she asked, flabbergasted at the casual way he was happy to dismiss their marriage and divorce as just something a little inconvenient—something that could be swept aside in the future as though it had never happened.
Whether they were married for twelve months or twelve minutes, and whether she liked him or not, he would leave an impression. She would not be the same person she had been before.
‘Let’s leave that thorny subject for another day,’ Theo told her wryly. ‘I’ll let you know when we’ll be leaving for the States...’
‘I didn’t say that I was coming with you.’
‘Are you going to argue with each and every small thing until we finally part company and go our separate ways? Because if that’s your intention it’s going to be a very long twelve months.’
‘I’m not being argumentative.’ She glared at him mutinously and in return he raised his eyebrows in cynical disagreement. ‘But if I’m obliged to fall in line and never complain then I think it’s only fair that you fall in line a bit as well.’
‘Are we about to have another bracing conversation about the “separate bedrooms post-marriage” clause?’
‘I’d like you to sample how I live,’ Alexa continued doggedly. ‘You want me to go to all sorts of stupid fancy social dos—’
‘Don’t write them all off. You might find that you actually enjoy some...’
Alexa chose to ignore that interruption. ‘The least you could do is try and understand what I’ll be sacrificing.’
Theo raised his eyebrows and began standing up. He was at a loss to understand what she was talking about. Of course the ‘pause’ button would have to be pressed on her fairy-tale love and perfect soulmate, but she was young. Plenty of time for her to find that once their committed spell together was at an end.
Frankly, he could tell her that airy-fairy dreams were a certain recipe for disappointment—but what would be the point of that? She would find out soon enough. She was an enduring romantic, while he...he had about as much faith or interest in romance as a turkey had in signing up for centrepiece duties next to the carving knife on Christmas Day.
She had asked him why he was cynical. He could have told her that he’d had a close-up view of just the sort of pain love could bring—the sort of pain that no one in their right mind would want inflicted on them.
It tended to turn a guy off marriage. Although, in fairness, he knew the day would come when marriage would make sense, and when that day came he anticipated something very much like what he now had—but without the complication of a partner in search of the impossible. Emotions would not take over, leaving him vulnerable to going through what his father had gone through.
Of course he was a very different man from his father. Stefano had met his wife when they had both been young. They had fallen in love when they had both been green around the ears. Theo was anything but green around the ears. The opposite. And he prided himself on having the sort of formidable control that would never see him prey to anything he didn’t want to feel.
An arranged marriage with the right woman—a woman who wasn’t looking for anything that wasn’t on the table—would be the kind of marriage he would eventually subscribe to. It made sense.
‘Do tell me what that would be. What great “sacrifices” will you be making? Tell me. I’m all ears...’
They were outside now, walking in the balmy sun. He had a case load of documents to read before his trip to New York, but he didn’t think that a few minutes prolonging their conversation would hurt.
‘I can show you.’
She hailed a cab and leant forward to give the taxi driver an address. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that time was money, but he desisted. Why provide her with another excuse to stage an argument? He had never met a woman as stubborn and as mulish as she was, and those were traits he had no time for. His life was stressful enough, without having a woman digging her heels in and finding objections to every single thing he said or suggested.
‘We’re here.’
‘Here? Where?’ The designer shops and smart cafés had been left behind, to be replaced with dingy shop fronts and fast food outlets. It was the sort of place Theo had only ever passed with the windows of his chauffeur-driven car rolled up.
‘The shelter where I volunteer,’ Alexa told him.
She pointed to a building next to a pawn shop. A grim concrete block fronted by a no-nonsense black door that would have deterred anyone but the most foolhardy.
‘I want you to come in and see it—meet some of the other volunteers I work with.’ She sprang out of the car, only realising that he hadn’t followed when she had slammed the door behind her, at which point she reopened her door and peered inside at him.
‘You’re not scared, are you?’ She smirked, because for the first time since she had boarded the rollercoaster ride that had become her life she felt as if she had the upper hand. ‘I promise I won’t let anything happen to you...’
Theo looked at her, partly outraged because no one had ever dared accuse him of being scared of anything in his life before, partly amused because she had wrong-footed him and not many had done that either.
‘What do you think I might be scared of?’ he murmured as they headed into the shelter.
‘A new experience?’ She blushed, hearing the teasing tone in her voice.
‘You’ve broken the ice on that one,’ Theo pointed out drily. ‘When it comes to new experiences, you rank right up there as a first.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ Alexa threw back at him, because she knew that a compliment it certainly hadn’t been meant to be.
He smiled slowly, his amazing eyes skirting over her flushed face and doing a lazy inventory of everything else.
‘You should,’ he murmured. ‘I have a jaded palate, and new experiences are always welcome...’
‘Even unpleasant ones?’
‘What are we talking about, here? The shelter...or you...?’
He was leaning against the door, towering over her, and she felt her heart begin to race. His voice was as smooth as the finest dark chocolate and his eyes were doing all sorts of weird things to her nervous system, muddling her thoughts and stripping her of that momentary feeling of triumph she’d had moments earlier.
She rang the bell and turned away, although she could still feel him staring at her, and suddenly the memory of all those convenient kisses slammed into her, depriving her of breath.
She didn’t like him, she reminded herself fiercely. Not only did she not like him—she didn’t like the situation she was in.
But he was so sinfully good-looking. He had the sort of face that made her want to stare with helpless fixation and keep on staring. He had that effect on every woman. She had witnessed it for herself. And, whilst she had thought herself immune to that sort of thing, she had to accept the galling truth that she wasn’t as immune as she wanted to be.
That was why she found it so unsettling whenever he got too close to her, and why the thought of those kisses kept her awake at night. She was human, and she lacked the necessary experience to deal with a man like Theo De Angelis. All her old-fashioned ideas about only ever being attracted to her soulmate had been turned on their head...
Which didn’t mean that they had disappeared! No, it just meant that she responded to him on a purely physical level, and it was only now that she was accepting that unpalatable truth. She’d always assumed that, for her, physical attraction would only be possible when it was to the guy who had stolen her heart, but she’d been wrong. She could see that now.
Which was a good thing.
Once you knew your enemy, you