But she had broken through that jaded wall that surrounded him. She had done something to him. And now, she was yelling at him.
“I could not warn you, cara,” he said. “That would have spoiled the surprise.”
“I didn’t like the surprise,” she said.
“Still, I needed you to look surprised. You are aware that most women do not know when they’re going to be proposed to, are you not?”
She sniffed audibly. “Maybe I’m not.”
“I think you are. I needed it to look real.”
“Is that why you...pawed at me afterward?”
“That’s a very elegant way to describe what transpired between us. Though I do believe, you did some pawing of your own.”
She huffed. “I did not. Like I said, you surprised me. I feel as though you could have warned me. About all of it. And you would not have lost the element of surprise. I could have acted.”
“Sadly, you’re a terrible actress. I hate to be insulting, but it’s true. You have no artifice.” As he said it, he realized how very true it was.
“You were trying to control me,” she said, her tone hard, the anger behind it indicative of a deeper wound. One that had existed long before he’d arrived in her life.
“That wasn’t it,” he said, although he imagined it was semantics at this point. “You have no... You’re very soft. You seem to have no way of protecting yourself from any of this at all. You sit in sunbeams with bowls of cereal. And I do not know what to do with you. I do not know what you might do next. I do not like it.”
She breathed in deeply, and if a breath could be called triumphant, then this one certainly was. “Good. I don’t live my life to please people anymore. I am my own person.”
“Yes. So you’ve said.”
“It’s the truth. I know that I told you my parents were difficult. But you have no idea.”
“Well, you have met my parents. Assume I have some idea of difficult parents.”
She snorted. “Trust me. Your parents seemed delightful to me.”
“Your frame of reference is off.”
“Undoubtedly.” He began to pace the length of the room, all of the unquenched fire and unspent energy inside him threatening to boil over. “You must remember that you are not in charge here. This thing that we’re doing is important only to me. Therefore, I will direct all actions. If I decided that this was the best way to go about confirming our engagement for the public, then you must accept that my way is law.”
“You keep saying this is only important to you. But that isn’t the case. I care. You may not understand it—I don’t even understand it. But it matters. I’m linked to it. Physically. I know that these babies aren’t mine, but it’s all jumbled up. Biology and ownership, what it means... I don’t know. I just know that I don’t feel like a womb for rent. I feel like a person, a person who is going through something big and terrifying. A person who is carrying a baby. Babies, even. There is no divorcing my emotions from it. There is no detaching myself, not completely.”
He regarded her closely. “Have you changed your mind about leaving?” She would. He would make sure of it. But if she was leaning toward a change of heart now, that would make his job all the easier.
Her reaction to that kiss would seal things completely.
“No,” she said, her tone muted. She looked away, biting that lush lower lip that he had tasted less than an hour ago. “I can’t. I have too much to do. I know that... I know that. But stop telling me that what I want doesn’t matter. That what I feel isn’t like what you feel.”
“But,” he said, unable to let that comment slide, even if he should for the sake of harmony. For the sake of manipulation. “It is the truth. I’m going to be a father to these babies. To these children. I’m going to be the one who raises them. I know what that entails. It is going to require sacrifice. Change.” Until he spoke those words he had not realized that he intended to change it all. Somewhere in the back of his mind he had imagined that he would throw the raising of these children over to nannies. But now, he realized that was not the case.
He thought of his daughter. The daughter whose name he could barely stand to think, even after all these years. The daughter he sometimes saw across the room, through crowds of people, growing from a child into a young woman. Without him. Without ever knowing.
The idea of being a distant father again, even if his children were in the nursery and he was downstairs seeing to his routine while they were cared for by others, was too much.
“My life will change.” He reiterated that, as much for himself as for her.
“I have a feeling mine will, too.”
“Yes. Because of all the money that I will pay you.”
“No,” she said, her tone fierce now. “Because I was naive. Because I was foolish to think that I could do this and feel nothing. That I could do this and simply walk away with a check at the end. This experience is never going to go away. I... I’m going to be changed,” she said, sounding sad now, broken. “I thought that everything would be fine because I was committed to having this life or I didn’t have ties and strings and any of those things that I was trying to avoid. But that’s not true. Everything has consequences.” She laughed. “I think I pushed that out of my mind. Because it was something that my father used to talk about. Consequences for actions. How everything you do will come back to you. How distressing to find out that not everything my parents taught me is wrong.”
“That is usually the case,” he said, her words hitting him in an uncomfortable place yet again. “Tragic though it may seem, no matter how difficult the situation, no matter how unreasonable your parents can be at times, they are often not entirely incorrect.”
She shook her head. “I’m going to bed.”
She turned away from him, and he reached out, grabbing hold of her arm and stopping her from going. “Remember,” he said, not quite sure what he was going to say. For a moment, he just stood there holding on to her, not certain of why he had prevented her from leaving. “Remember that we have to go to New York in two weeks. If you thought tonight was public, then what you encounter there will surprise you. If you need any kind of preparation in advance, I suggest you speak to me about it. Otherwise, I will assume that you know what you’re getting yourself into and I will expect you to behave accordingly.”
He released his hold on her. He knew he was being an ass, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to correct the behavior. Why should he?
Seduction, perhaps?
He gritted his teeth. Yes, that might have been the better path. To kiss her again, to soften her fears while he claimed that soft mouth of hers. And yet, he found he needed more distance from that initial kiss than another. More than he would like to admit.
“I think I can figure it out,” she said, her tone soft.
“See that you do.”
There were only a couple of weeks left until he would present her to the world as his fiancée. And at that point—his father was correct—it needed to be permanent. But Esther was hungry for experience. To see the world, to see all that life had to offer. And if there was anything that he possessed, it was access to what she craved.
He could give her glamour. He could give her excitement. He could—quite literally—show her the world.
And there was one more thing. Yet another that she would get from no other man, not in the way that he could give it. Passion. The two of them were combustible, there