feel you have to. I don’t.”
She had read that memo in his expression of bored tolerance.
She’d seen his home earlier so she wasn’t as agog returning to it, but was still taken aback that he lived in this massive split-level mansion in the sky. The foyer led to a sunken lounge where the exterior wall held another of his spectacular aquariums. It formed the inside wall of the infinity pool outside—which looked down onto Central Park.
She lowered to the sofa, its cushion stuffed with goose down, he had informed her, when her first time sitting caused her to gasp with a sense of sinking into pure luxury. All of his furniture was custom-made for him by an Italian couture house that hand-turned legs and hand-stitched pleats into leather and velvet.
They measure me like my tailor, even ask me which side I dress, he’d drawled.
One of his servants appeared with a pot of Chinese tea, something she had confessed to craving after her breakdown in Paris. It appeared every night now, without her asking for it.
“Thank you,” she said with a warm smile for the maid.
The woman curtsied.
Luli sighed. I’m one of you, she wanted to say, but Gabriel dismissed her.
“I thought Brittany might have said something to upset you,” he said as the door closed. He shrugged out of his jacket and loosened his tie, throwing both on the back of the sofa, gaze staying fixed on her.
“When?” She set aside her shoes and wiggled her toes with relief. Then she picked up her skirt as she walked across to where the tea had been left on the bar.
“She came out of the ladies’ room after you did and smiled at me like she had sunk my battleship.”
“Please.” Luli glanced over her shoulder so he could see her brow crinkled with scorn and pity. “I know a school in Venezuela where she could learn to be a cat with actual claws.”
“So she did say something.” His voice tightened.
“She told me you slept together.” She paused in pouring, glanced at him again and saw by his tense expression that it was true. She ignored the fresh strip that admission peeled off the back of her heart. “Actually, she asked whether you had told me that you’d been lovers.” She finished pouring and set the pot aside. “I said you probably didn’t think it was important enough to mention.”
He looked away, but even in the subdued lighting she saw the twitch of his mouth.
“Then she warned me that she could blackball me among the social elite here. I told her I’d never heard the expression, but that she must feel very disappointed things hadn’t worked out between you, and maybe it was because she talked about you behind your back.” One spoon of sugar. “I said I’d ask you. She didn’t like that.”
She heard his snort.
“Then I told her I would look up blackball so I understood exactly how that works.” Her spoon clinked as she stirred.
He swore under his breath, head hanging and shoulders shaking. “Every time I worry about you, I discover you’re perfectly capable of taking care of yourself.”
“Are you?” she asked, facetious, but also with tendrils of jealousy still working its poison through her veins in thorny little stings. “Why would you sleep with someone like that? What happened to saving it for someone special?”
“I’m not a virgin.”
She turned fully around to see his hands had balled in his pockets. His jaw had hardened. All of him had.
“Is it easier to remain celibate when you know what you’re missing?” A horrifying thought occurred. “Have you been seeing someone while we’ve been—?”
“No! When would I even—We’re together all the time. I have been celibate since we met and no, it is not easy.”
“Then... How long does this marriage have to last, Gabriel? Are we supposed to wait to have sex until it’s over?”
“What are you asking? Whether you’re allowed to have sex with other people? No. Neither of us is stepping out. It’s gossip we don’t need and would jeopardize the believability of this marriage.”
“So I’m just supposed to live here with you, wondering what sex would be like?”
He closed his eyes and sounded very beleaguered. “I’ve told you why we shouldn’t have sex.”
“Because you might hurt my feelings when this is over. Well, I’ll tell you what. It hurts my feelings that you’d have sex with someone like her and can’t bring yourself to make love to me.”
“Brittany? That’s what this is about?” He shoved a hand into his hair. “People want things from me, Luli. All the time.” He spoke with the infinite weariness of a battle-scarred warrior. “Sometimes it seems simpler to sleep with someone who is transparent in their motives. I didn’t realize how much she drinks or I wouldn’t have gone near her. It lasted less than a week.”
He had said his father drank himself to death. She wanted to ask how bad it had been, but the remote cloud around him told her it had been very bad. Her heart tremored, urging her to go to him, but his stillness held her off.
“I don’t drink,” she pointed out. “No more than you do.”
“I’ve noticed. I appreciate it.”
“So...?”
“Luli. You’re far too vulnerable.”
“You just said you don’t have to worry about me.”
“Yet I do.”
“Well, I’m worried about you! You have sex with people you don’t even like.”
“That was one misjudgment. Just...give it a rest,” he sighed. “We can’t, okay? I can’t let you start thinking this is real.”
“How is having sex making this more or less real? People who are married have sex. You’re afraid that if we sleep together, I’m going to want you to fall in love with me?”
“Yes.”
She folded her arms, aching because she already wanted that. Her marriage already looked very bleak, filled with lust and craving and deep yearning while he felt...nothing.
“I can’t say I wouldn’t,” she admitted. “I’ve always wanted someone to love me.”
His expression tightened as if her words had scored a line through him. “It’s not as idyllic as it sounds, trust me.”
“How do you know? Have you loved someone?” The world tilted and nearly dropped her off the edge into cold, airless space. “Is that why—”
“No,” he said, taking her aback with his harsh tone.
“No?
