He pushed himself off the bonnet and began to move away.
‘I’ll walk.’ His tone was inscrutable. ‘I need to think, anyway, and the fresh air will do me good.’
He stepped around the car and reached inside to retrieve his phone and jacket, slinging it over his shoulder as he walked away. Try as she might, she couldn’t seem to drag her eyes from him.
‘And what then?’ she asked thickly.
Lukas turned to look at her, the expression in his eyes almost ominous.
‘Then, Octavia, you are going to come home, and you are going to tell me everything.’
And it struck Oti as more than a little telling that the part her unguarded heart clung on to most tightly in that instruction was when he told her to come home.
CHAPTER SEVEN
OCTAVIA WAS IN his sleek living room, already waiting for him, when Lukas finally arrived home that evening.
She looked serene and composed, and utterly in control—just as she had done that morning helping the mother give birth to her child inside that car. As though this was the kind of thing she did every day.
He suspected, from all the research he had spent the day doing, including her charity work with Health Overseas Project, that it wasn’t too
far from the truth.
Octavia—or Oti, as she preferred to be called—wasn’t at all the woman that he’d believed her to be.
Had he ever been so mistaken about someone?
The question had been running through his head for the past several hours, though he knew the answer of course. It was because that was all he’d been expecting her to be. It was all that he’d wanted her to be.
He’d known her reputation didn’t fit from practically the first moment they’d met, when she’d sent all his senses into full alert. But he’d ignored it because it hadn’t suited the narrative he’d wanted to write.
Then he’d realised it again in the cathedral, when she’d stood in front of him and he’d felt as if his skull was cracking with the effort of resisting her. And he’d certainly realised it on witnessing the way she’d taken charge during Andrew Rockman’s heart attack. But he’d ignored it on those occasions too, because he’d been so focused on stealing Sedeshire International out from under Rockman’s nose. And he’d been using her to finally trounce that man, once and for all.
Now, though, it was time to face up to the fact that he should never have married her. Oti deserved better than to be a pawn in such a game, and he should have known that.
Lukas crossed the room to pour himself a drink from the cabinet—more for something to do than because he actually wanted one—and then took out a glass for her.
‘I take it you do drink?’ he asked brusquely. ‘Given that you’re clearly not in need of any twelve-step programme after all.’
He hadn’t intended to sound quite so abrasive and, in any case, his anger was directed more at himself than at Oti. But he wasn’t accustomed to missing things, certainly not in business. Oti might believe it showed he wasn’t quite as ruthless as he liked to appear, and it was ridiculous how much Lukas wanted to be the man she thought he was. However, he suspected the truth was far less selfless.
The simple fact was that whilst business was always clear and easy for him, marrying Oti had been about furthering his revenge for his mother. He had nearly—finally—succeeded in the plan he’d formulated back when he’d been a twelve-year-old kid. A plan he’d tweaked slightly over the years, but which had essentially stayed the same.
A plan which he’d been impatient to execute because he’d wanted to move on with his life. Truth be told, he’d wanted it over with a decade ago. But he couldn’t simply abandon it—he couldn’t simply let his mother’s death go without exacting some sort of punishment.
‘I do drink, yes.’ Oti’s quiet voice dragged him mercifully back to the present. ‘Though I prefer wine to brandy.’
‘Red or white?’
‘Red, if there’s a choice,’ she replied, unfailingly polite, which nearly killed him.
He opened the bespoke wine cabinet and selected a bottle, then set about opening it. In silence again, feigning a patience that he didn’t feel, until at last he was crossing the room towards her and setting the glass of wine down on the expensive coffee table.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured, lifting the glass elegantly and taking a sip before setting it back down.
He wasn’t sure why, but he wondered if she found it as tasteless as he currently found his favourite brandy.
Moving away, Lukas found himself at the huge picture window. The view had always made him feel as though the city—and what felt like the entire world—was at his feet, but now Lukas peered down the long, straight, wide roads as if seeing past the city’s boundaries would somehow let him see the big picture that he’d been missing all this time.