“Yes, we have, but it’s the very fact that we’ve sharedjust so much that makes me wonder if we are as compatible in that way as you seem to think.”
“Why should you wonder this? It is obvious that you want me.” His Greek accent got thicker when he was upset. She’d noticed that during a heated business phone call she’d overheard once, but it had never happened between them before.
She couldn’t feel badly that it was happening now. She was glad to know she could make him angry. She needed the assurance that she could impact his emotions because he certainly impacted hers. Though she would much prefer evidence of another sort of emotion and she didn’t appreciate his sentiment at all.
“Yes,” she said between gritted teeth, “I do want you, but I’m not so sure you want me. And I’m not going to spend my life married to a man who is going to look for his passion outside of our marriage bed.”
“Who said I would do this?” he demanded, his voice guttural and so thick with accent she had to concentrate to understand the words.
“Who said you wouldn’t?”
“I say.”
“I want to believe you, but—”
“There is no but. My honor is not in question here.”
“I wasn’t talking about your honor. I was talking about making love.”
“You brought up the possibility I would violate the bonds of our marriage…that is a matter of personal honor and one I do not take lightly.”
She was glad to hear that, but it didn’t answer the real problem gnawing at her. He was business associates with her father, how much did that have to do with this marriage proposal? She simply couldn’t convince herself that Sandor was suffering from shyness in admitting undying love. The man was far too confident…if he felt something for her, he would have said so. Yet, how did a woman ask if the man proposing was doing so as part of a business arrangement or if he wanted her personally? The blunt approach would probably be best.
Sandor wasn’t the type to respond well to subtlety.
“Do you want me…I mean for my own sake, not simply because I’m my father’s daughter?”
He frowned. “I would think that is obvious.”
Maybe it was. To him. But it wasn’t to her. When he kissed her, he made no effort to hide the barely leashed passion coursing through him, but he never acted on it. It confused the heck out of her.
“If it was obvious, I wouldn’t be asking.”
“I do want you.” His voice dropped an octave, to a sexual purr. “Very much.”
She licked her lips. “That’s…that’s good.”
“But for me, the commitment comes first…then we make love.”
She doubted he was a virgin, but apparently he ascribed to the standard some men still maintained about the women they intended to marry. “You’ve got some very old-fashioned views.”
“Yes. I am not ashamed this is so. I was born in a traditional Greek village. My grandfather’s beliefs may not find wholesale acceptance in me, but his influence is there.”
“Sandor,” she said, latching onto a topic less volatile to her emotions. “You never talk about your past. I don’t know if your dad is dead, if your parents are divorced or why it is that you never mention your father, but your grandfather pops up in conversation on occasion. I know he’s gone…at least I know that much,” she muttered under her breath, “but I don’t know why you and your mother live here in America. I don’t know so much about you.”
“Chief being the way I screw.”
“Sandor,” she hissed while her entire body blushed.
He glared. “I can be crude. Yes. It comes from the background you know so little about. But another thing comes from that past…the belief that a man does not take a virgin to his bed unless he is engaged to, but preferably married to her.”
“Is that something your grandfather taught you?”
“He drilled it into me every day of my life while he lived. Only a man totally lacking in honor would do so.”
“I see.” She had a feeling there was a lot more to this topic she planned to explore, but first she was going to set the record straight on something else. “However, between us…the point is moot because I’m not a virgin.”
“Of course you are.”
CHAPTER TWO
“AND WHAT HASmade you draw this brilliant conclusion?” she demanded in a tone her dad would have recognized with trepidation.
Ellie didn’t get mad easily, but once she was angry…she didn’t back down.