He’d misunderstood, but she saw no point in correcting him. The why didn’t matter. Not to him.
She looked down. “I don’t suppose you would have a hard time finding somebody else who wanted to go with you.”
“Yes,” he said, “I’m very wealthy, and very powerful. But, a great many men are. And very few of them have my ill humor or destroyed features.”
“So,” she said, “you just want me to be your date?” Spoken plainly like that, it scared her slightly less.
“Oh, it is a bit more than that. I shall present you to the world as my lover, and with that there will be certain expectations. You will be required to keep up the farce or... I will continue to pursue action against your father.”
She felt helpless. And she felt...well she felt like a prisoner. “I have a boyfriend.” As if bringing Tony into the mix would discourage him.
“Not anymore.”
Her heart twisted. “You can’t just do that. I mean, you can’t force me to break up with him.”
“You don’t need to do anything half so dramatic as that. But you will not be allowed to speak with him. In fact, I think I like this scenario even better. I hope he comes forward and complains to the media about the woman who jilted him for this.” He gestured to himself.
“Why do you want this?” she asked. “Just to hurt me? Because of my father?”
“No,” he said, hard and firm. “I need to return to the spotlight as I left.” He laughed then, dark and merciless. “Which is difficult enough. And I will be damned if I allowed myself to be an object of pity. Of scorn. When I walk into that ballroom, in front of the world, it will be as though I never left. Yes, I am scarred now, but I will have a woman on my arm, and there will be no doubt that as easily as I stepped into your bed, I will step back into the throne room.”
“And when...and when the party is over?”
He lifted a shoulder. “You will be free, of course. And we will concoct a story about our drifting apart. I could hardly settle down so quickly, after all. Someday, yes. But after a suitable succession of women such as yourself.”
The arrogance, the confidence inherent in that statement should have enraged her. Instead she felt...hot.
“I need my phone back,” she insisted, thinking again of Tony. Forcing her thoughts back to him.
“No.”
“But, I have agreed to your terms.”
“And yet, you are not a guest. You are my captive. I cannot have you making contact with the outside world that I don’t approve of. You are the daughter of the lowest form of life that I can think of on this planet, and I have no guarantee that you are not also a photographer, or that you wouldn’t also act as one if the opportunity presented itself. In fact, it would be rather a clever ploy, don’t you think?”
She supposed it would be, but she honestly hadn’t thought of it. “Well, I’m not. I’m getting my master’s in literature.”
“What do you do with a degree like that?”
“Teach mainly. But, my point is I don’t move in that world. I don’t condemn my father, but I’m not following in his footsteps either.”
He spread his arms wide. “And yet, here you are. You followed in his footsteps close enough.”
“I’m not hungry,” she said, looking at her barely touched food.
“I still am.”
“I want to go to my room.”
He waved a hand. “You will go when I’m finished. I suggest you eat, because there will be nothing served to you after.”
“I’m done.”
“It is not in my best interest to have you show up at our big debut looking half-starved. I should like your curves to be able to fill out a ball gown.”
Heat flooded her cheeks. “I don’t care what you want my curves to do. They aren’t yours. I’ll put on a show for you, but you don’t get access to my body.”
The air between them suddenly seemed to freeze; then it heated again. He stood from his chair, moving over to where she was sitting. He leaned in and he reached out slowly, drawing his fingertip across her cheek. She was mesmerized, held captive by his face. By every groove and imperfection in his skin, by the twist at the corner of his mouth and that slash that ran over his right eye. With him this close, she could see that it didn’t impact his vision. No, he saw. She had a feeling he saw so deeply into her that he could see just how fast her blood was rushing. How hard her heart was pounding.
“I will have access to whatever I like,” he said, his tone soft. “And you would do well to remember that.”
“I already told you—”
“You have a boyfriend. Yes. But, I have taken you prisoner in my castle, Belle. Ask yourself, do I seem like the sort of man who is concerned about whether or not someone has a boyfriend?”
“Given that...” She swallowed hard, trying to fight the fluttering in her stomach. “Given the fact that you have taken two people prisoner in the space of forty-eight hours, I imagine you don’t care about things like boyfriends, no.”
“You are correct.” He settled back into his chair, and a wave of relief washed over her. But, she also felt a lingering chill from his withdrawal. “You see, it is an interesting thing, having everything taken from you. When you shrink your world down to a palace, to the grounds, it gives you a lot of time to reflect.”
“Yes,” she said, “clearly, you had your own Eat, Pray, Love moment and emerged extremely enlightened.”
“Not entirely. Instead, I had a lot of time to think about what matters. And what doesn’t.”
“What matters to a man like you?”
“Survival. That’s all that matters. That’s the beginning and end of it. There are no rewards given for the manner in which you live, Belle. It would do you well to remember that.”
“You have the audacity to comment on what my father does for a living while you say morality doesn’t matter?”
“Because it hindered my survival. And, as previously stated, that is the only thing that matters to me. When you have nothing else, the elemental need to breathe is all that keeps you going. Yes, survival is the beginning and end of everything. When everything else falls away, the only thing that remains is that indrawn breath, and the seconds that stretch between it and the next. Sometimes, it is simply all you have to live for.” He took another bite of his dinner. “The living. Not the manner in which you live, not anything you possess. We are all creatures driven by that need.”
She shook her head. “Not me. I like books. And I like the ocean. The sun on the sand, and how warm it feels against my skin.” She saw something flicker in his dark eyes, and for some reason she felt her cheeks heat. “Those things are deeper than survival. And they matter. Because they’re what make survival matter.”
He laughed, but the sound carried no humor. “You would be surprised. There was a point in my existence when I looked around, and there was nothing. Nothing but an empty palace, dark, void of life. When every part of my body hurt, when I could barely get out of bed. And I would ask myself why I was still breathing. The answer was not books or the sun on the sand.”
“What was the answer, then?” she asked, in spite of herself.
“Because I’m simply too stubborn to allow death to win. Sometimes, that’s all the reason you have. So it is the reason that suffices.” He stood then. “I am finished. Come. I will show you back to your room.”
“I don’t need you to.”
“Yes,”