One Reckless Decision

“If you wish to hire a translator and have the documents examined, I will instruct my secretaries to begin compiling copies for your review immediately,” Leo said in a mild way, yet with that sardonic current beneath.

“And how long will that take?” Bethany asked, her bitterness swelling, hinting at the great wealth of tears beneath. She blinked them back. “Years? This is all just a game to you, isn’t it?”

His gaze seemed to ignite then, hard, hot and furious. The room constricted around them, narrowing, until there was nothing but Leo—the real Leo, she thought wildly—too dark, too angry and too close. Bethany felt panic race through her; a surge of adrenaline and something far more dangerous kicked up her pulse, hardened her nipples and pooled between her legs. She hated herself for that betrayal above all else.

And she suddenly realized how close together they were standing, with only the corner of the platform bed between them. She could reach out her hand and lay it against his hard pectoral muscles, or the fascinating valley between them. She could inhale his scent.

She could completely ruin herself and all she’d fought so hard to achieve!

“You must return to Italy if you wish to divorce me,” he said, his voice low and furious, like a dark electrical current that set her alight. “There is no other option available to you.”

“How convenient for you,” she managed to say somehow, not fighting the faint trembling that shook her—not certain she could have hid it if she’d tried. “I wonder how the foreign wife of an Italian prince can expect to be treated in Italy?”

“It is not your foreign birth that should worry you, Bethany,” Leo said, his noble features so arrogant, so coldly and impossibly beautiful, even now—his low voice like a dark melody. “The abandonment of your husband and subsequent taking of a lover? That, I am afraid, may force the courts to find you at fault for the dissolution of the marriage.” He shrugged, seemingly nonchalant, though his eyes were far too dark, far too hard. “But you are quite proud of both those things, are you not? Why should it distress you?”

Bethany felt as if something huge and heavy was crushing her, making it impossible to breathe, making tears prick at the backs of her eyes when she had no desire to weep. It was the way he said ‘abandonment’ and ‘lover,’ perhaps. It tore at her. It made her nearly confess the truth to him, confess her lie, simply to see his gaze warm. It made her wish she could still believe in dreams she had been forced to grow out of years ago.

But she knew better than to give him ammunition. Better he should hate her and release her than think well of her and keep her tied to him in this half-life, no matter how much it hurt her.

“There must be another way,” she said after a moment or two, battling to keep her voice even.

Leo merely shook his head, his features carefully blank once again, just that polite exterior masking all the anger and arrogance she knew filled him from within. She could feel it all around them, tightening like a vice. Too much emotion. Too much history.

“I don’t accept that,” Bethany said, frowning at him.

“There are many things that you do not accept, it seems,” Leo said silkily. “But that does not make them any less true.”

He wanted her. He always wanted her. He had stopped asking himself why that should be.

He did not care about her lies, her insults—or he did not care enough, now, having been without her for so long. He only wanted to be deep inside of her, her legs wrapped around his waist, where there could be only the truth of that hot, silken connection. The only truth that had ever mattered, no matter what she chose to believe. No matter what he felt.

She should know better than to row with him so close to a bed. She should remember that all her posturing, all her demands, rages and pouts, disappeared the moment he touched her. His hands itched to prove that to her.

She pushed her curls back from her face and looked unutterably tired for a flashing moment. “I would ask you what you mean, and I am certain you would love to tell me, but I am tired of your games, Leo,” she said in that quiet yet matter-of-fact voice that he was growing to dislike intensely. “I will not go back to Italy. Ever.”

He thought of the vulnerability he had sensed in her, that undercurrent of pain. He could see hints of it in the way she looked at him now, the careful way she held herself. Sex and temper, he understood; both could be solved in the same way. But this was something else.

A game, he assured himself. This is just another game.

“You make such grand proclamations, luce mio,” he said softly, never taking his eyes from hers. “How can you keep them all straight? Today you will not go to Italy. Three years ago you would not remain my wife. So many threats, Bethany, all of which end in nothing.”