“I told myself if I couldn’t marry Luiza, I wouldn’t marry at all.” He drained his drink and set it aside, turning to push his hands in his pockets. “Then I met you.”
And realized how useful she could be.
“I understand.” She fought to keep her brow from pulling.
“Do you? Because I don’t. It wasn’t a vow of celibacy. I’m not dead. I gave myself permission to have affairs. That ought to be enough. With every other woman it has been.”
A strand of something poignant thrummed near her heart. She tried to quell it for the sake of her sanity, trying not to read anything into what he was saying. In a lot of ways what he’d offered her was more than she’d imagined she’d ever find, so she shouldn’t be yearning so badly for more.
“I realize you have to look out for your country’s best interest, Ryzard. You’ve been very kind and supportive of me—”
“Oh, shut up, Tiffany. Looking out for my country’s best interest is how I’ve been rationalizing your presence in the presidential bed, but even that doesn’t work. Do you think I can use you in good conscience after Luiza died as a pawn? Hell, no. But allowing you to push her out of my heart would be an even greater betrayal.”
She could see the tortured struggle in him. He might never love her, not when to do so would mean accepting the debilitating guilt that accompanied it. Who could accept such a deep schism to their soul?
As she absorbed that reality, her breath burned in her lungs like dry smoke.
“But each time you talk of leaving for America, I start thinking about a length of chain about this long.” He showed her a space between his hands of two or three feet. “With a cuff here and here.” He pointed from his smartwatch to her wrist.
She couldn’t help a small smile.
“For such a sophisticated, educated man, you’re incredibly uncivilized. You know that, right?” She rubbed the goose bumps off her arms, trying to hide how primitive she was at her core, responding to his caveman talk like some kind of kinky submissive.
“Your parents have every right to be suspicious of me,” he allowed drily. “But it’s important to me that you know my intentions toward you are not dishonorable.”
That’s exactly what she had feared after overhearing her mother. It had gutted her. Meeting his gaze was really hard with that specter still haunting her.
“I don’t expect you to love me, Ryzard.” The words fractured her soul. “But I have to insist on honesty. If you’re really just with me because of my father, please say so and I’ll—”
“I can’t believe I’m going to say this,” he cut in impatiently, “but sometimes I wish to hell you’d had other lovers so you would appreciate what we have. I do.”
“Oh, well, let me just accommodate that right now.”
He grabbed her before she’d taken two steps toward the door.
“Gorilla! Brute! You’re hurting me,” she accused as she found herself bouncing over his shoulder toward the bedroom.
“Honesty, Tiffany,” he reminded in a scolding tone. “You just demanded it, and so do I. Lie to me and so help me, I’ll spank you. That is not a bluff.” He flopped her onto the bed and retreated to slam the bedroom door.
“You scare me,” she cried, sitting up. “Not like scared you’ll hurt me,” she protested with an outstretched hand, trying to forestall the outrage climbing in his expression. “The way you make me feel. I’m terrified you’ll stop wanting me. You saw what I was like before you came along. I don’t want to be that person again. I don’t know how to handle how important you are to me, or how horrible I’ll feel when this ends.”
The tense line of his shoulders eased. “I can’t imagine that happening.”
“But I don’t know how honorable my intentions are. I told you how I feel about living in the public eye. If it’s just an affair...”
She trailed off, distracted as he joined her, his big body crowding and overwhelming, sending her onto her back under him with the force of his personality, barely even touching her. She melted in supplication, slave to his authority and the tenderness in his eyes.
“This is more than an affair,” he insisted.
That didn’t allay any of her misgivings, but she wasn’t sure what she wanted him to say. She rather wished she had more experience with relationships herself, but from everything she’d observed, she doubted anyone was truly confident with whatever sorts of relationships they had. It came down to trust, and as much as she wanted to believe in Ryzard, she didn’t have much faith in herself.
She touched the pad of her fingertip to his lips, tracing the masculine shape that so entranced her.
“Where do we go from here?” she asked, meaning emotionally, but he took her literally.
“I have quite a few appearances. I would like you to accompany me. Will you?”
Her heart stalled, but refusing meant bringing The End forward to now, and she could already see it would be horribly painful. She wasn’t ready for that, so she said the only thing she could.
“Of course.”
CHAPTER TEN
DESPITE TIFFANY’S AGREEMENT, despite the unflagging passion between them, she grew less like the cheeky woman he’d come to know and more like the chilly mother he’d met in Zurich.
Of course he was pressing her inexorably into her mother’s role. He couldn’t help it. The opportunity was too ripe, the timing at hand, and she was damned good at it. She stepped forward with a gracious remark when needed and backed off the rest of the time. No matter what came up or when, she accepted the pull of his attention with equanimity. If she didn’t like it, no one could tell, not even him. When he asked, she assured him everything was “Fine.”
A sure sign that it wasn’t.
But neither of their schedules had room for the type of downtime that had brought them together in the first place. She’d been up for several hours two nights in a row trying to resolve a problem with her firm. Now he’d dragged her to Budapest for an Eastern European conference. A black-tie reception opened the event, and her best makeup couldn’t hide the exhaustion around her eyes.
Still she smiled, always ignoring startled reactions to her scars or simply moving past an awkward moment with a calm “Car crash.” Then she would distract with a compliment or question, her warm manner disguising the fact she maintained a discreet bubble of distance.
So why was she currently clasping two hands over a stranger’s? Her expression was uncharacteristically revealing, not the cool mask she usually wore at these events. The man was older than Ryzard, somewhere in his fifties, but not someone he recognized. Tiffany was sharing deep eye contact with him, and her profile was somber.
He excused himself and crossed over to them, possessive male hackles rising to attention, especially when they both stiffened at his approach and lowered their gazes.
“Ryzard, this is Stanley Griffin, minister of international trade in Canada and my late husband’s cousin. Well, cousin to my mother-in-law, Maude.”
Despite the legitimate reason for familiarity, he used the introduction to extricate Stanley’s hand from Tiffany’s grasp.
They briefly chatted about his country’s mission to, “Do what we did with the EU here in Eastern Europe.” Ryzard expressed his desire to participate, but first he needed recognition so if that message could be conveyed to Canada’s prime minister...?
Stanley left with a promise to do so, but made a point to ask Tiffany, “Please stay in touch.” Once again, Tiffany had proved her worth to him politically, but her coziness with the man rankled Ryzard for the rest of the evening.
“You seemed very familiar with that Canadian,” he said later when they were undressing in the hotel suite. He was tired of being away and wished they were home.
Home. Did she regard his country the way he did? She wasn’t happy here in Hungary, despite her expressed desire to see the country and her interest in this city’s history. He couldn’t be sure she’d been happy in any of the places they’d been recently.
“He was at my wedding. I didn’t remember him, to be honest, but he certainly remembered me. He started to tell me how much he loved it when Paulie had spent summers with their family, when the boys were young, and I thought we were both going to—” She clamped her lips together, then pressed a knuckle to her mouth, turning away.
Stricken by her edging toward breakdown, he moved to grasp her shoulders in bracing hands. “Shh. Don’t talk about him.”
She reacted with a violent twist away from his grip and glared up at him with eyes full of tears and betrayal. “Oh, that’s rich. Why can’t I talk about my husband? Luiza is right there every time we’re naked.” She poked two fingers into his chest.