, wanted to see her like that again. The realization that he’d been responsible for it sat like a boulder on his chest, hours later.
Mira’s wide smile and warmth when she’d hugged his cousin had been real too. Aristos had never been more thankful for Stella’s spectacular entry than that evening. He’d forgotten how much Mira hated confrontations, how her self-possession had always driven him up the wall. And yet today, she’d let him see how fragile she was feeling.
“I’d be devastated if you died, Aristos. Especially now.”
Which brought him to the huge, glaring truth he still couldn’t seem to settle with.
