“What is there in our past relationship or even the present one for me to trust, Konstantin?”
“I broke up with you for the sake of my family and a promise I had made. Doesn’t that tell you that at the very least, I keep my promises?”
She wasn’t as impressed as he clearly expected her to be. In fact, she barely refrained from rolling her eyes. “You signed a contract, Konstantin. I never doubted how important business was to you.” She just hadn’t realized that marriage fell under that umbrella for him.
Even after he’d told her about the contract, part of Emma simply hadn’t believed he ever planned to follow through on it. Not with the way he treated her. Not with the fact he’d signed it several years before they’d met and had never even dated the woman named in it, Lady Nataliya Shevchenko.
“Which was a commitment I made on behalf of my family and myself.”
“It was a draconian agreement,” Emma condemned.
Konstantin laughed, though there was little humor in the sound. “That is what Jenna says.”
Tension stiffened Emma’s spine. “Who is Jenna?”
“Nataliya’s best friend.”
“Is she your girlfriend?”
“No, of course not. I do not do girlfriends.” He pinned her with a dark brown gaze. “You were the single exception.”
That might have meant something if he hadn’t dumped her. “Latest sex partner, then.”
“No. I think my youngest brother would gut me if I made a play for Jenna. Not that I see her giving him the time of day, but that is not the point.” Konstantin smiled, inviting her to share the joke.
Emma was all out of humor at the moment. Finding out he had a son might be every bit as easy for Konstantin as he was making it out to be, but Emma’s entire life was changing.
Again.
Because of this man. Again.
The truth was, they’d veered completely off topic and it was her fault. “I believe the point you were trying to make is that since you keep promises to your family, I should trust you to keep any promises you make to me.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not sure if it has escaped your notice, but first, that was a business contract, even if family was involved. And two, I am not your family and you betrayed me pretty spectacularly in the past.”
“How did I betray you?” he asked, like he really didn’t know.
“You dumped me, but that wasn’t enough for you. You evicted me completely from your life so I could not even reach you. You allowed your crazy-pants sister-in-law to have a TRO taken out on your behalf that made my life that was already imploding even worse. You let her threaten me and my role in my unborn child’s life.”
“I did not know about any of those things!”
“But if you had not cut me from your life with such precision, you would have. Now you want me to believe that if you had known, you would never have let any of that happen. It’s a reach, Konstantin.”
“I had no choice.”
“Did you even try? Did you go to your father or your brother and say, hey, can we renegotiate that medieval contract so I can stay with this woman I fancy?” Emma didn’t use the word love because he never had.
“You know I did not. You make it sound easy, but it would not have been. Nikolai took over his responsibilities as king decades before he should have had to. I could do no less than what was required of me for the sake of our country and my family.”
“Which meant what? You had to marry a woman you did not love?”
“Love did not come into it.”
“No, it didn’t. Not for you anyway.” He had never even come close to loving her. She saw that now, but she’d loved him. So much, she’d grieved his loss even after she thought he’d taken the TRO out against her.
“I did not love you,” he acknowledged. “But I was obsessed by you. When I said I had no choice, I wasn’t just talking about the contract.”