She lifted her head, pulse tripping. She was usually fast asleep by the time he came to bed.
“I didn’t think you’d still be up,” he said, closing the door and tugging at his tie. “Is something wrong?”
“Just thinking.”
“About my mother? I’m over it.”
She’d been contemplating more than that, but as he threw his tie toward a chair her brain blanked entirely. Was he going to strip in front of her like one of those exotic dancers? Okay.
“I’ll call her tomorrow and lay out some ground rules. I don’t want her asking you about my private life, but if you two want to go for brunch or text each other cat videos, do so with my blessing.”
“Where does picking out wallpaper fall? Too personal? Or...?” She waved her hands in the air, blinking with innocence.
He only gave her a flat stare, not seeming to enjoy the joke.
She bit her lips in compunction. “Thank you. I like her. And I feel for her, chasing something that never panned out the way she wanted it to. That’s hard for anyone. She’s really proud of you, you know. That you were able to make your own dream come true.”
He paused in dragging his shirt free of his trousers. “My company isn’t a dream. It’s a means to an end.”
Midas. He really was a four-letter word.
“Don’t you think he takes up too much real estate in our heads?” She’d been thinking that a lot lately. “I think the best revenge would be to forget about him altogether and live our lives without his shadow hanging over us.”
“Give up now? When I’m so close to squashing him like a bug?” Leander pulled his belt free and threw it after his tie. “Is that what you want to do? Let him get away with everything he’s done?”
He sounded so aggressive, she pressed back into the pillows.
“No. But chasing revenge allows him to win in other ways. We can’t be happy if we’re angry and we deserve to be happy.” She saw that so clearly now, how she had refused to allow herself real happiness because there had always been this dark fret that Midas would punish her for so much as a smile. He probably would continue to try to spoil her fun, but that didn’t mean she should do his harmful work for him. “He shouldn’t be allowed to steal our moments of pleasure from us.”
Leander hung his hands on his hips and stared at her a moment, then he toed off his shoes, muttering, “I’m a little too drunk for this conversation.”
“Am I making you angry? I’m not defending him.” He didn’t even seem drunk.
“No,” he said dryly. “But my mind leapt to our little moment of pleasure on the yacht. The fact he stole your ability to enjoy that sort of thing only fans my flames of hatred.”
“Oh.” A blast of fiery heat burst alive within her, part alarm, part acute self-consciousness, part remembered ecstasy. “You, um...” She swallowed. “You think about that?”
He stopped halfway to the bathroom, shirt loose and open, feet bare. “Did you think I could forget it?”
“I don’t know.” She rubbed her chin on her knee. “We had that argument after and you’ve been so reserved ever since, not even hinting that you were interested in me that way.”
“Because you were assaulted.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “You need to know I can control myself.”
She did know that. Or rather, she had never thought he couldn’t. She had moments when she felt vulnerable around him, but emotionally, not the kind of vulnerable where she didn’t want to be trapped in an elevator with him.
His voice plummeted to a dark rasp that sounded as though it originated in his chest. “Do you think about it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she blurted, then dropped her guilty face onto her knees, hiding her culpable blush.
He gave a snort of amusement.
“I do think about it,” she conceded, blushing harder as she lifted her head. Her voice thinned with plaintive emotion as she forced herself into that open honest place they were trying so reluctantly to find. “I think about it and about what I just said, that I don’t want to live my life in reaction to what Midas might do. I don’t want to think about him at all. I want to think about what I want.” She hugged her knees even tighter into her chest.
Leander’s cheeks went hollow. He stood rooted and still, as though carved from oak. “And what do you want?” he inquired.
Here she was leaping off a cliff again, this time of her own volition. Air rushed around her and her breath was gone. Her body braced for the icy plunge into the unknown.
But this yearning in her was too soul-deep to keep it contained. “I want a baby.”