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Lionel did not see.
As if she could tell, Geraldine smiled, and that made that pressure in his chest worse. “I mean that she worries about me, not what people might say about her or our family. That’s why she left. It might look like judgment, but it’s not. It’s that she can’t bear to stay and watch me do things she worries might hurt me.” It was her turn to shrug. “Love doesn’t have to look the way you think it should, Lionel.”
Later that night, when she came back from putting the baby to sleep and joined him for their usual dinner, he stripped her of the clothes she wore and laid her out on that very same rug, where the glass hadn’t shattered and the room still felt too full.
And he did everything he could to make her scream.
Though he refused to ask himself what he thought he was proving. Or what he thought he meant by it.
Lionel kept waiting for the spell to be broken as the days passed. Fall rolled in, limning the fields with a deeper gold. The sky was a far more intense blue overhead. And the green of Geraldine’s eyes seemed to grow more mysterious.
If anything, he felt more enchanted by her, not less.
Yet having taken that month that his grandmother had ordered, though he had worked despite her demands, he had to go back to his usual travels. And at first, he assumed that he would enjoy his visits to different offices around the globe the way he always had. The excitement of waking up in a new city. The challenge of walking into a different office.
But he did not find it all as thrilling as he had before.
Historically, no matter how much he enjoyed a relationship, Lionel had always been grateful for his work. Because he enjoyed that as well—and often far more, if he was honest. When he was in the office, he had always been perfectly capable of compartmentalizing. Not that he would have called it that.
He simply didn’t think about the woman in his life until and unless he wanted to see her.
But he thought about Geraldine all the time.
In the middle of the tense negotiation in a boardroom in Singapore one evening, he found his mind wandering as he wondered what Geraldine was going to do with her morning with him away. And whether she missed him when he traveled—
When Lionel realized the direction of his thoughts, he sat back in his chair, so shocked he had to cough to cover the growl of dismay he was sure he’d made audibly.
For never, in all of his life, could he recall ever wondering—for even a moment—if anyone missed him.
He was Lionel Asensio.
On some level, he supposed, he had always rather thought that the lights dimmed when he quit a room.
When he came back from that trip, he found Geraldine fast asleep in the bed they now shared. Because he had insisted that she move into his rooms.For the access, he had assured himself.For the convenience, he had told her.
Tonight he stood there watching the moonlight play over her, for far too long. Fully clothed.
For far longer than he would have admitted if she’d woken up to see him at it.
Eventually, he talked himself out of whatever daze he was in. He’d showered off the mess in his head, then slipped into the bed beside her, waking her up in the best way he could imagine.
Every time he came home, it was the same. Whether she was asleep or awake, she always greeted him with the same obvious delight. The same sweetness, the same fire.
And every time he tasted her anew, he was certain that this would be the time that it failed to excite him as it had before. That she would fall short of the memories he tortured himself with when he was away.
It was possible he looked forward to that happening, but it never did.
Instead, every time, it was better.
Because he had taught her everything she knew and she was a clever student. He could do nothing but exult in the way she set about attempting to master each and every skill he’d introduced her to.
Until some nights, it was hard to remember who had taught who.
“I need something to do,” she told him one day, when they had been together some while. They were walking outside along the fields, taking in the cooler air. “I’m not used to all this inactivity.”
“You are an Asensio wife,” he intoned, as if that was all that should matter to her.
There was a primitive part of him that thought it was, in fact, the only thing that should matter to her. But there was also a part of him that liked her more than he wanted to for saying such a thing, becausehecertainly wouldn’t have liked sitting around, waiting to be dressed and living for her return.
