One Reckless Decision

“Quite the contrary.”

She had not seen him in days. Four days, to be precise.

She sat up, swinging her legs to the floor and straightening her shoulders as her eyes drank him in, as they always did and always had, no matter how angry and hurt she had been when he reappeared. She could not seem to help herself. Her heart leapt, no matter how sternly she lectured herself against such foolishness.

Since she could not control it, she tried instead to ignore it, and focused on him instead.

He looked …different, somehow. Bethany’s senses, more attuned to him than she was at all comfortable with, whispered an alert.

Leo’s dark eyes glittered in a way that made the edgy need in her belly punch to life and roll lower, setting her alight. His mouth was set into a firm, determined line. He was dressed impeccably in a black jacket over a soft cashmere sweater, his legs packed into dark trousers. Even relatively casually dressed, he was fully the prince. Only he could look so regal so effortlessly.

“I am delighted to hear it,” she said, eyeing him warily.

She felt vulnerable, somehow, as if she’d arranged herself on the settee simply to tempt him, with her curls in wild abandon and a soft wool throw over her bare feet. When, of course, she could not have known he would appear today. If she had, she would not have worn the casual denim jeans she knew annoyed him, much less the skimpy, tissue-thin T-shirt that she was afraid showed far more than it should.

She would have chosen far better armor to ward him off, to keep him at arm’s length where he belonged.

As if he could read her as easily as she’d read the novel at her feet, Leo’s full lips quirked slightly, knowingly. Mockingly, she thought, and frowned.

She did not understand the tension that rolled through the room, seeming to rebound off of the elegant wall-hangings. She told herself it was no more complicated than his sudden return, his unexpected appearance before her.

The castello had been a very different place while he’d been gone. She could remember what it had been like before, every time Leo had left on another one of his business trips. He had gone to Bangkok, New York, Tokyo, Singapore—and she had been trapped.

In retrospect, it was so easy to see how well the cousins had played on her fears. While Leo had been in residence, they’d been nothing but charming—yet once he’d left, they’d attacked. But this time the castello had been empty of their negative voices.

Bethany had been able to wander through it at her leisure, with no one whispering poison in her ear or pointing out her unsuitability at every turn. It was as if she’d come to the place brand new. As if it were scrubbed free of ghosts.

She had not cared for the softening she had felt as she moved through the place, exploring it as if it were a beloved museum of a house she’d once known, a home. As if, given the opportunity, she could truly fall in love with it as she had when she’d first laid eyes on it so long ago.

She did not feel so differently about the man, she thought as she studied him now, and that shook her, down to her bones and back again. Her frown deepened, even as her heart began to pound.

“You look as if you have seen a ghost,” he said with his usual inconvenient perceptiveness. Bethany actually smiled then, very nearly amused at her own predictability where this man was concerned, but covered it by leaning down and reaching for her book.

“Quite the opposite,” she murmured.

She straightened and pushed her curls back from her face with one hand. She wished she had tamed the great mess of them into an elegant chignon or a sleek bun. She wished she had it in her to be appropriate. But then, she reminded herself, she had no need to seek his approval any longer. She told herself she did not want to, in any event, no matter the quickening in her pulse.

She placed the book next to her on the settee, and took her time about looking up at him again. “I hope you have come to tell me it is time to visit the divorce court?”

His expression darkened. He was still propped up against the doorjamb, yet somehow he had taken over the whole of the small room in that way of his, using up all the air, stealing all the light.

“I am afraid not,” he drawled. There was something she couldn’t quite understand in his tone, something she did not want to comprehend in his gaze. “Though your impatience is duly noted.”

“I have been here for days and days,” she pointed out mildly enough. “I did not ask you to travel half the world away. Once again, I must remind you that I have an entire life in Toronto—”

“You do not need to remind me, Bethany,” he interrupted silkily, her name like some kind of incantation on his lips. She shivered involuntarily. His gaze slammed into hers. “I think of your lover often. It is a subject I find unaccountably captivating.”