A Baby to Bind His Bride

He’d felt that like a loss, too.

But today he told himself that his response to her was fury, because it should have been. He didn’t move as she kept coming, bearing down upon him where he stood as if she was considering toppling him straight backward, through the window and down to the streets of Rome far below.

A part of him thought he might let her try.

Before she made it all the way to the window, she veered to the left and to his desk. Her blue eyes met his and he felt himself tense, because the look that she was giving him was not exactly friendly. She held his gaze and stabbed her finger on the button that made the glass in all his windows that faced the office go smoky. Giving them exactly the sort of privacy he didn’t want.

“You are supposed to be in Sydney.” His voice sounded like steel. Harsh and very nearly rude. “Sydney, Australia, to be precise, which is a good, long way from here. A good, long, deliberate way from here.”

“As you can see, I am not in Sydney.”

This woman made him…thirsty. His eyes drank her in and he wanted to follow his gaze with his hands. The deep black dress she wore fit her beautifully, and called attention to that tiniest of swells at her belly. So tiny that he very much doubted anyone but him would know what it signified.

But he knew. Oh, did he know.

And this time, when a new wave of fury broke over him, he knew it wasn’t masking anything. He knew it was real.

“Do you think I sent you away for my health?” he demanded.

She let out a noise. “I don’t care why you sent me away, Leonidas.”

And he had never heard that tone from her before. Not at all cool. Not remotely serene. Not calm in any way whatsoever. It was so surprising—so very unlike the Susannah he knew—that it almost knocked him back a step.

He frowned at her, and realized abruptly that while she looked as sleek and controlled as she usually did, it was only the surface. The effortless chignon to tame her blond hair, the stunning dress that called attention to its asymmetrical hem and its dark color, and the sort of shoes that most women couldn’t stand in upright, much less use to stride across office buildings. All of that was typical Susannah.

But her blue eyes were a storm.

And this close to her, hidden away behind smoky glass in his office, he could see that she was trembling besides.

“Susannah—”

“I don’t care,” she said again, more sharply this time. She took a step toward him, then stopped as if she wasn’t sure she could control herself. “For once, I just don’t care about you or your health or your feelings or anything else. My God, Leonidas, do you realize that my entire life has been about you?”

“Hardly.” Leonidas scoffed at her. At that notion. At the heavy thing that moved in him, entirely too much like shame. “I doubt you could have picked me out of a lineup before our marriage.”

And the laugh she let out then was hollow. Not much like laughter at all. It set his teeth on edge.

“You’re thinking of yourself, not me,” she retorted. “A rather common occurrence, I think.” When he only blinked at her, astonished, she pushed on. “I was a teenager. My parents told me that I was promised to you long before we got married, and believe me, I knew exactly who I was saving myself for. You were Leonidas Betancur. I could have found you blindfolded and in the dark.”

He told himself there was no reason that, too, should settle on him like an indictment.

“I am not responsible for the fantasy life of a schoolgirl,” he gritted out at her.

Susannah nodded, as if he’d confirmed her expectations. Low ones, at that. “On our wedding day, you took great pains to tell me how little the things that mattered to me matter to you. Like my schoolgirl fantasies that you might treat me the way any man treats his bride. And I accepted that, because my mother told me it was my place to do so.”

Leonidas couldn’t tell if he was affronted or abashed by that. He didn’t much care for either. He decided he preferred affront, and stood taller.

“You were nineteen years old and I was an extremely busy—”

“But then you died,” she continued, and there was a shaking in her voice, but it didn’t seem to bother her in the least. She advanced another step. “Has it ever crossed your mind how much easier it would have been for me to marry someone else after that?”

“It would make you a bigamist, but I sense that is of no matter in this remarkably slanted portrayal of our relationship.”

“I’m not sure relationship is the word I’d choose to describe a distant engagement, a circus of a wedding during which you spoke only to your business associates, your death and resurrection, my unwise attempt to help you—”