The Secret Beneath the Veil

“Now who is beating you up?” Mikolas challenged.

She swung her head to look at him. “You don’t think I owe her? Someone needs to advocate for her.”

“Where is she now?”

“I was coming away so I made arrangements with her doctor for her to go into an extended-care facility. It’s just for assessment and referral, though. The formal arrangements have to be completed. She can’t stay where she is and she can’t go home if I’m not there. Her doctor is expecting me for a consult this week.”

Mikolas reached for his tablet and tapped to place a call. A moment later, the tablet chimed. Someone answered in German. They had a lengthy conversation that she didn’t understand. Mikolas ended with, “Dankeschön.”

“Who was that?” she asked as he set aside the tablet.

“My grandfather’s doctor. He’s Swiss. He has excellent connections with private clinics all over Europe. He’ll ensure Hildy is taken into a good one.”

She snorted. “Neither of us has the kind of funds that will underwrite a private clinic arranged by a posh specialist from Switzerland. I can barely afford the extra fees for the one I’m hoping will take her.”

“I’ll do this for you, to put your mind at ease.”

Her mind blanked for a full ten seconds.

“Mikolas,” she finally sputtered. “I want to do it. I definitely don’t want to be in your debt over it!” She ignored the fact that he had already decided she owed him.

Men expect things when they do you a favor, she heard Hildy saying.

A lurching sensation yanked at her heart, like a curtain being pulled aside on its rungs, exposing her at her deepest level. “What kind of sex do you think you’re going to get out of me that would possibly compensate you for something like that? Because I can assure you, I’m not that good! You’ll be disappointed.”

So disappointed.

Had she just said “you’ll”? Like she was a sure thing?

She tightened her arms across herself, refusing to look at him as this confrontation took the direction she had hoped it wouldn’t: right into the red-light district of Sexville.

* * *

“If that sounds like I just agreed to have sex with you, that’s not what I meant,” Viveka bit out, voice less strident, but still filled with ire.

Mikolas couldn’t think of another woman he’d encountered with such an easily tortured conscience or with such a valiant determination to protect people she cared about while completely disregarding the cost to herself.

She barely seemed real. He was in danger of being moved by her depth of loyalty toward her aunt. A jaded part of him had to question whether she was doing exactly what she claimed she wasn’t: trying to manipulate him into underwriting the old woman’s care, but unlike most women in his sphere, she wasn’t offering sex as compensation for making her problems go away.

While he was finding the idea of her coming to his bed motivated by anything other than the same passion that gripped him more intolerable by the second.

“Let us be clear,” he said with abrupt decision. “The debt you owe me is the loss of a wife.”

She didn’t move, but her blue eyes lifted to fix on him, watchful and limitless as the sky.

“My intention was to marry, honeymoon this week, then throw a reception for my new bride, introducing her to a social circle that has been less than welcoming to someone with my pedigree when I only ever had a mistress du jour on my arm.”

Being an outsider didn’t bother him. He had conditioned himself not to need approval or acceptance from anyone. He preferred his own company and had his grandfather to talk to if he grew bored with himself.

But ostracism didn’t sit well with a nature that demanded to overcome any circumstance. The more he worked at growing the corporation, the more he recognized the importance of networking with the mainstream. Socializing was an annoying way to spend his valuable time, but necessary.

“Curiosity, if nothing else, would have brought people to the party,” he continued. “The permanence of my marriage would have set the stage for developing other relationships. You understand? Wives don’t form friendships with women they never see again. Husbands don’t encourage their wives to invite other men’s temporary liaisons for drinks or dinner.”