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“Those are no longer your concerns,” he told her, in the silken sort of way that made all the hairs all over her body seem to stand on end in warning. It was awarning, she told herself. “For you are now the wife of an Asensio, and there will be no more scrabbling about in cold winters, concerning yourself with such menial tasks.”
“If that’s the sales pitch you think you should be leading with, I have some news for you,” Geraldine replied with admirable calm, she thought, given the state of her pulse. “You’ve read this situation wrong. Why would I have the slightest interest in the kind of superficial glamour that killed my cousin? Or the man who helped engineer it?”
She had sense that something in him hardened, but all he did was study her for a moment, then step back and indicate that she should take her seat at the table.
Geraldine felt like a trap was closing around her. As if she’d stuck her arm into a terrifying set of steel jaws and the only way out might be to gnaw the whole thing off—
Then again,she thought, repressively,it could be that you’re simply hungry, since the last thing you ate was a selection of stale nuts on that plane.
“Perhaps it would be better if we hold off on accusations and character assassinations,mi querida esposa,” Lionel said as she pulled herself together and took her seat. As he stood there and helped her into it when she needed no such aid, then held the back of the chair to slide it into the table, so that she felt him all around her. As if he was touching her when he was not. “After all, I would not wish you to feel embarrassed when the results prove my innocence.”
He looked entirely too sure of himself for her peace of mind when he rounded the small table and took the seat opposite hers.
“Even if the results do come back and prove that you’re Jules’s father, I won’t feel embarrassed,” she declared then, though she wasn’t really sure that was true. But what mattered was that shesoundedsure, she told herself. “I told you the reasons why I sought you out. They remain valid. If you are named incorrectly, that only means that I will have some follow-up questions for you.”
“Geraldine,” he said, a different note in his voice—or maybe it was just the way he said her name, making it a lilting thing. A scrap of a song, much the way his own name sounded in his language, three lovely syllables instead of something that rhymed withvinyl. “This all sounds like a great many words and attempted diversions to cover the fact that you are quite beautiful. And that you have clearly gone to great lengths to hide it.”
It was only now, sitting at the table, that she realized what she should have noticed immediately. They had taken her glasses away at some point while washing her hair and had never given them back. The realization was a relief, she found.No wondershe found everything so sultry, so atmospheric.
Not that it helped her now. She couldn’t see details well in the distance, but now that she was sitting with only this table between her and Lionel, she could, regrettably, see that he looked even better up close.
Not better, she lectured herself.More dangerous. Everything about him is a calculated seduction, and you know where it ends.
But she was dismayed to find that knowing such things did not set her straight as much as it should have. Because her body did not appear to be getting the message that she was not to find him attractive.
“I’m not beautiful,” she told him matter-of-factly. “My cousin was beautiful.”
“It is not all one thing or the other.” Lionel leaned back in his chair and the way he looked at her seemed to happen from the inside out, making everything within herhum. “Is this what you meant when you spoke about shying away from beauty because it is only on the surface? Because it is not who you are?”
Geraldine barely remembered saying that, though it sounded very much like something shewouldsay. She didn’t understand that tightening in her chest then, as if the very idea that this man had actually paid that much attention to her while she was speaking made her...some kind of stranger to herself, as if the woman she could see reflected in his gaze was moreherthan she had ever been.
She did not care for that at all.
Or maybe she was worried that she did.
“True beauty is not something that can be hidden away with a pair of glasses and an unflattering dress,” she said quietly. “That’s a Hollywood movie. The reality is that I have a certain shape, that’s all. I find that I very rarely like the attention that shape brings me. But then, unlike fancy billionaires and famous models, I do not find that I enjoy very much attention at all.”
He seemed to look at her for a long while, and that humming inside her was turning into something more like a seismic episode, but still he kept on. And she wanted to break this moment apart before it broke her, but she couldn’t seem to open her mouth. She couldn’t seem to do anything at all but look back at him, the harsh beauty he wore so easily seeming even more magnetic, even more tempting, in the soft touch of the candlelight.
“Very well,” he said at last, as if something had been decided.
He did something with one hand, and suddenly their private little garden was filled with two staff members who managed to make it seem as if there were at least triple of them. They bustled about and when they left, there was wine in the glasses, candles between them, and platters of food that smelled so good she had a moment where she thought she might actually weep.
“The food is a selection of local delicacies. Andalusia is known for its food, and my cook is the best,” he told her, and not in a way that suggested he was exaggerating to compliment his chef. But in a way that suggested that it was a quantifiable fact. He inclined his head. “Eat, Geraldine.”
And for a while, that was exactly what she did. The flavors were seductive. The dishes played with savory and sweet in different combinations, like a complicated dance. She only wished that her appetite was big enough to eat every last morsel on the table.
But Geraldine did not realize until some time had passed that she’d miscalculated. Because there was something too intimate about sitting in the candlelight, as the sky darkened above them and then gave itself over to the night. There was something about the way the candles danced in the little bit of breeze, the only music the soft touch of it as it went. And how the act of eating together, in silence, made whatever this was between them feel fraught. Deeper than it was. Almost as if—
But she could not allow herself to think these things. Not with this man who might very well be responsible for what had happened to her cousin. Not when Jules was her first and foremost responsibility these days—as she should be. The baby was the point of all of this, not whatever she felt on a night breeze in the company of this man.
She put down her fork when it occurred to her that she had started to think about it as if it might not be true. As if it might not be him.
As if she was tempted to believe him.
Lionel was lounging in the chair across from her, toying idly with a wineglass on the table before him, though his gaze remained trained on her.
“You seemed to have enjoyed the cuisine of my country,” he said, after some while had passed. An eternity or two, to her mind, caught up like that in his dark, gleaming gaze. “I am glad.”
