“I recall making any number of demands that you chose to ignore: that you remained in Italy, as tradition required. That you refrained from casting shame on my family’s name with your behavior. That you honored your vows.”
“I will not fight with you,” she told him, her blue eyes flashing and her chin rising. She made a dismissive gesture with one hand, the one that should have worn his ring yet was offensively bare. He clamped down on the surge of temper. “You can choose to revise history however you like, but I am finished arguing about it.”
“Then we are in perfect agreement,” he bit out, keeping his voice low and for her ears alone despite the fierce kick of his temper—and that hollow place beneath it that he refused to acknowledge. “I have not gained an appreciation for public scenes since we last met, Bethany. If it is your plan to embarrass me further tonight, I suggest you rethink it. I do not think this will end the way you wish it to end.”
“There is no need for a scene,” she said at once. “Public or otherwise.” She shrugged, drawing attention to her delicate neck, and reminding him of the kisses he’d once pressed there and the sweet, addictive taste of her skin. But it was as if that was from another life. “I only want to be divorced from you. Finally.”
“Because it has been such a hardship for you to stay married to me?” he asked, his voice cutting and sarcastic. “How you must struggle.”
He was not a man who believed in impassioned displays—particularly in public, where he was forever being held up against the example of his family’s long legacy—but this woman had always provoked him like no other. Tonight her eyes were too blue, her mouth set in too firm a line. It clawed at him.
“I understand how it must cut at you,” he continued coldly. “To live in such unearned luxury. To have all the benefits of my name and protection with none of the attendant responsibilities.”
“You will be pleased to learn that I no longer want them, then,” she said. She raised her brows at him in direct challenge, but he was caught by the flash of vulnerability he saw move across her face. Bethany—vulnerable? That was not a word he’d ever use to describe her. Wild. Uncontrollable. Rebellious. But never defenseless, wounded. Never.
Impatiently, Leo shoved the odd turn of thought aside. The last thing in the world he needed now was to become intrigued anew by his wife. He had yet to recover from the initial disaster that had been his first, ruinous fascination with this woman. Look where it had led them both.
“Do you not?” he asked, his voice harsh, directed as much at his errant thoughts as at her. “How can you be certain when you have treated both with such disrespect?”
“I want a divorce,” she said again with a quiet strength. “This is the end, Leo. I’m moving on with my life.”
“Are you?” he asked, his tone dangerous. She either did not hear it or did not care. “How so?”
“I am moving out of that house,” she said at once, a wild fire he could not entirely comprehend raging in her sky-blue eyes. “I hate it. I never wanted to live there in the first place.”
“You are my wife.” His voice cracked like a whip, though he knew the words had long held no meaning for her, no matter that they still moved through him like blood, like need. “Whether you choose to acknowledge it or not. Just because you have turned your back on the vows you made, does not mean that I have. I told you I would protect you and I meant it, even if it is from your own folly and stubborn recklessness.”
“I’m sure you think that makes you some kind of hero,” she threw at him in a falsely polite tone that he knew was for the benefit of the crowd around them. Yet he could see the real Bethany burn bright in her eyes and the flush on her neck. “But I never thought anyone was likely to kidnap me in the first place.” She let out a short, hollow laugh. “Believe me, I do not advertise our connection.”
“And yet it exists.” His voice brooked no argument; it could have melted steel. “And because of it, you are a target.”
“I won’t be for much longer,” she said, her foolhardy determination showing in that stubborn set to her jaw and the fire in her eyes. He almost admired it. Almost. “And you’ll find that I’ve never touched any of the money in that account of yours, either. I’m going to walk out of this marriage exactly as I walked into it.”
“And where do you intend to go?” he asked quietly, softly, not daring himself to move closer. He knew, somehow, that putting his hands on her would ruin them both and expose too much.
“Not that it’s any of your business,” she said, her gaze direct and challenging, searing into him. “But I’ve met someone else.”
CHAPTER TWO
THE room seemed to drop away. All Bethany could see was the arrested look in his eyes that narrowed as he gazed at her. He did not move, yet she felt clenched in a kind of tight fist that held only the two of them, and that simmering tension that sparked and surged between them.
Had she really said that? Had she truly dared to say something like that to this man? To her husband?
How much worse would it be, she wondered in a panic, if it was actually true? She found she was holding her breath.
For a long, impossible moment Leo only stared at her, but she could feel the beat of his fury—and her own heart—like a wild drum. He looked almost murderous for a moment—or perhaps she was succumbing to hysteria. Then he shifted, and Bethany could breathe again.
“And who is the lucky man?” Leo asked in a lethally soft voice. When she only stared at him, afraid that her slightest movement might act as a red flag before a bull, his head tilted slightly to the left, though he did not lift his dark eyes from hers. “Your lover?”
Bethany somehow kept herself from shivering. It was the way he’d said that word. It seemed to skate over her skin, dangerous and deadly. She already regretted the lie. She knew she had only said it to hit at him, to hurt him in some small way—to get inside that iron control of his and make him as uncertain and unsettled as she always felt in his presence. To show him that she was deadly serious about divorcing him. Why had she sunk to his level?
But then she remembered who she was dealing with. Leo would say anything—do anything—to get what he wanted. She must be as ruthless as he was; if he had taught her nothing else, he had taught her that.
“We met at university while I finished my degree,” she said carefully, searching his hard features for some sign of what might happen next, or some hint of the anger she suspected lurked just out of sight beneath those cold eyes.
She reminded herself that the point was to end this tragedy of a marriage once and for all. Why should she feel as if she should go easy, as if she should protect Leo in some way? When had he ever protected her—from anything?
“He is everything I want in a man,” she said boldly. Surely some day she would meet someone who fit that bill? Surely she deserved that much? “He is considerate. Communicative. As interested in my life as in his own.”
Unlike Leo, who had abandoned his young wife entirely the moment they’d reached Italy, claiming his business concerns were far more pressing. Unlike Leo, who had closed himself off completely and had been coldly dismissive, when Bethany had not been able to understand why the man who had once adored her in every possible way had disappeared. Unlike Leo, who had thrown around words like ‘responsibility’ and ‘duty’ but had only meant that Bethany should follow his orders without question.
Unlike Leo, who had used the powerful sexual chemistry between them like a weapon, keeping her addicted, desperate and yet so very lonely for far longer than she should have been.
Something flared in the depths of his dark gaze then, something that shimmered through her, arrowing straight to her core, coiling tight and hot inside of her. It was as if he knew exactly what she was remembering and was remembering it too. Their bodies twined together, their skin slick and warm, their mouths fused—and