“Perhaps you should listen to the feedback.”
He wrapped his arm around her waist, the heat from his hand shocking. His fingertips rested just beneath the curve of her breast, making her heart beat faster, stronger.
“I’m very sorry,” he said, his voice husky. “Please say you’ll forgive me. At least in time for the paparazzi to catch up with us. I would not want pictures of our dinner to go into the paper with you looking stormy.”
“Oh, perish the thought. We cannot have anything damaging your precious reputation.”
“Our association is entirely for my reputation. You will not ruin this. If you do, I promise I will make you pay. I will take money out of our agreement so quickly it will make your head spin. You do not want to play games with me, Esther.”
He whispered those words in her ear, and for all the world he would look like a lover telling secrets. They would never guess that it was a man on the brink issuing threats.
It galled her that they worked.
He walked them inside, without being stopped by anyone, and went to a table that he had undoubtedly sat at many times before. He did pull her chair out for her, making a gentlemanly show there as he had failed to do at the car.
“Sparkling water,” he said to the waiter when he came by.
“What if I wanted something else?” she asked, just to continue prodding at him.
“Your options are limited, as you cannot drink alcohol.”
“Still. Maybe I wanted juice.”
“Did you want juice?” he asked, his tone inflexible.
“No,” she said, feeling defeated by that.
“Then behave yourself.”
He took control like that with the rest of the dinner, proceeding to order her food—because he knew what the best dishes were at the restaurant—and not listening to any of her protestations.
She didn’t know why she should find that particularly surprising. He had done that from the beginning. She had tried to come to him, had tried to do things on her own terms, but he had taken the reins at almost every turn.
Suddenly, sitting there in this restaurant that was so far outside her experience—would have been outside her scope for imagination only a few weeks earlier—she had the sensation that she was being pulled down beneath the surface. That she was out in the middle of the sea, unable to grab hold of anything that might anchor her.
She was afraid she might drown.
She took a deep breath, tried to disguise the fact that it was just short of a gasp.
Finally, their dessert plates were cleared, and Esther felt like she might be able to approach breathing normally again. Soon, they would be back at the villa. And while she still found his palatial home overwhelming, it was at least a familiar sort of overwhelming. Or rather, it had become so over the past few days.
Then, she looked up at him, and that brief moment of sanity melted into nothing. There was a strange look in his eye, one of purpose and determination. And if there was one thing she knew about Renzo it was that he was immovable at the best of times. Infused with an extra sense of purpose and he would be all-consuming.
She didn’t want to be consumed by him. Not in any capacity. Looking into his dark eyes now, an answering twist low in her stomach, she wasn’t certain she could avoid it.
He reached into the interior pocket of his jacket then, his dark eyes never wavering from hers, and then he got out of his chair, kneeling in front of her. She couldn’t breathe. If she had had the sensation of drowning before, it had become something even more profound now. Like being swept up in a tide that she couldn’t swim against. The effect those eyes always had on her.
The effect he seemed to have on her.
She was supposed to be stronger than this. Smarter than this. Immune to the charms of men. Especially men like him. Men who sought to control the world around them, from the people who populated their surroundings, to the homes they lived in, all the way down to the elements. She imagined that if a weather report disagreed with Renzo, he would rail at that until it changed its mind.
She knew all about men like that. Knew all about the importance of staying away from them.
Her mother had been normal once. That was something Esther wasn’t supposed to know. But she had found the pictures. Had seen photographs of her mother as a young girl, dressed in the trends of the day, looking very much like any average girl might have.
She had never been able to reconcile those photographs of the past with the woman she had grown up with. Quiet. Dowdy. So firmly under the command of her husband that she never dared to oppose him in any way at all.
It had been a mystery both to her father and her mother that Esther had possessed any bit of rebelliousness at all. But she had. She did. And if there was one thing Esther feared at all in the world, it was losing that. Becoming that drawn, colorless woman who had raised her.
Love had done it to her. Or more truthfully, control carefully disguised as love.
It was so easy to confuse the two, she knew. She knew because she’d done it. Because she’d imagined her father had been overbearing out of a sense of protectiveness.
Those thoughts flashed through her mind like a strobe light. Fast, confusing, blinding, obscuring what was happening in front of her.
She blinked, trying to get a grip on herself. Trying to get a grip on the moment. It wouldn’t benefit her at all to lose it now.
“Esther,” he said, his voice transforming itself into something velvet, softening the command that had been in it only moments before. Brushing itself against her skin, a lush seduction rather than a hard demand.
He was dangerous. Looking at him now, she was reminded of that. She told herself over and over again as he opened the box he had taken out of his coat pocket and held it out to her. As he revealed the diamond ring inside.
He was dangerous. This wasn’t real. This was something else. A window into a life she would never have. This was experience. Experience without consequence. She was pregnant. She was having twins. And she was playing at being rich and fancy with the father of those twins. But they weren’t her babies. Not really. And he wasn’t her fiancé. Wasn’t her man at all.
That was a good thing. A very good thing. She didn’t want anything else. Not from him. Not from anyone. She couldn’t sustain this.
But she had to go along with this. And she had to remember exactly what it was, all the while smiling and doing nothing to disrupt the facade. Which, he had reminded her, was the most important thing. She could understand it. On a surface level, she could understand. But right now, she felt jumbled up. And she hated it.
Still, when he took the ring out of the box and then took her hand in his, sliding the piece of jewelry onto her fourth finger, she felt breathless. Felt like it was something more than a show, which proved all the weakness inside her. All the weakness she had long been afraid was there.
“Will you marry me?” he finished finally, those last words the darkest, the softest of all.
This was a moment she had never even fantasized about. Ever. She had never seen marriage or relationships as anything to aspire to. But this felt... This felt like nothing she had ever known before. And the question Renzo was asking seemed to be completely different from the one her father had undoubtedly asked her mother more than twenty years ago.
Of course it was. Because it was a ruse. But more than that, this whole world might as well exist on another planet entirely.
But that doesn’t make him less dangerous. It doesn’t make him a different creature. He’s still controlling. Still hard.
And he doesn’t love you.
Her heart slammed