‘It does—and you know it does.’
She didn’t want to answer. She didn’t want to engage with him. But she couldn’t help herself.
‘I think you’re attacking me because it’s easier than looking at yourself,’ she challenged, not caring that her breathing was shallow and fast, or that she sounded as though she’d run a marathon. ‘You’re pretending you don’t feel something I know you feel.’
‘You’re mistaken.’
‘You and I had an arrangement that was all about practicality. We didn’t need to...to sleep together, but we did. Because we wanted to. You might tell yourself that you aren’t capable of love, but you are.’
He glared at her for a long moment, and Saskia realised she couldn’t even breathe.
Until, at last, he spoke. ‘Then perhaps I’m just not capable of loving you.’
Rejection lodged in her throat, thick and bitter-tasting. Saskia struggled to swallow it down.
‘Perhaps not,’ she rasped out. ‘But I don’t think it’s that. And I don’t think you do, either.’
‘All I can offer you is everything I’ve already promised. I will be the best father anyone could possibly be to this child. And I will be the best provider. I will take of my family the way I have always done. You’ll want for nothing—I can promise you that. But I can’t promise you love, or happy-ever-afters. I can’t pretend this is some great love story. I am who I am, Saskia.’
‘You’re so much more than you think,’ Saskia whispered. ‘But if I can’t make you see that then perhaps I’m wrong for you.’
‘Perhaps you are,’ he gritted out, thrusting his chair back abruptly and standing. ‘But I will not see our child suffer for our mistakes. We will marry, and we will provide a united front for this child.’
* * *
Malachi had no idea what had just happened. Or, more to the point, what he had just allowed to happen.
His head told him that he had done the right thing, but his chest was tight and angry. Full of a churning sense of remorse. Both for what he’d said and the way he’d spoken to her.
But it was for the best, he told himself furiously.
Everything he’d said was the truth. He couldn’t be the man she wanted him to be—the kind of man who professed love—he could only be who he was and hope that was enough.
Evidently it wasn’t enough for Saskia.
She wanted the words. The flowers. The poetry. All the things he couldn’t—wouldn’t?—give her.
He stalked the grounds of his castello, glaring into the darkness to see if perhaps the night sky had fallen in. After all, what other reason could there be for what was going on here?
His head was constantly full of thoughts of Saskia. And it wasn’t helped by the idea of her soft, wet body against him, on him, around him. Even at work the meatiest of contracts hadn’t been able to distract him from her.
He scowled at the sky even harder—but, no, it was most certainly up where it should be. What was more, it positively twinkled with the prettiest stars, free of urban light pollution, almost as if it were entertained by his uncharacteristic reverie.
It was galling.
He could take off for a night run, go a few rounds in the castello’s well-appointed gym, or swim lap after lap until his body ached. But he suspected it would do little to numb his brain from the effect Saskia was having on him.
How was it that she could make him feel powerful and powerless all at the same time?
This wasn’t him. This wasn’t the untouchable man he’d turned himself into once he’d finally dragged himself and Sol from the bowels of a childhood caring for their junkie mother.
He’d sworn to himself all those years ago that he would never let another person get under his skin like that. Aside from his brother, he’d vowed he would never permit anyone to venture this far into his life. A wife, a family, children. It was never going to be for him. He’d never wanted it.
Yet here Saskia was. Pregnant.
He had no name for this heavy, full feeling which was building in his chest with every passing day, but it didn’t seem to be regret. Or resentment.
In someone else he might have thought it was...joy. Or happiness. Or even love. But this wasn’t someone else—this was him. And he didn’t feel those things. He never had. The closest he’d ever come to feeling love was for his kid brother, but it wasn’t the kind of unfettered, wholehearted emotion that normal people seemed to feel.