Fear that he could read her so easily, that he might guess the embarrassing truth, lent her voice a frustration she hadn’t intended.
‘I’m sick of being cooped up in this house, unable to even go out, when you refuse to talk to me about anything remotely important. I can’t take it any more. I’m getting my trainers and I’m going for a walk along the beach.’
He eyed her again, the same intensity, the same knowing expression in those unfathomable depths. How was it that he seemed to find it so easy to read her while she had no idea what he was thinking, most of the time? It was hardly fair.
And now she sounded like the kind of petulant teen she liked to pride herself that she’d never been.
‘Have I upset you in some way, Archie?’ Evenly. A little too calmly.
‘No.’ She gritted her teeth.
‘Have I treated you badly and not been aware of it?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Then perhaps you would care to tell me why I suddenly seem to have become your enemy.’ His eyebrows shot up. ‘Only here was I thinking I was looking after you.’
He had been. That was the problem. He was looking after her for the baby, which was right and proper, but not because he also wanted to look after her. The difference was subtle, but it was there. And it hurt.
Logic, it seemed, stood little chance against a heart that yearned for something else. Especially when that something else was Kaspar Athari’s love.
Archie balked at the realisation.
Surely she wasn’t still imagining herself in love with Kaspar? No, that had to be the baby mushing up her head.
‘You’re right.’ She backed down abruptly. ‘Sorry. Maybe I just need to get out of the sun.’
The last thing she needed right now was to engage in a bit of verbal back and forth with him. Or stir up more emotions in her that her hormone-riddled head might mistake for love. It was all she could manage not to squirm beneath his unrelenting gaze. Assessing her, as he always did.
‘Get changed,’ he bit out unexpectedly. ‘I’m taking you out for the afternoon.’
* * *
Flitting around the city, playing the tourist with Archie and doing the sightseeing thing was certainly not the way he’d been expecting this day to turn out. Yet here they were in downtown Los Angeles, soaking up the atmosphere.
To his surprise, he found himself enjoying it, even forgetting his concerns for Archie, and for their baby, for a while.
Over the last week he’d become more and more aware of the beatific yet simultaneously false smile that she’d flashed him from time to time. He was aware that, to a greater extent, it was his own fault. After opening up to her that one night he’d not so much regretted it but, more, had had his misgivings. At loading something like that onto Archie when she already had enough to worry about. And, yes, about opening up so easily, so naturally. As if it hadn’t been the greatest secret he’d lugged around for his entire life, which had defined him, driven him, moulded him. And as though it didn’t even matter any more. Not when he had Archie.
Because the truth was, he didn’t have Archie. She may have married him, but only because she’d been pregnant with his baby and he’d insisted on it. He would do well to remember that before he risked letting himself get carried away with this sham marriage of theirs. The marriage he was altogether too happy to accept. So he’d managed to shut himself off to her as he always had. A closed book.
But always aware that Archie could so easily take him off the shelf, blow the cobwebs away and open him up if she took it into her head. Encouraging him to give up his stories, his secrets when they were better left unread.
Unseen.
‘The Walt Disney Concert Hall?’ she breathed, a look of quiet awe on her face as she dragged him back to the present.
‘Yeah, well, I figured with your background in construction this might be of particular interest.’
‘It is.’ Archie nodded, taking in the iconic structure in front of them. ‘The way it looks and, I believe, the sound are incredible.’
He dipped his head in confirmation.
‘The LA Philharmonic are performing next month. I have tickets. Accompany me.’
It was meant to be an invitation but he knew it sounded more like a command. Even more unexpectedly, however, Archie merely looked up at him in surprise and then smiled. A genuine, sweet smile that he felt everywhere, as if she were running her hands over his bare flesh the way he knew her eyes had been doing—albeit against her will—earlier in the afternoon at the pool.
She made him feel so good. Perhaps too good. He didn’t have any right to still want her the way he did. As wrong as he knew it was—she was the mother of his child, after all, and he was supposed to be caring for her, protecting her—he couldn’t seem to stop it. She preyed on his waking thoughts. And most definitely his sleeping thoughts.