flashed in her amber eyes that he didn’t like. Pain? He had gone a step too far in venting his anger. Saying things he wasn’t even certain he felt just to simply let the anger continue. Indulging emotion for once rather than sublimating it.
He didn’t know how sleeping with Rachel would make him feel. The idea of it...it had made him tense. But that was to be expected, considering the nature of their relationship, and everything else.
But sex with his wife was half the appeal of marriage to him. Everything in life had a place. A fire burning in the fireplace was all well and good. But when the fire spread outside of it, that became a problem.
Yes, things had their place. And he had been looking forward to having everything where it was meant to be.
But now the plan was upended. And he wasn’t certain of his next move. For a man who liked to plan ahead, it was disconcerting at best.
“I am sorry,” he bit out. “That was crass of me. I’m frustrated, and it has very little to do with you personally.” Except, somehow, the frustration, or rather, his inability to manage it, did seem tied to her.
She blinked, and he could see some of the tension release from her body. “Of course not. Of course. None of this really has anything to do with me personally, does it?”
“I’m glad you have such a good grasp on the situation.”
“I don’t, Ajax, not even close. What, if you’ll excuse me, in hell do you want from me? Do you want me to just hang out for the next five years, living in your house, and then go on my merry way like none of this ever happened?”
“Clearly that cannot happen,” he said.
“Clearly?”
“I would not disrespect you that way.”
“Oh, honey, after all the crap you said to me last night, you’re saying you don’t want to disrespect me?”
“I was angry.”
“Great. So was I. So am I.”
“I apologized.”
“An apology isn’t a magic healing potion, it’s just a bandage. It covered up some of my pique nicely, but it’s hardly healed.”
“Well,” he said, shifting his weight to the balls of his feet, “perhaps we can set it aside in the interest of figuring out what it is we need to do?”
“All right,” she said.
“We’re married, and we really had no other choice, all things considered.”
“Yes.”
“And we have to stay married for at least five years.”
“Uh-huh,” she said.
“And I planned on marrying into your family. On keeping Holt in your family. I want to be married. I would like to have children. A real marriage suits me.”
“Oh, indeed?”
“Yes. I wanted a wife. A wife was always my end goal.”
“Except she was tall, blond, a size four and named Rachel?”
“Yes,” he said, teeth gritted. “But in the end, what difference does it make?”
“Is that really how you feel? Do I matter that little... Does she?”
“It isn’t you, Leah. I have had a plan for my life from the moment I left my father’s house. I planned to work my way up, and I did. To make a new start for myself with nothing but hard work, honesty. To never, ever set foot back on the path I was born to walk. And I have done that. I met your family, and your father and mother made me feel welcomed. Like a son. And then there was Rachel. Everything fit. It all seemed perfect. I knew the first time I saw her she was my end goal. That she would be my wife. She is the first part of my plan that has dared not to fall into place.”
“Yes, well, that’s because she’s a woman and not a business venture.”
“But we would have been perfect,” he said.
“No, Ajax, you wouldn’t have been. You would have been fine, but not perfect. Because she’s not perfect. You certainly aren’t.”
“But it made sense,” he said. “In my head...in my head she made everything fall into place.”
“She’s not a business venture, and she’s not an ideal, either.”
He rubbed his temples with his fingertips. “I know that.”
“Well, you don’t seem to. You talk like marriage to her was your end goal and then...and then what? It would just be perfect? Your life would suddenly be perfect?”
“I can’t... It’s hard to... I’ve been working, Leah, so hard, all of my life. I came to your family’s home, and your parents treated me more like a son than an employee. They took me in, gave me focus and purpose. Your father set me on this path. He taught me things, taught me how to be a man, to be strong. He gave me goals. He sent me to school. I have been walking that path he set me on, tirelessly, never looking away from the goal, from the end.”
“To where you would make Holt continue on for him. Where you would be part of our family.”
“I’ve been walking for a long time,” he said.
“And then you reach the end and you rest?”
“And then maybe I don’t have to work so hard to stay in control all the damn time because I’ll have arrived at a more stable point,” he bit out. “My...everything would be in place.”
Because things weren’t now. He’d made money, obtained power and connections. He’d used all of the resources at his disposal to bring down his father’s drug and human trafficking ring. And he still couldn’t rest. He still didn’t feel he could stop working. Stop trying to distance himself from his past.
From all he had done.
“Why do you need to hang on to control so tightly, Ajax?” she asked, her eyes filled with...sympathy. Pity. If she knew who she was talking to, if she knew the beast that lived inside him, she wouldn’t look at him like that.
He stood and started to pace the room. “It’s nothing. This is nothing. It can still be fixed.”
Leah studied him, noticed the tension in his jaw, in the lines of his body. He was uncomfortable, and thrown off. And she had to take into account that he could very well be heartbroken.
He said he loved Rachel. But for the first time she wondered. Wondered if he’d ever known her really, or if she’d just been symbolic for him.
“I have a plan, Leah,” he said.
She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “Oh, good. Let’s hear it.”
He stopped moving, his hands locked behind his back. “First, we must
