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When she started out she had it in her mind to pattern herself on Keira Walker. The two women had become friends of sorts in the past few months, and since Mara knew Trace thought the world of Keira, what better role model could she pick? Trace didn’t know it, but weeks ago she’d started taking cooking lessons from her French chefs on the days Trace wasn’t on duty. Alec and Liam had been amused, but had willingly eaten her modest efforts. It wasn’t until she’d let it slip to them that she was trying to become more like Keira that Alec laughingly told her, “Keira can’t cook. Our mom gave up trying to teach her because she refused to learn.”
Mara had been taken aback by that, but not daunted. So maybe cooking wasn’t a skill Keira had ever acquired, but it would still make Mara more able to function on her own if she had to. And she wanted to prove to Trace she didn’t need a large household staff to survive. Otherwise, how would he ever come to believe she could be anything other than the princess she was? How would he ever realize the only one she truly needed in her life was him?
The drive home was as silent as the drive to work had been, and Mara had plenty of time to think. Trace’s refusal to talk to her hurt, but it gave her the opportunity to consider long and hard about what was really important to her, and what she would willingly give up to keep him in her life.
Money was something she had always taken for granted. When she turned twenty-one she’d inherited a sizeable fortune from her mother, much of which resided in a trust. She didn’t need the salary she earned as a professor at the university, and in fact had arranged to donate her salary anonymously to the general scholarship fund. Andre paid for her bodyguards since they were all in the Zakharian military, but she easily paid for the rest of her staff and all the household expenses out of the income she earned on the trust’s invested principal. But she knew from things she’d read that some American men could be touchy about money, particularly when the woman had it and they didn’t.
Trace was a proud man. A self-made man. Everything he had he’d earned himself, and Mara admired him tremendously for it. Most of her principal was in an unbreakable trust that benefited her and any heirs she might have, and if she died without issue the trust would revert to Andre and his heirs. But there was enough money under her personal control to give a proud man pause. “Fortune hunter” was an ugly title, but one she knew the tabloids wouldn’t hesitate to use. She’d lived her whole life as a target of the tabloids, but Trace hadn’t, and she had to shield him if she could.
To do that she had to convince him she could survive on a lot less. All she really needed was enough money to maintain her stable. Trace couldn’t ask her to give up Suleiman—he loved riding as much as she did, and she had it in her mind to provide him with a mount worthy of him, a mount to equal Suleiman so they could race together like the wind. But other than that her needs were few. A chance to teach, to share her love of mathematics with her students. A chance to write, to leave something of herself to posterity. And Trace. She needed him. Needed his love. More than anything else she needed his love.
Then a thought occurred to her, startling in its simplicity, but something that should have occurred to her a long time ago. Maybe the reason he never told you he loves you all this time is because of the money. Maybe he is afraid people will think the worst. Maybe he is afraid you will think the worst, too. Maybe he is waiting for you to say something first because of that.
By the time they got home Mara had convinced herself her supposition was the truth. She turned to Trace the minute they walked in the front door and forced him to meet her eyes. “We must talk.”
He stared at her, impassive. Then he said, “You’re right. I’ve been putting it off, but...”
Mara glanced around the front hallway and saw two of her staff passing through. “Privately,” she said in an undertone. He nodded, and she added, “Give me five minutes to take off my things. I will meet you in my sitting room.” She didn’t wait for acknowledgment, just headed for her bedroom. She dumped briefcase, purse and computer bag unceremoniously on the chair beside her bed, and in frantic haste removed her jacket, mitten, glove and glasses, leaving them lying on the bed.
She hurried to the bathroom and wasted a minute rubbing away the little indentations her glasses left, and tucking in the stray tendrils of hair that had escaped her careful chignon. Then she stared at her reflection for another half a minute, wishing she was as beautiful as Trace was handsome. A wasted wish. She pressed her lips firmly together and gathered up her courage. “He loves me as I am,” she reminded herself solemnly. “I am beautiful in his eyes.”
