One Reckless Decision

She pretended she was not aware of Leo still standing in the doorway that connected his suite to hers. She pretended she could not feel the weight of his gaze and the far heavier and more damaging crush of the memories she fought to keep from her mind tugging at her, pulling at her, making her feel as if she waded through molasses.

Yet, despite herself, she was attuned to his every movement, his every breath.

“Dinner will be served at eight o’clock,” he said in his inexorable way when the silence in the room seemed to pound in her ears. “And, yes, we still maintain tradition and dress for dinner.”

She turned back toward him, hoping the fact that she was wearing jeans annoyed him as much as it had three years ago, when he had had his social secretary admonish her for her relentlessly common fashion-sense. She had been seen wearing them in the village, where anyone might have recognized her—oh, the horror.

“As you are not a student but the Principessa di Felici, it would be preferable if you dressed in a manner more befitting your station,” the dry, disapproving Nuncio had told her.

She reminded herself that she had only moments ago claimed to have grown up; such spiteful, petty thoughts rather undermined that claim.

She smiled with as much politeness as she could muster and waved a hand toward her bag where it stood near the door.

“As you can see, I brought very little,” she said. “I doubt I have anything appropriate. I am more than happy to take a tray in my room.”

“There is no need,” Leo said smoothly, a smile playing near his sensual lips.

He moved then, his long strides bringing him far too close to her until he stopped at the large dressing-room that led away from the bed chamber itself. He opened the door and indicated the interior with a slight nod.

“Your wardrobe remains intact.”

Bethany felt her mouth open and snapped it closed.

“You cannot mean …?” She blinked. “I have been gone for three years.”

Leo’s smile deepened. “Eight o’clock,” he said soft ly.

She did not know why she should feel so …disarmed. She did not know why it felt as if he had kept her things out of some sense of emotional attachment to her—when she knew such a thing to be impossible. Leo did not have emotional attachments, to her or to anyone. It was far more likely that he had simply forgotten this room existed the moment she’d left and the contents of her closet along with it.

Still, she felt a fluttering in her stomach and a kind of ache in her chest.

Leo was too close now, within a single step, and she knew the exact moment that both of them realized that: the air seemed to disappear even as it heated. His eyes grew darker, more intent. His smile took on an edge that made a tight coil of need twist inside of her.

“No,” she said, but it was little more than a whisper. Need. Longing. She did not know which was worse.

“What are you refusing?” he asked, taunting her. “I have offered you nothing.”

Yet, was the unspoken next word. It seemed to shimmer between them. Bethany could imagine his hands cupping her face, his hard, impossible mouth on hers. She knew exactly how it would feel, exactly how deeply and fully she would feel it.

But she knew better than to let him touch her. She knew better than to trust herself this close to him. It was not him she feared, it was herself. Once she touched him again, how could she ever stop?

“I am here for one reason, Leo,” she said, wanting to back away from him but worried that doing so would make her look weak, and encourage him to push his advantage. “I am not here to dress in fancy gowns for lavish dinners I do not want, much less to play bedroom games with you.”

“Bedroom games?” His voice was like chocolate, dark and sweet. “I am intrigued. What sort of games do you have in mind?”

“A divorce,” she said, feeling desperate. He still had yet to move! He simply looked at her in that knowing, shattering way, and it made her shiver. Her body wanted everything he had to offer and more. It always had. “All I want is a divorce. That is the only thing I have on my mind.”

“So you have mentioned, I think,” Leo said in that low, rich voice that seemed to connect directly to her nerve endings, sending sensations rippling throughout her limbs. “Repeatedly.”

There was no magic, she told herself fiercely. He was not magical. It was simply because she was here, in this room, in this castle, in Italy. It was not his voice. It was not him. It was only the past, yet again.

If she turned her head too quickly she feared she would see her own ghost and his entwined together—on the thick rug beneath their feet, up against the door, on the window seat. They had always been insatiable. As their marriage had worn on and worsened, that had often been their only form of communication.