“And where do you intend to go?” he asked quietly, softly, not daring himself to move closer. He knew, somehow, that putting his hands on her would ruin them both and expose too much.
“Not that it’s any of your business,” she said, her gaze direct and challenging, searing into him. “But I’ve met someone else.”
CHAPTER TWO
THE room seemed to drop away. All Bethany could see was the arrested look in his eyes that narrowed as he gazed at her. He did not move, yet she felt clenched in a kind of tight fist that held only the two of them, and that simmering tension that sparked and surged between them.
Had she really said that? Had she truly dared to say something like that to this man? To her husband?
How much worse would it be, she wondered in a panic, if it was actually true? She found she was holding her breath.
For a long, impossible moment Leo only stared at her, but she could feel the beat of his fury—and her own heart—like a wild drum. He looked almost murderous for a moment—or perhaps she was succumbing to hysteria. Then he shifted, and Bethany could breathe again.
“And who is the lucky man?” Leo asked in a lethally soft voice. When she only stared at him, afraid that her slightest movement might act as a red flag before a bull, his head tilted slightly to the left, though he did not lift his dark eyes from hers. “Your lover?”
Bethany somehow kept herself from shivering. It was the way he’d said that word. It seemed to skate over her skin, dangerous and deadly. She already regretted the lie. She knew she had only said it to hit at him, to hurt him in some small way—to get inside that iron control of his and make him as uncertain and unsettled as she always felt in his presence. To show him that she was deadly serious about divorcing him. Why had she sunk to his level?
But then she remembered who she was dealing with. Leo would say anything—do anything—to get what he wanted. She must be as ruthless as he was; if he had taught her nothing else, he had taught her that.
“We met at university while I finished my degree,” she said carefully, searching his hard features for some sign of what might happen next, or some hint of the anger she suspected lurked just out of sight beneath those cold eyes.
She reminded herself that the point was to end this tragedy of a marriage once and for all. Why should she feel as if she should go easy, as if she should protect Leo in some way? When had he ever protected her—from anything?
“He is everything I want in a man,” she said boldly. Surely some day she would meet someone who fit that bill? Surely she deserved that much? “He is considerate. Communicative. As interested in my life as in his own.”
Unlike Leo, who had abandoned his young wife entirely the moment they’d reached Italy, claiming his business concerns were far more pressing. Unlike Leo, who had closed himself off completely and had been coldly dismissive, when Bethany had not been able to understand why the man who had once adored her in every possible way had disappeared. Unlike Leo, who had thrown around words like ‘responsibility’ and ‘duty’ but had only meant that Bethany should follow his orders without question.
Unlike Leo, who had used the powerful sexual chemistry between them like a weapon, keeping her addicted, desperate and yet so very lonely for far longer than she should have been.
Something flared in the depths of his dark gaze then, something that shimmered through her, arrowing straight to her core, coiling tight and hot inside of her. It was as if he knew exactly what she was remembering and was remembering it too. Their bodies twined together, their skin slick and warm, their mouths fused—and Leo thrusting deep inside her again and again.
She took a ragged breath, jerked her gaze away from his and tried to calm her thudding heart. Those memories had no place here, now. There was no point to them. Leo had not destroyed her, as he’d seemed so bent on doing. She had survived. She had left him, and all that remained was this small legal matter. She would have spoken only to his staff about it and avoided this meeting, had they not insisted that the principe would wish to deal with this, with her, personally.
“He sounds like quite the paragon,” Leo replied after a long moment, much too calmly. He raised his dark brows slightly when she frowned at him.
“He is,” Bethany said firmly, wondering why she felt so unbalanced, as if she was being childish somehow—instead of using the only weapon she could think of that might actually do more than bounce off of him. Perhaps it was simply that being near Leo now made her feel as she had felt when she’d been with him: so very young and silly. Naïve and foolish.