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“How long were you planning on this being your honeymoon destination?” she asked. Why had she asked? She didn’t really want to know. Curse her stupid curiosity.
“More than a year. When we set the wedding date, I booked this place.”
“You do like your plans, don’t you?”
“Without a plan, how do you know if you’re on the right path?”
“I don’t know. If you adhere so tightly to a plan, how do you know you’re not missing something really great that’s just a hair to your left?”
He shrugged and walked up the steps that led into the villa. “It isn’t worth the risk,” he said. “Not to me.”
He pushed the door open and went inside; Leah followed, scanning the surroundings. It was a giant, open room with a vaulted ceiling, accented by exposed beams. The floor was made from wood, too, rough and unfinished, giving the impression of something rustic in the midst of the polished luxury. The bedroom was only partitioned off from the main living area by a swathe of gauzy fabric. And beyond the veil, a large, plush bed that was certainly built for two.
And they weren’t going to need separate sleeping quarters. She looked ahead, at Ajax’s broad back, his trim hips and...well, yeah the way his black dress pants fit over his muscular butt. That was a perk to walking behind Ajax chatting his ear off she’d discovered a little later into her teens. The view from back there was good.
“What risk? The risk of failure?” she asked.
“No. Failure would not be half so bad. There are much bigger things, much darker things to fear.” He set down the bag he’d been carrying and walked toward the far end of the room. “Let me ask you a question, Leah.”
“Go for it.”
“Do you think you’re a good person?”
She blinked. “Yes. I...suppose so. I make candy, not war, and I smile at people when I walk by them on the street. Never took money from my grandma’s purse. Yes.”
“All right, but do you trust that if your circumstances changed, you would remain a good person? That you would have morals, morals that took hold deep inside of you, that would keep you from ever changing?”
“I’d like to think so,” she said, sensing she wouldn’t like where he was leading her.
“I trust that I am not a good person. Not just that I might not be if things were to change, but that if I ever take my eyes off the prize in front of me, if I let myself slip up, I will go right back into the darkness I came out of, and I’m not willing to do it. Not just for me. For everyone I might hurt. Emotion, need, lust—those things distract. They are unpredictable. I don’t trust them.”
She laughed a little, not because anything he said was funny but because it was the only way she could release the tension, the unease, building inside of her.
“You wouldn’t...hurt anyone, Ajax.”
He laughed, and his was obviously not born of humor, either. “Oh, you say that, Leah, but you don’t know anything about me, not really. You think you do. You think I was born the minute I appeared on your family’s estate? No. By then...by then I had lived more life in sixteen years than a girl like you will have lived at the end of her days. And that’s not an insult. You don’t want to have seen what I’ve seen. To know what I’ve done. I don’t want to know it. But I do. And the memory is what keeps me going this way. It’s what reminds me, every day, of how important it is to keep your eyes on the goal.”
“Ajax...”
“We’re done talking about this.”
“No, we aren’t,” she said. “You told me yesterday that you were worse than most men. Today you’re telling me you’ve done things... I think I deserve to have an idea of what I’m dealing with here.”
“Why? I thought you knew me so well?”
“No. I knew your mask. And I liked it better.”
“Everyone does,” he said. “And they should. On that note—” he reached for his tie, loosened it and then pulled it off “—I think I’ll go for a swim.” Then he started undoing the buttons on his shirt, stripping so he was bare to the waist. Oh...my.
It was so easy to forget how angry she was, how hurt and confused when she saw that lean, well-defined torso. All olive skin with a bit of dark hair over his chest. Broadcasting just how masculine he was. As if she needed the reminder.
He headed toward the bedroom area, and she just stopped, staring. He was behind the curtain, but she could see, easily, the silhouette of him through the thin gauze. He opened one of the bags that had been delivered ahead of them and pulled out swim shorts, then he pushed his pants and underwear down his thighs.
