“Far be it from me to stand in the way of such a perfect union ,” Leo murmured, running his hand along the front of his exquisite suit jacket as if it required smoothing. As if anything he wore would dare defy him and wrinkle!
Bethany’s frown deepened. That was too blatant, surely? “There is no need for sarcasm.”
“I must contact my attorneys,” Leo said, his dark eyes hard on hers. Bethany felt slightly dizzy as that familiar old fire licked through her, making her legs tremble beneath her and her breath tangle in her throat.
How unfair that he could still affect her so after everything that had happened! Yet there was a part of her that knew that it was safer to acknowledge the attraction than the grief that lurked beneath it.
“Your attorneys?” she echoed, knowing she had to say something. She knew she could not simply stare at him with that impossible yearning welling up within her for the man he could never be, the man he was not.
She wished suddenly that she had more experience. That she had not been so sheltered and out of her depth when she’d met Leo. As if she’d spent her youth hermetically sealed away, which of course, in many ways, she had. But how could she have done anything else? There had been no one but Bethany to nurse her father through his long, extended illness; no one but Bethany to administer what care she could until his eventual death.
But she had had to drop out of her second year of university to do it when she was barely nineteen. She had been twenty-three when she’d met Leo on that fateful trip to her father’s favorite place in the world, Hawaii. She had dutifully traveled with the small inheritance he’d left behind to spread his ashes in the sea, as he’d wished. How could she have been prepared for an honest-to-goodness prince?
She had hardly imagined such creatures existed outside of fiction. She had been utterly off-balance from the moment he’d looked at her with those deep, dark eyes that had seemed to brand her from the inside out. Maybe if she’d been more like other girls her age, if she’d been more mature, if she’d ventured out from the tiny little world her father’s needs had dictated she make her own …
But there was no use trying to change the past—and, anyway, Bethany could not begrudge the years she’d spent caring for her father. She could only move forward now, armed with the strength she had not possessed at twenty-three. She had been artless and unformed then, and Leo had flattened her. That would never happen again.
“Yes,” he said now, his gaze moving over her face as if he could see the very things she so desperately wished to keep hidden: her lies. Her bravado. That deep despair at what they’d made of their marriage. That tiny spark of hope she would give anything to extinguish, once and for all. “My attorneys must handle any divorce proceedings, of course. They will let me know what is involved in such a matter.” His smile was thin, yet still polite. Barely. “I have no experience with such things.”
Bethany was confused and wary. Was this really happening? Was he simply caving? Agreeing? She had not imagined such a thing could be possible. She had imagined he would fight, and fight dirty. Not because he wanted her, of course, but because he was not a man who had ever been left, and his pride would demand he fight. She was not certain what the hollow feeling that washed through her meant.
“Is this a trick?” she asked after a moment.
Leo’s brows lifted with pure, male arrogance. He looked every inch the scion of a noble bloodline that he was.
“A trick?” he repeated, as if he was unfamiliar with the term yet found it vaguely distasteful.
“You were opposed to my leaving you in the first place,” she pointed out stiffly. That was a vast understatement. “And you did not seem any more resigned to the idea of it tonight. How can I trust that you will really do this?”
He did not speak for a long moment, yet that simmering awareness between them seemed to reach boiling point. Once again, Bethany felt heat and a deep, encompassing panic wash over her. She thought he almost smiled then.
Instead, he reached over and took her hand in his impossibly warm, hard grasp.
Flames raced up her arm, and she felt her whole body tighten in reaction. She felt the ache of it, both physical and, worse, emotional. She wanted to yank her hand from his more than she wanted to draw her next breath, but she forced herself to stand still, to let him touch her, to pretend she was unmoved by the feel of his skin against hers.
Leo watched her for a moment then dropped his brooding gaze to her hand. His thumb moved back and forth over the backs of her fingers, sending sensation streaking through her. She felt herself melt for him, as she always had at even his slightest touch. She ached—and she hated him for it.