Elodie straightened her clothes with a sultry smile. ‘You certainly haven’t lost your touch.’ She tiptoed her fingers down to the waistband of his chinos. ‘Let’s see if I’ve lost mine, shall we?’
Lincoln’s hand captured hers in a firm hold, his expression unreadable. ‘No.’
She arched her brows in a cynical manner, determined not so show how much his rejection hurt her. She pulled her hand out of his and opened and closed her fingers, her skin tingling from the heat of his touch. ‘You really are serious about those rules of yours, aren’t you?’
‘I am.’
Elodie shifted her mouth from side to side in a musing way. ‘May I ask why?’
‘I told you—it will make it a lot easier to dissolve our marriage when the six months is up.’
He moved to the other side of the room, taking his jacket from where it was lying over the back of a chair and moving towards the built-in wardrobe. He slid one of the mirrored doors back and took a coat hanger from the rack. He hung his jacket on it, then placed it in the wardrobe and closed the door again. His actions were precise, methodical, as though the task helped him process his thoughts.
He turned and faced her again, with a light of determination in his gaze that struck a chord of unease in her. ‘I don’t want any lasting mistakes from our temporary union.’
Elodie frowned, in spite of her determination to act cool and unmoved by his stern composure and stance. ‘What do you mean by “lasting mistakes”?’
His eyes bored into hers. ‘Are you currently using contraception?’
‘Of course.’
A low-dose pill was her only option at the moment, because she had struggled to find one that didn’t affect her mood. Not that she was good at remembering to take it regularly. But she’d figured that since she hadn’t exactly been putting herself ‘out there’ since her ill-fated hook-up with Fraser MacDiarmid, it was the best alternative. And since Lincoln was so adamant their marriage was to be on paper only—well, what did it matter if it didn’t have the same reliability as other methods?
Lincoln held her gaze for a pulsing moment, then his eyes drifted to her mouth and he sucked in an audible breath. ‘We’ll have to share the bed or Alita and Nina will suspect something is up.’
Elodie gave him a playful smile, sensing he was struggling to keep to his own rules. It gave her a sense of feminine power that sent a thrill through her flesh. He wanted her, but his fight was not with her but with himself.
‘Do you want to toss for which side to sleep on? I seem to remember you like being on the right—or have you changed since we last—?’
‘The right is still my preference.’
She made a little snorting noise. ‘That figures.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you always like to be right.’
A crooked smile formed on his lips. ‘So do you.’
Elodie shrugged in a nonchalant manner, and went to the dressing table where she had left her cosmetics. She picked up her cleanser and then sat on the velvet-covered chair. She caught his eye in the mirror. ‘What?’
Lincoln came over and laid his hands on the tops of her shoulders, still holding her gaze in the mirror. ‘I haven’t really thanked you properly for agreeing to all this.’
There was a different quality to his tone—a softer, warmer note that made her heart suddenly contract.
‘All this?’
‘Pretending to be in love and happily married. It means the world to Nina to see us reunited.’
Elodie placed one of her hands over his, where it was resting on her shoulder. ‘I really like her. It’s so sad that she has so little time left with you...especially as you only found each other a couple of years ago.’
One of his hands began playing with the long tresses of her hair in an absent fashion. His touch sent shivers dancing over her scalp and down her spine.
‘Life isn’t always fair, but we have to deal with it.’ His hand fell away from her hair, the other from her shoulder.
Elodie spun around on the chair and craned her neck to look up at him. ‘How will you deal with it? Her death, I mean?’
Lincoln let out a long breath and rubbed a hand over his face. ‘The same way I coped with losing my adoptive mother.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘By trying to rush into marrying a woman you barely knew and didn’t even love?’
There was a beat or two of silence.
Lincoln continued to hold her gaze, but his was screened—like a blacked-out window in an abandoned building. There was a muscle near the corner of his mouth that twitched once or twice, as if he couldn’t decide whether to give a rueful smile or grind his teeth, and then he released a long sigh.
‘I wish I’d searched for her earlier. I lost her as a baby and now I’m going to lose her again. When we’re only just getting to know one another. She’s filled the hole my adoptive mother left behind, but I’m conscious of the time ticking away. Every day that goes by is a day closer to losing her. It’s...torturous, to be honest.’
‘Oh, Lincoln, I’m so sorry. It must be hard for both of you.’
He gave a stiff movement of his lips that passed for a dismissive smile. ‘We’d better dress for dinner. Nina likes to dine early as she gets tired. I’ll leave you to get ready in private.’
Elodie watched him stride away to the door of their suite. ‘Lincoln?’