no idea how she was so certain of this, only that she was. Nothing about Andres was docile. She was right, he wasn’t tame. Not in the least. And yet he was allowing himself to be collared and muzzled by his older brother. It made no sense.
“I told you already I spent a great many years doing nothing less than exactly what I wanted. In fact, I was doing that only last week. I have made mistakes,” he said, his tone uncompromising. “Mistakes I had hoped were healed by time, and circumstance that had nothing to do with conciliatory actions on my part. It turns out I was wrong.”
“Be specific,” she said. “Where I come from we don’t deal in this kind of circular conversation. Either we tell someone what we are thinking, or we don’t. There is no alluding to events and talking around the most important element of the truth.”
It was true, though she was rarely included in important conversations back in her homeland. Still, the exclusion was not ambiguous.
“You want to know what I did? Is that it?”
“If it answers the question of why you’re doing this, then yes. I feel like I have a right to know.”
“So be it, then.”
* * *
Andres felt strangely reluctant to tell Zara the truth. It was an oddity that she didn’t know already. Everyone in his country did. Anyone abroad who read tabloids while standing in line at the grocery store knew the sordid details of his past, and what had become of Kairos’s first engagement.
And it was that fact that made him so reluctant to speak of it.
She didn’t look at him and see the playboy prince. Didn’t look at him and see the black sheep. She didn’t like him, but that was based entirely on the interactions they’d had, not on any rumor or headline.
Strange that he found that refreshing, but he did.
Strange that he should care at all what she thought. But he did. He had made a practice of shedding outside opinion from an early age. When he’d first come back from the shadows and into the public eye as a teenager.
“I get the feeling you don’t read a lot of gossip news.”
“No,” she said.
He sat down in the chair opposite her, affecting a casual posture. He was a professional at pretending not to care, particularly at moments when he cared quite a bit. “Then you won’t have read about my escapades. They’re legendary. There isn’t a woman I can’t seduce. No supermodel with sex on her mind I’ve ever refused. I always leave them wanting more, as I rarely stay with a woman for more than one night. I have no shame. No morals to speak of whatsoever.”
He watched as the color in her cheeks rose, turning a dark pink that matched the embroidery on her dress. “Is that so?” Her voice was husky, her eyes focused somewhere on the wall behind him. He couldn’t work her out. Was she simply uncomfortable in his presence, angry and biding her time, or did she feel the insistent tug of attraction just as he did?
He had been with a great many women. And while he wasn’t particularly proud of that behavior when he stood back and took stock of it, it could not be denied. With his vast experience it made no sense that he would be tempted by this woman. She was not sophisticated. She was beautiful, but a great many women were beautiful. Beautiful without being too sharp, too fearsome and too wild.
She was like the wind, bottled up and stitched into a gown. He had to wonder if she had allowed for herself to be harnessed and was simply waiting for the right moment to free herself again.
“Yes. The media always said I had no shame. I imagine that I must have some, though I have not felt any in quite some time. It’s very liberating,” he said, not sure why he was adding this to the conversation, “to feel no embarrassment. To feel no compunction about simply acting on your impulses because you have accepted that you are capable of nothing else. Still, I didn’t imagine that I was absent of shame entirely. That isn’t true of anyone except for sociopaths. And I never thought that I was a sociopath. Then my brother and I, and his fiancée, Francesca, flew to Monte Carlo for a bit of fun and games. Kairos, being Kairos, was having fun in a very dignified manner. Largely he was meeting with world leaders in a more casual environment. I was there to have real fun. And so, it turned out, was Francesca. While Kairos was out I threw a party in my suite. I invited every beautiful woman I could find, every man interested in engaging in a bit of gambling and debauchery. There was a lot of alcohol, as there invariably is at these things. It turns out, the right amount of alcohol is all it takes for me to lose my last vestiges of shame. It was at this party that I proved the media right.”
“What did you do?” Her question, confused, mystified, enhanced by those wide dark eyes, shamed him in a way nothing else ever had. She truly couldn’t guess. Couldn’t even fathom the betrayal he was about to uncover for her.
Yes, if she was going to be his wife, it was best she understood now. Just who he was. Just what he was.
What your parents always knew you were.
“I screwed my brother’s fiancée. I wouldn’t even have remembered if it had not been for videos of the event. Not only did I humiliate my brother, but I made both Francesca and myself porn stars. That did not go over well with her family, if you were wondering. Nor did it go over well with mine.”
Those wide eyes now registered shock, horror. He was torn between the disappointment of watching her understand, of seeing her accept the reality of what he was, and a strange fascination that he could still shock someone. That she hadn’t somehow sensed upon their first meeting that he was flawed in a very real and insurmountable way. In a way he had fully embraced. He was not a man capable of doing things by halves. And since he could not be good, then he had purposed to be debauched to his very core.
He had a feeling that if he tried to explain that to Zara she would look at him as though he had grown another head. He was struck just then at how different their lives had been. He lived in a different world. The moment he’d gained control of his life, he’d made it exactly what he’d wanted. One filled with parties, as much human contact as he wanted. A different woman every night, helping to fill the void that might have been tempted to widen inside him if he allowed it.
She had lived a much more solitary existence. While his had been cluttered with noise. As much as he could possibly surround himself with.
They might as well have been from other planets entirely.
“Now,” he said, not seeing the point in continuing the discussion. “You will tell me something about yourself.”
She tilted her chin up, her expression proud. “The fact that I witnessed my family’s death isn’t enough information for you?”
Something uncomfortable, heavy, shifted in his chest. “You don’t want to marry me,” he said.
“Of course not.”
“Why not?”
“Aside from the fact that you’re a stranger, you just confessed to me that you betrayed your brother. You... You just told me you were the most faithless man on the planet, and now you’re seriously asking me why I don’t want to marry you?”
“You said yourself you had no plans to marry. Don’t tell me now that you had fantasies of a white picket fence and a husband who only had eyes for you. Our marriage could be whatever you want it to be, but you haven’t even asked me what my designs on you are. You haven’t asked me what my goal is for our union, haven’t given any input on how you would like things to be conducted. You simply don’t want to marry me. Which makes me think you must have a goal apart from me.”
She looked away, her jaw set, stubborn.
“Answer me, feral creature, or I will make good on my earlier threat.”
“Listen to you,” she said, her head whipping around, her lip contorted into a sneer, “the man who just professed to being able to seduce any woman is threatening me with his body.”