She was terribly afraid it was pure, undiluted anticipation.
Another betrayal in a day chock full of them.
When his knock came on her front door—a hard, commanding rap—her stomach fluttered about as if it was beset by butterflies and she hated herself. Fully. But she crossed the floor to let him in anyway.
She wrenched open the door, prepared to be icily controlled and cuttingly polite, and caught her breath.
Because she was never prepared.
Pascal stood there, in profile as he stared off toward the lit-up abbey in the darkness. The light from inside the cottage spilled over him, making a meal out of his strong nose and sensual lips. Even his scars seemed to enhance his appeal, silvery across his jaw, then disappearing beneath the collar of the coat he wore.
He took his time turning his head to look at her, and when his eyes met hers, the world began to burn.
Her first and foremost.
“I have raced to your side on command,” he said, his voice low and laced with too many dark things she did not wish to understand. Not when she could feel them all, each individual thread and threat, winding around and around inside her. “Never let it be said that I cannot take an order,cara. Like a dog.”
Cecilia ignored the way that wound its way down her spine, settling worryingly low in her belly with a pulse she wanted to call pain. But it wasn’t pain.
It most certainly wasn’t pain.
She forced herself to turn her back on him, then led him into the room as if he was as threatening to her as the tottery old priest—even when every alarm inside her shouted that it was exactly the wrong thing to do. That she should never turn her back on a predator like him, no matter how many too-hot memories she had of a time she’d been pretending she’d forgotten.
But she did it, and though her neck prickled, Pascal did not leap upon her with his fangs bared, or any such superstitious nonsense.Of course he didn’t,she told herself sternly. She waved him to the sofa before the fire, with its newly plumped pillows and a throw folded just so along the back to hide the stains from small, sticky hands. Then she took her favorite chair again, stuck as it was at a convenient angle to the sofa that allowed her to be close yet not in reach.
“No offer of a drink?” he asked as he shrugged out of his heavy coat and tossed it beside him on the sofa. And then he sat, managing to overwhelm the small sofa with the sheer magnitude of his oversize frame and thoseshoulders. Cecilia somehow doubted she would ever look at that sofa quite the same way again. “Noaperitivosto help us pretend we’re civilized?”
“This isn’t a social call.”
“Not even a few olives. I feel like a savage.”
“That is between you and whatever passes for your god, Pascal,” she said tightly.
She regretted it the moment she spoke. And then with far more fervor when his stark mouth moved into something far too sharp to be a smile.
“Incivility does not suit you, Cecilia.”
“I brought you over here to discuss introducing you to Dante,” she said, reminding herself that she needed to stay cool, controlled. No matter how his presence here seemed to suck up all the air in the main room, making it nearly impossible to breathe. “But the more you play little games, the more I second-guess myself on that score.”
The hint of amusement on his face was extinguished as surely as if it had never been there, and she detested the fact that she couldfeelit. As if he was doing ittoher. And that terrible pang of something like panic, urging her to do whatever she could to make it come back.
No,she ordered herself.This is not about placating him. This is about choosing between right and wrong.
But he was looking at her as if she was the enemy. “I suggest that you proceed with caution. Do you truly wish to set up a scenario in which we use our child as a bargaining chip between us?”
Cecilia blinked. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I can’t pretend to know what you have been thinking about while you made me sit in that clinic and relive the worst time of my life,” he said in the same dark tone, his gaze so hard on hers that she was surprised her skin didn’t open beneath the onslaught. “Revenge, I assume. But in between amusing memories of my accident and what it took to survive it, I have been entertaining myself with tales from the worst divorces.”
Once again she hadn’t seen him coming. A sensation she did not enjoy. “Divorces? What do divorces have to do with our situation?” She tilted her head to one side. “Or is that what passes for your usual leisure reading material?”
“I was studying custody battles,” he supplied, and he settled back against the couch. Another man might have looked idle. Pascal did not. “The nastier, the better. And do you know who suffers the most in such scenarios? Not the battling parents.”
It was the second time today that someone else had obliquely rebuked her for her selfishness, and Cecilia found it didn’t sit well. She was far too flushed. And she wanted to throw the lamp beside her at his head for daring to lectureheron parenting, even in a roundabout way.
But she had spent most of her life learning discipline of one sort or another, so she kept herself still.
“You don’t think we should use Dante as a bargaining chip, and I agree, of course,” she said when she could be certain the lamp would remain where it was. “Perhaps you could also stop trying to use him to manipulate my emotions.”