“Between painting and children, I’m washing up nonstop. I’d have hands like a scullery maid if not for your lotion. Have you thought of developing a children’s line?”
They spoke with the couple until the champagne was served. The toasts were mostly bland platitudes, but Leander thanked everyone for coming and set his arm around Ilona as he lifted his glass to her.
“Finally, to my beautiful fiancée. By agreeing to marry me, you’re giving me something I’ve wanted for a long time.” The words were exactly as he’d rehearsed them, but they didn’t come out with near as much irony as he had used to compose them.
The yacht must have hit some wash from a passing freighter at that moment. The deck seemed to shift beneath him as he watched her drop her lashes. Shy at being the focus of attention? Or aware that he had intended to be facetious and was stung by it?
“I mean it, glykiá mou.” His voice sank into his chest and he grew hot and prickly. “Thank you.”
Ilona didn’t know what to make of Leander’s toast. Of any of this.
She had sent him that medical report in a passive-aggressive huff, hurt and affronted. The last thing she had expected—the very last thing—was that he would make a joke about taking a pregnancy test himself.
It had been such an absurd remark, she’d been privately laughing about it all evening while resenting him for making it hard for her to hate him. He was the loveliest date which was annoying, always nearby without smothering or hovering. He checked on her drink and neither monopolized a conversation nor left it all to her. He knew how to get away from the boorish guests, too.
Andhe’d gotten the upper hand with Odessa! Ilona couldn’t help enjoying what a ruthless flex it was for him to neutralize Odessa’s influence by pressuring Mira’s husband into showing up, even if it meant the odious Mira was here.
Ilona couldn’t help admiring the strength of his muscled frame, either, when the yacht rocked beneath them and his arm firmed to steady her. She honestly felt light-headed for a moment and feared he was about to kiss her. She would dissolve again; she really would and couldn’t bear to do it in front of all these people.
Thankfully, Feodor was keeping to his efficient schedule and the loud bang of fireworks drew everyone outside.
The gasps and sighs of the crowd, the music and the bursts of sparkling color, barely made an impression on Ilona. She stood with her back pressed to Leander’s chest, her head resting in the hollow of his shoulder, her bottom brushing his hips and thighs. Her blood shot and fizzed with each shooting star then her heart exploded and her mind scattered.
It finally ended to great applause and the yacht pointed itself back to shore.
Leander’s warm hands rubbed her cool arms. “Are you cold?”
“I brought warm clothes for nightfall. I’ll go change.”
She excused herself, skin still sensitized by a touch that surely wasn’t meant to turn her on the way it did.
It was starting to hit her that this would be her life for the next three years. She would share a house with him and they would go to events and he would touch her shoulder to get her attention and her knees would go weak. How would she survive it?
The distress of her thoughts made her fingers clumsy. She couldn’t seem to get these crisscross laces to close her linen trousers and threw off her pullover, growing hot and agitated.
“Oh.” Leander walked in and firmly pressed the door shut behind him.
“What—?” She snatched up the pullover and hugged it across her naked breasts, keeping her other hand on her unlaced pants so they wouldn’t slide to the floor. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought you’d be finished changing. I need a clean shirt.” He removed his jacket to reveal the stain of red wine on his chest.
“Did you lose a duel?”
“One of our guests had too much to drink.” He began unbuttoning his shirt, gaze on the cuffs he was releasing. “If I were in a duel, I wouldn’t lose.”
“Says the man defeated by a glass of wine.”
“Touché.”
“Oof. I see what you did there. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“Yet I rarely am,” he said in a blithe tone while stepping into the closet.
She seized the opportunity to shrug on her pullover again. It had a wide neckline that didn’t allow for a bra. Its loose sleeves and drawstring cuffs got in the way as she hurried to work on the cords of her trouser fly. Why was looking chic always so inconvenient?
She finally managed it and set her bare foot on the bed so she could turn her pants cuff. She used her comb to measure the width, ensuring they were exactly the same.
“You don’t have to try so hard, you know.” He spoke from the door of the closet and his voice had shifted to a lower gear. He was closing the cuffs on a clean shirt that hung open, revealing his bare torso. He belonged on a romance novel cover, he was so muscled and well proportioned. She swallowed, gaze fixated on that intriguing pattern of chest hair that bisected his six-pack then disappeared into his boxers as he opened his fly and tucked his shirt.