The Man Behind the Scars

And this approach to a marriage put everything on the table, didn’t it? Why suffer through the traditional trials of the first year of a marriage when it could all be dealt with so efficiently in advance? You only had to check your more tender feelings at the door, and every possible area of future contention between you and your spouse-of-convenience could be ironed out well before any vows were exchanged.

What could be better? she asked herself. What could be more rational, more reasonable? She was delighted with herself that she was approaching this new phase of her life in so pragmatic and thoughtful a fashion. She was.

“I was under the impression that British courts did not, historically, look kindly on prenuptial agreements,” she said at one point, as she eyed yet another stack of papers in front of her.

“There is significant debate on that issue in the legal community,” the nearest lawyer snapped.

Angel only smiled.

She told herself she didn’t mind when she was trotted off to Rafe’s personal physician and asked to subject herself to a comprehensive set of physical exams, including a great battery of blood tests and other more sensitive procedures. She didn’t ask what they were testing for, because, of course, she knew. How had it never occurred to her to wonder about how this side of things would work? She shouldn’t be at all surprised. Naturally, Rafe wanted to be sure that she was both fertile and disease-free. He wanted to get his money’s worth, didn’t he?

She had absolutely no reason at all to feel hollow inside, she told herself fiercely. Every night when she was home alone in the flat that looked dingier by the day, and every morning as she sat in the back of a car so expensive its price had made her gag slightly when she’d looked up similar models online. She had signed up for this. This was what this kind of arrangement looked like. It was all very thorough. It made sense.

This was, at the end of the day, exactly what she wanted.

Wasn’t it?

She saw him, finally, almost ten full days into the tests and contracts and explanation of clauses. Angel walked through the high-ceilinged foyer of the distractingly elegant town house, leaving for the day after having spent hours signing away her rights to any and all fortunes that Rafe might or might not settle upon the children they might or might not produce in the course of their marriage, which might or might not last any significant amount of time. Over and over again, on all the necessary copies. Just as she’d done every day so far, in one form or another.

He did not speak. He only stood in the arched doorway to what she’d been told was a reception room of some kind. She might not have seen him at all, so completely still was he, and so fully did he blend into the darkness of the unlit room behind him. But she felt an odd shiver skate down the back of her neck. She turned her head, and just like before in the ballroom of the Palazzo Santina, there was nothing at all but his cool gray gaze.

She stopped walking. She slowly pivoted. Without meaning to move, she took a step closer to him, then caught herself. He stood there in the doorway, watching her, more solid than she remembered, as if he stood firm and commanding on the ground. As if he demanded no less than that from the air he breathed. Ruthless, she thought, and had no idea where that word had come from. When had she ever seen him be anything but kind, if, perhaps, severe? No matter how he hinted he might be otherwise?

It was that pervasive sense that she was in danger, the frantic pulse in her veins, the low curl of adrenaline that set up a kind of humming beneath her skin, that made him seem so much larger than life. So much darker, so much bigger, as if he could dwarf the world with his cold gray eyes alone.

“I had started to wonder if you were a figment of my imagination,” she said, speaking before she knew she meant to, automatically adopting that airy tone, as if the very sternness of his ruined face demanded it. “It never really occurred to me that there were so many practical matters to attend to. You always imagine it’s just straight from the romantic dance to the happily ever after, don’t you? No ten days of contracts to sign, just a cheerful song as the credits roll.”

He didn’t appear to move so much as a muscle. And still it was as if he moved closer, towered over her. She swallowed, hard.

“Have you convinced yourself this is a romance, Angel?” he asked in that dark way of his, that seemed to settle into her bones and shift like some kind of flu through the rest of her. Hot. Cold. And back again. “I fear you have set yourself up for a grave disappointment.”

She smiled. She had the strangest feeling that if she didn’t, if she showed even the faintest hint of the confusion or panic inside of her, he would call this all off. And she didn’t want that. It was amazing how much—how strongly and how deeply—she didn’t want that. Far more in this moment, she realized in some surprise, than before.