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“Until what?”
“Until I found someone I was very attracted to.”
The look on his face told her he saw right through her lie. But given that he had lied to her about his reasons for not spending more time at the chateau, she shoved her guilt away.
“I don’t regret waiting. But I do wish I had... I don’t know, lived a little more. Had more adventures.”
“Having fun isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
The darkness in his tone caught her, stopped her from saying the joke that had risen to her lips.
He trailed two fingers up and down the stem of his wineglass, his gaze turning distant as he retreated into the past. “Indulging for the sake of indulgence. Buying things because they’re expensive. Attending parties because of who will be in attendance and not because you want to go.” His fingers tightened on the wineglass. He tilted it up, drained the contents, then set it back down with a precision that belied the seething grief and fury she saw in his eyes. “Living in a constant state of working hard and playing just as hard to avoid dealing with something hard.”
He leaned back, angled his body so that even though he was looking at her, he physically shut himself off from her. She felt the loss as acutely as if he’d stood up and walked away.
“So perhaps you did yourself a favor. Working hard and staying focused.”
The last words dripped with bitterness and self-loathing.
“I doubt someone who increased the value of his family’s business as much as you did didn’t work hard,” she said gently.
“I did work hard. I just played harder. Bought new properties, spent only one night in each of them, sold them the next day. Went to auctions at Christie’s or Sotheby’s and bought the entire lot because I could. Slept with women whose names I didn’t know because they wanted me. Wanted a piece of the millionaire shipping heir, and I wanted sex.” His head snapped around, his eyes hard as rock. “Fun is fun until it leads to death. Destruction.”
Her heart shuddered, cracked. She wanted to reach out, soothe the anguish from his face and offer him comfort.
A comfort she knew he wasn’t ready to receive.
His chair legs grated on the floor as he stood. He collected their plates and carried them into the kitchen. She stayed at the table, turned his confession over in her mind as she watched him out of the corner of her eye.
“Did you always indulge like that?”
A plate clattered in the sink. He stood with his back to her, the muscles in his back tense and pressing against his skin.
“Most of my adult life, yes.”
“When did it start?”
“Does it matter?”
He turned then, leaned back against the sink and crossed one leg over the other as he tucked his hands into the pockets of his pants. His broad shoulders, bare to her gaze, slowly dropped, as if he was forcing himself to relax, to appear cavalier.
“I think it does.”
He shrugged. “I don’t. It was a way of life for me. Now it’s not.”
“But it still seems to bother you. Like you were living that way of life but not really enjoying it. Like you were doing it for another reason and now regret it.”
He pushed off the sink and stalked toward her.
“Maybe I was.” He grabbed her hands and hauled her to her feet. “Maybe I wasn’t.” He looped an arm around her waist, yanked her against his body. “But I can tell you I don’t regret last night.”
“Griffith—”
“We only have a few days. Let’s make the most of it.”
The words cut her heart. She knew why he’d said them. To remind her this was nothing more than sex, a short affair that would begin and end at the Chateau du Bellerose.
Terms you accepted. Terms that were worth both the pain and the pleasure.
