“No, we can’t,” Regina said softly. “It would be a lie. It wouldn’t work.”
He studied her. She’d obviously thought this through. “How do you know it wouldn’t work?” he asked.
She blinked, clearly startled.
“The marriage, I mean,” he continued. “Not the touching. How do you know the marriage wouldn’t work?”
Regina’s gaze met his. “It hasn’t,” she said softly, and he was pretty sure she was remembering the past months.
So was he, and what he was remembering was that Regina had been happy until she fell into his life and things had gone awry. He’d spent a lifetime learning to be a proper O’Ryan and protecting the O’Ryan reputation from any hint of scandal. But after he had married Regina and scandal had been averted, he had abdicated his responsibility as if his duty had been done. There had been no satisfaction in this marriage and yet…
“We haven’t really tried to make our marriage work, have we?” he asked. “You mentioned that Adele wondered why she hadn’t seen you around, but very few people have seen us together. Our marriage has been solely on paper, hasn’t it?”
“There were reasons for that. You were practically forced to marry me.”
Somehow Dell kept from reacting to that. “I chose to marry you, Regina.” But he knew deep down that he was lying, at least partially. There had been numerous reasons why he had married Regina, but guilt, duty, honor and the need to protect the family name—and her—had been supreme.
But had he really protected her? Had he done anything right where she was concerned?
Maybe. After she had delivered his mail that day, they had become distant friends of a sort. She was nothing like the women he saw socially, nothing like the women he bedded and nothing like the women he considered as the ones who might produce the next O’Ryan heir. But he had liked her. She had been warm and refreshing. They hadn’t known each other well, but they might have become friends if he hadn’t made a single wrong and hasty decision that had turned the world upside down and had, ultimately, led to them becoming man and wife.
And now here they were, on the verge of another hasty, reckless decision. But he had never been a reckless man. Reckless actions were usually the result of messy emotions and he had spent years learning the ways emotional slips could ruin lives. Haste and recklessness fostered failure, and he didn’t like failure.
“I chose to marry you,” he said again. “But I’ve been a poor excuse for a husband, Regina. And I think that before we give up on this marriage, we should give ourselves a chance to turn this thing around.”
Regina took a deep, audible breath. She paced a few steps, clearly agitated.
He followed her. When she turned suddenly, they were closer than they had been since their disastrous wedding night. Dell breathed in her light honeysuckle scent, and felt a small rush of attraction. Carefully he controlled his reaction.
“You don’t love me,” she said. “Elise—”
“No,” he said. “I don’t love you, but I don’t love Elise, either. I’m not interested in love and would never have chosen that as a rationale for marrying. You just said that you didn’t want love, either, so there are no impediments. I think we should begin again. Why shouldn’t we stay married since we’re already here?”
“Because now that I’ve had a chance to think rationally, I realize that I’m not O’Ryan material.”
“Too late. You’re already an O’Ryan.”
“Only because of a few words in a ceremony I don’t even remember.”
“That counts.”
She gave a cute little grimace, and Dell fought some primal male instinct to lean closer.
“Dell, this hasn’t been a good year, but I’m—finally—regaining my sense of independence and balance. Help me out here. I’m trying to do the right thing.”
He shook his head. “You’re trying to do me a favor by setting me free to continue on my previous course, but divorce is the wrong thing if we haven’t even tried to succeed. We’re married, Regina, even if we didn’t get here via the path your clients take. We should at least give ourselves a true trial run and get to know each other before we decide to divorce. There’s a chance we might make a success of this situation, after all. We could save ourselves a lot of trouble and the kind of unpleasant publicity that comes to those in the spotlight who marry and then divorce too quickly. Does that make sense?”
She looked a bit unhappy but she nodded. “I guess so. Yes.” Why did Dell feel that it was Regina doing him the favor now?
“How long a trial period?” she asked.
He considered. “How about two months? Long enough to get to know each other and become a couple.”
“I don’t know,” she began. “This still seems unfair to you.”
But Dell was warming to the idea. O’Ryans never did things impulsively. In fact, marrying Regina had been his only true impulse. His failure there was proof enough that slow and steady was best. For months she had been a silent stranger in his house, and he had accepted that. Now time was healing her, and there was renewed life in her eyes, vibrancy and spunk in her attitude and a woman emerging from the ashes. Yet he barely knew who she was. If they were going to end things, then he darn well wanted to know who he was divorcing. And if they were going to stay married, well…it was time to backtrack and uncover what had been covered. Methodically.
“If you’re still worrying because we’re not an ordinary couple, don’t,” he told her. “Not being in love is the best way. Love would only introduce complications and lead to possible rash mistakes. Emotional attachments would make it more difficult to end this later if that’s where we finish up.”
She had blanched when he had used the words rash mistakes and he cursed himself. She was probably thinking about her own past mistakes. He reached out and tucked a finger beneath her chin to distract her. “Let’s give our marriage a fair chance,” he urged.
Slowly she nodded, her soft skin sliding against his finger in a way that made him want to curve his palm against her jaw. “If that’s what you want,” she whispered.
He had no idea what he wanted, but he knew that when he decided, he wanted that decision to be based on logic.
Still, when he looked down at Regina rational thought slipped a bit. She had lifted her chin, and his finger had slid slightly down her throat, over silken skin that was made for a man’s caress.
“How about the touching part?” she asked in a choked voice, as if she’d read his mind. His body tightened. But her deep brown eyes were genuinely concerned.
He cleared his throat. “We’ll wait on that,” he assured her, hoping his voice sounded normal. “At the moment we’re just taking some time to make an effort and see if we’re going to stay together.”
“Or if we’re going to part,” she added, but he had the feeling that she had already decided that she wanted their marriage to end.
Maybe
