"So now I'm stupid."
"Don't twist things around."
"I'm trying to untwist them." She leaned forward to touch the box, still open on the coffee table. "You haven't seen Seraphina's dowry. Aren't you curious?"
"It's nothing to do with me." But he looked down, saw the glint of gold, of silver, of glossy beads. "Not a hell of a lot, considering."
"You're wrong, it's quite a bit, considering." Her gaze lifted to his again. "Quite a bit. Why did you go back down for it?"
"I told you I would."
"A man of your word," she murmured. "I was fuzzy at the time, but things are clearer now. I remember lying there watching you climb up that rock wall. Clinging like a lizard. Your hands bleeding, slipping when the wall would give way. You could have been killed."
"I guess I should have just left you there."
"You couldn't have done that. You'd have gone down for anyone. That's who you are. And you went back, for this." She stroked the lid of the box. "Because I asked you."
"You're making it bigger than it was."
"You brought me something I've looked for my entire life." Her eyes, swimming with emotion, stayed on his. "I can't make that bigger than it is. How many times did you climb up, climb down, for me, Michael?" When he said nothing, only turned away to pace again, she sighed. "It makes you uncomfortable—gratitude, admiration, love."
"You're not in love with me."
"Don't tell me what I feel."
Because her voice had sharpened, he glanced back warily. If she started throwing things again, he doubted he had the energy to dodge.
"Don't you dare to tell me what I feel. You're entitled not to feel the same way, entitled not to want me to love you, but you're not entitled to tell me what I feel."
"Then you are stupid," he exploded. "You don't even know who I am. I killed for money."
She waited a beat, then rose and walked over to pour herself a glass of mineral water. "You're referring to when you were a mercenary."
"It doesn't matter what title you put on it. I killed, I got paid for it."
"I don't suppose you believed in the cause you were fighting for."
He opened his mouth, shut it. Wasn't she hearing him? "It doesn't matter what I believed or didn't. I killed for profit, I've spent the night in a cell, I've slept with women I didn't know."
Calmly, she sipped. "Are you apologizing, Michael, or bragging?"
"Christ Almighty, don't pull that snotty lady-of-the-house routine on me. I've done things you can't even imagine in this rarefied world you live in."
She drank. "Rarefied, is it?" she murmured. "As compared to the reality you live in. Michael Fury, you're a snob."
"Jesus Christ."
"You are. As you see it, I'm above desperation or needs or sins because I come from money and maintain a certain social status. I'm not supposed to understand a man like you, much less care for him. Is that right?''
"Yeah." He ached everywhere. "That about sums it up."
"Let me tell you what I see, Michael. I see someone who has done what he had to do to survive. And I understand that very well, even living in my pathetic, rarefied world."
"I didn't mean—"
"Someone who didn't give up, no matter what got in the way," she interrupted, staring him down. "I see someone who decided to take a new direction in his life and is making it work. He has ambition, decency, and courage. And I see a man who can still grieve over a child he never had a chance to know."
She was making him into something he wasn't, and she was scaring the life out of him. "I'm not what you're looking for."