‘I do want you,’ she insisted. ‘I said I’d give you children, didn’t I?’
‘Sex is not a transaction, little maid. Or at least, it shouldn’t be. That is why I said you could have a year to make up your mind about whether you wanted to stay married to me. You should choose it because you want it.’
She frowned, not liking the overly patient tone in his voice. She was very inexperienced, it was true, but she wasn’t a child. ‘But I did want it. I was the one who suggested the whole marriage thing in the first place, remember?’
His head tilted slightly, his eyes glittering in the candlelight. ‘Yes. To pay off a debt I told you that you did not have to pay.’
‘I might nothaveto pay it but it’s a debt all the same,’ she insisted. ‘And anyway, you agreed. It wasn’t as if I held a gun to your head and demanded that you marry me or else.’
‘True,’ he said. ‘You did not.’ And oddly another one of those smiles turned his mouth, as if he was enjoying her responses, making something in her stomach flutter like a bird. It was genuine amusement, she thought, and it lightened his face. He would never be an easy man to be around, his presence was too intense, too overwhelming for that, but it lessened the claustrophobic weight of it. Made her almost want to smile with him.
‘What’s so funny?’ she asked, irritated with how hot her cheeks suddenly felt.
‘You are a surprising woman, Rose.’ He surveyed her from underneath ridiculously thick, silky black lashes. ‘I was not expecting that.’
Warmth shifted inside her, as if part of her was very pleased to be thought of as surprising by him. Again, unsettling. In fact, he was unsettling all round.
She shifted in her chair. ‘What were you expecting then? A doormat?’
‘No. I like a woman who speaks her own mind and isn’t afraid to match wills with me.’
Again, there was that flutter deep inside her, an excited little thrill. Part of her liked that very much indeed. Liked that a man as iron hard as he was thought she was strong enough to match wills with. And that he wanted her to speak her mind.
He might call you little maid, but he’s never treated you like one.
That was very true. Every time she’d been on cleaning duty in his room while he was Vasiliev’s guest, he’d never told her what to do the way some did. He’d never treated her like a piece of furniture. He’d been...aware of her.
And it had never made her feel afraid.
You liked it. He interested you.
Rose shifted in her seat again, discomforted. Men were dangerous, especially if you got their attention, and being interested in this one felt threatening somehow.
Yet shewasinterested, she couldn’t deny it. What with those horrific scars and being Vasiliev’s son-in-law, and the fact that he’d had a wife before her. And being a shadowy businessman that the press seemed to find frightening. Yet also the man who had freed her, who’d only reluctantly agreed to her marriage demand and who’d treated her with nothing but courtesy.
A puzzling man. A man of opposites and contrasts.
His expression was unreadable, those fascinating eyes of his glinting as he watched her.
Something about the way he was looking at her made her feel hot and restless. ‘So, what?’ With an effort she tried to keep her voice cool and not sound so impatient. ‘Will you help me?’
‘Get your friend away from Vasiliev, you mean? Yes, I will help.’ He toyed with his champagne glass, his thumb rubbing against the stem. ‘As it happens, I’ve already been gathering information on him. I will have to go through the proper legal channels in order to get Athena away from him permanently, so it might take some time. But she isn’t in any immediate physical danger.’
The flutter in Rose’s stomach fluttered even harder. So, he’d already been gathering information about Vasiliev. She hadn’t expected that. He seemed not to care about anything much, yet... That wasn’t quite true, was it?
‘I understand,’ she said. ‘And thank you.’ She tried not to give away the depth of her relief or how much that meant to her. ‘I can give you—’
‘No,’ he interrupted calmly. ‘You do not need to give me anything. I will help Athena and take down Vasiliev because it is the right thing to do. Nothing more and nothing less.’
She stared at him in surprise. Men, in her experience, were generally not concerned with doing the ‘right thing.’
He stared back, enigmatic as a brick wall. Then he said, apparently reading her mind, ‘What? Did you think I was like Vasiliev? I’ve already told you that I’m not.’
Her curiosity tightened. ‘So, if you’re not like him, then exactly what are you?’
He didn’t reply immediately, his gaze falling to his glass for a moment. ‘I was a soldier once, a long time ago,’ he said at last. ‘Then I became a businessman. Now I am building a legacy for someone who was concerned with injustice. Someone who was important to me.’
She had read that he’d been a soldier. A soldier in the French Foreign Legion.