“They’re not you.”
He pulled out a box from a drawer, and she blinked. The box was sky-blue in color, with a silken white bow on top. As his long, tanned fingers tugged the edges of the bow and the shimmering ribbon unfurled in his hand, the unmistakable words Tiffany & Co. appeared.
Within seconds, he’d opened a velvet box and held up the largest, most dazzling diamond necklace Virginia had ever seen. Its sparkle was blinding. Its sheer magnificence just made her breath, her brain, her everything scatter.
The piece was worthy of old Hollywood, when the women would wear their finest evening dresses and most impressive jewels for the night. A large, oval-shaped green pendant hung from rows and rows of large, brilliant diamonds that fell like curtains and lace in the most exquisite workmanship Virginia had ever set eyes on.
“I… It’s lovely.”
“It’s yours.”
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
But he stepped behind her and began to fasten it around her neck. His lips grazed the back of her ear as his fingers worked on the clasp. When he was done, he turned her around to face him. “You’re mine to spoil. It’s yours. Tomorrow. Next week, next month, next year. It’s yours.”
This was him, announcing, in a way, that he was sleeping with her. No one who saw her would have any doubt. Why would he do this tonight? Why would she allow it?
She experienced a horrible urge to touch him, an even more intense one to ask him to hold her, but that would only bring the tears gathering in the back of her eyes to the forefront. She didn’t understand these tears, or the desperate sensation of having lost before she’d even fought for him.
Her eyes dropped to his chest as she felt a blush creep up her cheeks. His cross lay over his chest, glinting bright gold against the bronzed skin. His breath stirred the hair at the top of her head. The warmth of his body enveloped her.
His hands framed her jaw, lifting her face to his. “I bought you earrings and a bracelet, too.”
As he seized her wrist with his long, tanned fingers, she watched the thick cuff bracelet close around her. Oh, God, no wonder mistresses were always so sexy and smiling, when all their men treated them just like this!
“I can’t,” she still said. Because it felt so wrong. So intimate. So personal. It made her mind race with thoughts she did not—should not—think of. She was lying to him, or at least, withholding something important.
And it felt so odd, the weight of the diamonds and the forest-green emerald on her. It felt like a chain around her neck—Marcos’s chain on her. And her baby. And her future.
You’re mine to spoil…
“I insist, Virginia,” he sternly said, and drew her at arm’s length to take in the visual.
Self-conscious, Virginia dropped her gaze and tugged at a loose curl on her shoulder. The dress hugged her body like a lover’s embrace, the jewels refracted thousands of little lights and for the first time in her life Virginia felt like a fraud. A woman desperate to be anyone, anyone, that the man she loved could love.
“I don’t know what to say.”
His chuckle was full of arrogance, but it made her melt all the same. “Then get over here.”
When he drew her close and kissed her with a passion that buckled her knees and had her clinging to his shoulders, she didn’t say anything at all. But her mind screamed, “We’re having a baby!”
“Marcos, I’d like to talk to you, tonight.”
He fixed his powerful eyes on her, his face unreadable. He seemed to have forgotten about the dress, and she wondered if he’d been jealous. Marcos wasn’t surrounded by the aura of relaxation of a man who’d spent an entire night feasting on his lover, but with the tension of one who wanted more. The air felt dense between them. “I have other plans for tonight,” he admitted.
She could not even smile at that. “Still, I’d like for us to talk.”
He cradled her face, forced her to meet his gaze. “What is it?”
The concern in his eyes, the gentleness in his voice, only made her crave his love with more intensity. She did not want to crave it with such intensity, did not want to feel the emptiness growing inside her, realizing she lacked his love at the same time as their baby grew bigger.
Their agreement was over once she accompanied him to the Fintech dinner. And maybe they would be over, too.
She drew in a tremulous breath. “After the party.”
“All right,” he said, smiling. “In fact, there’s something I’d like to speak to you about, too.”
Inside the lavishly decorated lobby of the glass-and-steel skyscraper smack in the center in Michigan Avenue, Marcos guided Virginia through the throng of people, nodding to a few. “That’s Gage Keller, he’s a developer. His company, Syntax, owns half of Las Vegas now. The young woman with him is his wife.”