Page 53
I laugh humorlessly. “I’m sure they do.”
Taut silence falls over the room. Two people who usually don’t have a problem speaking suddenly don’t know what to say. I should just leave. He’s clearly got a handle on this situation, and there’s nothing left to say.
But yet there’s everything to say.
I look up at him through my lashes, fearful of the answer I may get to my next question. Because there is an answer I want yet shouldn’t, and one that I don’t want, yet should. “Do you regret it?”
All the air is sucked from the room as I await his reply, and the sound of my ragged breathing against his steady rhythm is all I can hear. My body instinctually leans closer to find the heat radiating off him. I want to dive into his embrace and remember what it’s like to feel warm. Warm from him and him alone.
“No,” he finally says, voice husky. “I know I should, because I could’ve blown up your life and your plans with my brother, but I don’t.” There’s an edge to the way he’s looking at me, blue eyes dancing over my face, measuring my every reaction to his words. It’s like a physical caress, the only one he’s allowing himself right now.
I keep my hands to myself, too. Can’t allow them to wander where they desire to go. Despite the way my palms twitch to feel the muscles in his chest shift, trace the sharp angles of his jaw, relish the softness of his wavy hair.
“I don’t… I don’t know how much your brother would care.”
Beau laughs bitterly and steps back. The distance between us makes my chest cave in a way that frightens me. “Don’t lie to yourself.”
“I’m not,” I protest. “The past month that he’s gotten to know me, he’s never made a pass or shown that he wants me like you.”
“Please don’t fool yourself with that. He’s doing that because there are too many people watching him and he knows he needs to keep a clean image. Feeling you up on horseback doesn’t fit. But trust me, he doesn’t like his things being taken from him.”
“I’m not one of his things!”
“You are—”
“He doesn’t want me!” I scrub my hands down my face, exasperated. “I can tell. Yes, he wants a wife, but he doesn’t desire me the way… the way I think you do.”
Beau stiffens, and suddenly I wonder if I’ve been misreading him. This entire situation. Maybe I’m just a fling or something fun to play with because he enjoys having what he can’t.
But I saw it in the way he looked at me on the cliff, then echoed in those photographs when we thought no one was looking. And knowing that they were the reason for his distance, not because he regretted what we did…
“I know I’m not much of an expert on such matters,” I continue, fighting past the embarrassment. “But there’s just not that same spark. I don’t know how to describe it. But when he talks to me, he doesn’t look at me like you do.”
Beau takes a small, slow step forward. “And how, exactly, do I look at you?”
My heart pumps wildly as I get a whiff of his cologne. Remember the way the scent of it drove me mad when it clung to my clothes that night and how I haven’t washed them since. “Like you desire me. Like you care about what I have to say. Like you enjoy spending time with me and want more.”
“Do I?” he hums.
“Yes. You’re—you’re looking at me like it right now.” Every cell in my body is tuned into that look, those eyes of his. The hair on the back of my neck stands up as he slowly brings himself chest to chest with me. My breasts ache, remembering what they felt like with his mouth on them. “I don’t think he’s interested in me. He may be interested in me as part of a deal, but not in me.” It’s the first time I’ve admitted the inkling at the back of my mind out loud.
“And how does that make you feel, Princess?”
I fiddle with a loose thread on my skirt, breaking eye contact. No one’s asked me that before. No one has ever really asked how I’ve felt about this whole arrangement, both before it started and throughout the summer as we’ve gotten to know each other.
I don’t know if I even fully realized that Lock doesn’t seem as interested in me as I was in him until the cliffside with Beau and understood what longing looked like. What it feels like. And then to turn around and feel so… empty on the horse ride with Lock.
Not seeing Beau at the event last week was like a physical punch to the gut.
Not seeing Lock today was a small blimp of annoyance.
“If you’re asking me if I’m okay with him being disinterested in me, no, I’m not,” I admit. “But that doesn’t mean that I can do anything about it. It’s not my choice to make.”
“Why the hell shouldn’t it be?”
“Because our parents—”
He vehemently shakes his head. “To hell with that. If it was not for our parents meddling, and the duty I know you feel called to fill on behalf of Beatrice, would this be a choice you’d make?”
