One Reckless Decision

The Bethany he knew was vocal, mercurial. She did not break; she bent until she’d twisted herself—and him—into new and often contradictory shapes. He was not at all sure what to do with a Bethany he could not read, a Bethany whose temper he could not predict with fatalistic accuracy.

He was even less sure how it made him feel.

He reached over and poured the wine, a rich and aromatic red, into both of their glasses.

“Can we not enjoy each other’s company, no matter the circumstances?” he asked. “Have we really fallen so far?”

He let his gaze track the flush that tinted her skin slightly red, and made the deep, inviting green of her dress seem that much more beckoning. He wanted to reach across the table and test the curls that fell from the twist she’d secured to the crown of her head, but refrained. When he gave his word, he kept it.

No matter what it cost him.

“It is questions like that which make me question your motives,” she said, a vulnerable cast to her fine mouth. She kept her gaze trained on him as he lounged back in his chair and merely eyed her in return, trying to figure her out, trying to see beyond the facade.

He was starting to wonder why she was so determined to divorce him—and why she refused even to discuss it. It was almost as if she feared he would talk her out of it, should she allow the conversation. Which, of course, he would.

Talk or no talk, there would be no divorce. He wondered why he did not simply announce this truth to her here and now and do away with the suspense. He knew he would have done so three years ago without a second thought.

Was it a weakness in him that he was content to let this play out—that he was intrigued despite himself by this new version of his wife? Her return, her uncertainty, her obvious response to him that she worked so hard to conceal …he found himself fascinated by it all. He did not want to crush her with a truth he suspected she would claim to find unbearable. He wanted to see what happened between them first.

He did not want to investigate why that was. He did not want to look too closely at what felt more and more like an indulgence with every passing second.

He began to realize exactly what he had done by vowing he would not touch her. Perhaps she was not the only one who had hidden in their explosive passion. Perhaps he too had used it as a shorthand—a bridge. It was an unsettling notion.

But this time, he thought with a certain grimness, he would make sure that there were no shortcuts taken. They would achieve the same destination, but this time they would both do it with their eyes wide open. It was the only way he could be sure that there would be no more years of estrangement, no more talk of divorce. And the more he let this play out, he told himself, the less likely that there could be arguments from Bethany about compulsion and manipulation, and all the rest of the accusations she levied at him.

“You are so focused on our divorce,” he said after a moment. He selected a plump, ripe olive from the small bowl, swimming in oil and spices. He popped it in his mouth. “Don’t you think we should first discuss our marriage?”

She let out a startled laugh. Her blue eyes looked shocked, which irritated him far more than it should have done. As if he was the unreasonable one, the hysterical one!

“You want to …talk?” she asked. Her tone of amazement set his teeth on edge. “You, Leo Di Marco, want to talk. Now. After all this time.”

Something that looked like pain washed through her extraordinary eyes—but it could not be; how could it be? Then it was gone, hidden once more behind that brand-new armor of hers that she wore far too comfortably for his tastes.

“There was a time I might have killed to hear you say such a thing,” she said after a moment, her voice husky. Her mouth twisted slightly, wryly. “But that is long past, Leo. It is too late for talking now, so far after the fact. Surely you see that?”

“Three years have passed since we were last together,” Leo said, unperturbed, keeping his attention focused on her face. She looked away and he felt the loss, as if she had deliberately shut him out. “I imagine that ought to provide us the necessary distance.”

“The distance to do what?” she asked—almost wistfully, he thought. She was still gazing out at the dark gardens, a faint frown between her brows. “Rake over the old coals? Poke around for old wounds? I do not understand the purpose of such an exercise. What will it accomplish? Our scars are our scars. Must we compare them?”

He searched her face, so much like a stranger’s, when he had once thought he’d known it and its secrets far better than he knew his own.

He did not understand his own feelings. He wanted to go to her, to comfort her, and he could not understand the urge. The need for her body, for that addictive fire that raged between them—that he comprehended fully. But why should he want to chase the shadows from her eyes? Why should he yearn to make her smile? He wanted to focus on her duties, her obligations, the role he expected her to play. The rest of it, these softer urges, led directly to places within himself he had no desire to visit. He had walled them off long ago.