they’d been practising saying something, ‘that if you decide you want to start seeing other...women, I shan’t mind.’
His fork fell to his plate with a clatter. His heart pounded. Rarely had he been more shocked. Or outraged. ‘Say that again,’ he breathed.
‘You heard me perfectly well, Alek. I’m just asking you to be discreet about it, that’s all. I don’t particularly want—’
‘No, wait a minute.’ Ruthlessly he cut across her words in a way he’d avoided doing of late, leaning across the table and glaring at her. ‘Are you telling me that you want me to start dating other women?’
Ellie didn’t reply, not immediately. She fiddled around with her napkin for just long enough to hang on to her composure—telling herself that this was the only solution. She couldn’t keep him chained up like a tame lion. ‘I don’t know if want is the right word—’
‘Maybe you want to watch?’ he suggested crudely. ‘Perhaps that’s one of your fantasises. Does the thought of me having sex with somebody else turn you on, Ellie?’
‘Don’t be so disgusting!’ she snapped, feeling her cheeks growing hot. ‘That’s not what I meant at all and you know it.’
‘Do I?’ he demanded furiously. ‘What am I supposed to think, when you give me your blessing to have sex with someone else, while you’re still living under my roof?’
She glared back. ‘I wasn’t giving you my blessing. I’m trying to be fair!’
‘Fair?’ he echoed, furiously.
‘Yes, fair.’ She took a shaky sip of water. ‘I know you’re a virile man with a healthy sexual appetite and I shouldn’t expect you to have to curtail that, just because...’
‘Because you no longer want me?’
Ellie swallowed as she met the accusation spitting from his blue eyes. Oh, if only. If only it were as simple as that. ‘It’s not that I don’t want you.’
‘You just take masochistic pleasure in us sleeping apart? In me lying wide-eyed for most of the night knowing you’re in the room next door?’
‘I told you before. I can’t do fake intimacy. And I didn’t start this conversation to discuss the reasons why I won’t sleep with you.’
‘Then why did you start it?’
‘Because I’m trying to be kind.’
‘Kind?’ He stared at her incredulously. ‘How does that work?’
‘I’m just suggesting that if you want to relieve your frustrations, then feel free—but please be discreet about it. I just don’t want it in my face, that’s all.’
There was silence for a moment while he stared down at his clenched fists and when he looked up again, there was something in his eyes she didn’t recognise.
‘Why not you?’ he questioned simply. ‘When you’re the only woman I want? When we both know that if I came round to the other side of that table and started kissing you, you’d go up in flames—the way you always do when I touch you.’
‘So why don’t you?’ she challenged. ‘Why don’t you take control, as you’re so good at doing? Take the choice away from me?’
He shook his head and gave a short laugh. ‘Because that would make it too easy. A short-term fix, not a long-term solution. You have to be with me because you want to, Ellie—and not just because your body is reacting to something I do to you.’
She stared at her napkin. She stared at her water glass. But when she looked up, she shook her head. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘It would be insane to even try. We’re planning a divorce before too long and I want to acclimatise myself to the situation. I’m trying to get used to the separate lives we’ve agreed to lead.’
For a minute there was silence.
‘And what if I told you I don’t want separate lives, or a divorce?’ he said at last. ‘That I wanted to start over, only this time to do it differently? We’ll take it as slow as you like, Ellie. I’ll court you, if that’s what you want. I’ll woo you with flowers. I won’t take business calls when we’re away. I’ll do whatever it takes, if you just give me another chance.’
His bright eyes bored into her and for a moment Ellie couldn’t speak, because she got the feeling that Alek didn’t often ask questions like that. And hadn’t she sometimes dreamt of a moment like this—even though she’d told herself it would never happen? But it was happening. He was sitting there and saying things she’d longed to hear and temptation was tugging at her—because Alek in a peace-making mood was pretty irresistible. His blue eyes were blazing and his lips were parted, as if already anticipating her kiss—and didn’t she want to kiss him so badly? She could go into his arms and they could just lose themselves in each other, and...
And what?
How long before domesticity bored him? Before the emotional demands she would inevitably make became too tedious for him to bear? Because he still didn’t do communication, did he? Not about the things that really mattered. He was still denying that he had a brother. He was only talking this way because he was bargaining with her. Because it was probably frustrating the life out of him that she wasn’t falling into his arms with gratitude.
She shook her head. ‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
She realised that his pride was going to be hurt—and maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. But she needed to show him that this was about more than pride. She had to summon up enough courage and strength to present him with a few harsh home truths.
‘Because I can’t contemplate life with a man who keeps running away.’
‘Running away?’ he echoed and she heard the anger building in his voice. ‘Are you accusing me of cowardice, Ellie?’
‘It’s up to you to make the diagnosis, not me.’ She stared at the little vase of blue flowers which sat at the centre of the table. She thought how delicate the petals were. How most things in life were delicate, when you stopped to think about it. She lifted her gaze to his, trying not to react to his anger. ‘When you told me all about your family—about your mother walking out on you and the effect it had on you—I could understand why you never tried to get in touch with her. I understood that you’d taken your pain and turned it into success and that it was easier to turn your back on the past. But you’re an adult now, with the world at your fingertips—the most successful man I’ve ever met. You’re intelligent and resourceful and yet you’ve just heard that you’ve got a brother and you’re acting like nothing’s happened!’
His dark head was bent and there was silence, and when at last he looked at her she flinched from the pain she saw written in his eyes.
‘Not just a brother,’ he said. ‘I think I could have dealt with that. But a twin brother? Do you know what that means, if it’s true? Have you thought about it, Ellie? She didn’t have another baby with another man. She had one who was exactly the same age. She took him with her and left me behind. I was the one she rejected. I was the one she didn’t want. How do you think that makes me
