And no amount of telling her otherwise had made any difference, so when she’d asked him what he wanted, he’d told her. And when she’d said she’d be his wife in order to pay him back, he’d said he’d wanted children, thinking that then she’d surely give up insisting on this payment nonsense.
But she hadn’t.
She clearly hadnotunderstood what she’d offered.
So perhaps that was why, in the end, he’d agreed. So he could show her.
Nothing at all to do with not being able to think about anything else but her in your bed.
He watched through the windows as Rose shifted on the sun lounger, burying her head deeper in her folded arms.
Yes, he’d admit to thinking that. Not that he’d touch her, or at least not until she decided to stay married to him—ifshe decided to stay married to him.
But in the meantime, he could deliver her a little lesson in what it meant to wildly promise things you didn’t understand to people you shouldn’t promise them to. And maybe he’d enjoy her company too. Naya wouldn’t begrudge him that, surely?
Not that he’d had time to think too deeply about it in the past three months since their marriage.
He’d been very busy, involved in some new tech development and then a contract negotiation with one of the smaller Baltic states.
But Rose was always at the back of his mind. A puzzle he kept turning over and over, unable to put it down.
He was never interested in people. He was a tactician involved in the business of protecting them, but only as an abstract concept. Yet he couldn’t deny that since he’d left her standing in that hotel room in Istanbul, having newly married her, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking of her.
He wasn’t sure why.
Perhaps it was how she had been the only woman to excite his lust in over a decade. Or perhaps it was how mysterious she was, how no one knew where she’d come from or even her real name. Or maybe it was more to do with how she hadn’t been afraid of him, even from the first moment they’d met. Even in that helicopter, full of wariness and suspicion, trepidation and apprehension, she’d met his gaze determinedly as she’d put her offer of marriage to him.
It was clear then that she had no idea what it meant to be your wife, and yet still you accepted.
Out beside the pool, Rose shifted yet again, the sunlight gleaming on her skin.
No, she didn’t know. That’s why he’d decided to give her a year of freedom for herself, while at the same time, she would spend two weeks every season to get to know him. And if at the end of a year, she did not want to remain married, he would annul the marriage.
Naya wouldn’t object to that.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and glanced at the screen, once more scrolling through the emails one of his assistants had sent him, providing him with all the info he needed about what his wife had been doing for the past three months.
She’d been living in Paris, in an apartment she’d found herself rather than the one he’d organised for her. She’d also found herself a job waiting tables at a local cafe, which she hadn’t needed to do since he’d provided enough money for her, and yet she’d insisted on anyway.
Strange when she was the one who’d asked for his help. She was apparently very set on doing things her own way according to the staff member he’d assigned to help her, and did not like to be told what to do. That, he could understand. She’d been a prisoner for so long, and some people would have been beaten down by it.
Not Rose.
She’d adapted very quickly to life outside the compound, learning French and English in rapid succession, as well as opening her own bank account. Apart from some initial set-up money, she hadn’t touched any of the funds he’d provided, preferring to live frugally off her own wages at the cafe.
Again, odd when she’d been the one to request the money.
It made him curious. It made him want to know more.
He’d made some initial enquiries to track down where she came from, but so far hadn’t had any luck. He’d assumed she was Russian, but maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she’d come from somewhere else.
He put his phone away and gazed at her through the windows, the breeze ruffling her hair that tumbled over her shoulders. He had no idea why she’d dyed it blue, but the afternoon sunlight caught gleams of brightness in among the dark blue strands, like a seam of gold at the bottom of the ocean.
Pretty.
Yes. And so was she.
His plan for this next week was simply to get her used to his presence, nothing more, no matter what his body wanted. Sex would happen when and if she decided she wanted to stay married to him, and not before.