To be near him.
To hear his voice.
Would she ever be brave enough to admit that she loved him?
Well, she didn’t find out, because once again she had made the mistake of thinking she could anticipate his reaction.
Lonely—the catch in her voice, all his internal debate, all his endless mental pro and con lists suddenly meant nothing, because he could see himself losing her. As he imagined her walking out of the door, out of his life, the knot in his stomach was fear. He called himself all the insults in his vocabulary, which was extensive, and still they didn’t begin to describe what an utter fool he’d been.
His first mistake had been thinking he could take emotions out of marriage; on paper it had equalled no tensions. He had wanted his life to resemble the clear, uncluttered lines of his desk—neat rows, square edges, controlled, no mess—and it could. It had been, but as he looked into Mari’s stormy, beautiful face, he made a life-changing discovery—he no longer wanted it to.
Love— He had avoided even thinking the word. Love was what had changed everything, had changed him.
He didn’t want a suitable bride, someone who said the right things and agreed with everything he said. He wanted Mari. Not the Mari that said what she thought he wanted to hear, but the one who blurted out the first thing that came into her head and argued the hind leg off a donkey just for the hell of it—he wanted his Mari back!
‘You are totally wrong.’
Hanging on the banister, she took two steps up then, unable to stop herself, one down, but she didn’t lower her wary guard as she struggled to read beyond the cool detachment of his manner, to read the expression in his deep-set eyes.
‘I am?’
‘About me and us... Your position is...’ He stopped, his dark brows twitching into a straight line as he framed his suspicious question. ‘Has anyone here treated you with less than respect?’
The negative shake of her head lessened the explosive quality of his hard stare; the nerve in the hollow of his clenched cheek stopped jumping.
‘We should stay married.’
‘I know, because of the baby,’ she said dully.
‘Because you are you and I am...’ He sucked in a deep breath, then let it out slowly before saying in a voice that vibrated with emotion, ‘Lonely.’
Mari watched in disbelief as, having dropped the unexploded conversational bomb at her feet, he turned to go back into the study, pausing to call casually over his shoulder, ‘Join me here for a drink when you’re ready—tonic, lime and lots of ice?’
The door closed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WHEN THE FEELING returned to her paralysed limbs, Mari flew on an adrenaline rush high up the stairs two at a time, her heart thumping against her rib cage.
By the time she reached the bedroom where her clothes were laid out, ready, she had come back down to earth. He had waited to say this until after he knew about the baby—was that significant?
And after all, what had he said— Lonely...? It might just mean he was at a loose end.
Was she seeing and hearing what she wanted to?
Fingers pressed to her temple, she closed her eyes and willed the inner dialogue to stop before her head exploded, which was not a good look for the perfect hostess.
Her eyes shot wide as she pushed up the cuff of her sweater to see the time.
‘Oh, God!’
She stripped off her clothes as she walked across the room. She entered the bathroom, where she proceeded to chuck half a bottle of some expensive bath oil in the bathtub and turned on the taps full. While the tub filled she piled her hair on top of her head, skewering in the pins carelessly before lowering herself into the water.
By the time she had stepped into the black number that managed to be both classy and extremely sexy, Mari had managed to achieve a degree of composure, even if it was skin-deep. Underneath she was so wound up she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to wait for him to explain what the hell he had meant. She had a horrible feeling that the moment she saw him she was going to blurt out something terminally stupid like ‘I love you!’
Well, he’d either run, laugh in her face or...anything was better than this terrible uncertainty.
* * *
Seb took the box out of his pocket. It should have been a ring, he thought, snapping it open to glance down at the string of sapphires that had caught his eye as he passed a shop. He could see them around her lovely neck, the colour a tribute to her eyes. He slid the box back into his pocket and pushed his head into the big wing-back chair that faced the fireplace.
Some inner sixth sense made him glance up just as a figure appeared outside the open French doors. The overalls the man was wearing were emblazoned with the name of the catering company who had been brought in to bolster his own kitchen staff.