She couldn’t deny it because he was right. And she did not lie. Like him, she hated lies. Like the lie when a person told you they loved you but didn’t. Not really.
“So…I have had more than one relationship that lasted a few months. I’m twenty-four years old, after all.”
“But none of those relationships were deep.”
“How do you know? My father said so,” she guessed. “You can’t trust the judgment of a man who thinks that balance sheets are more comprehensible than people. He doesn’t know me.”
“Like I do not know you?”
“I’m afraid so, yes.”
Sandor shook his head with an impatient jerk. “You are wrong.”
But she wasn’t. Sandor did not know her any better than her father did, which meant he couldn’t care for her any more deeply than her dad. While the knowledge hurt, it also really begged the question why Sandor wanted to marry her.
He was looking at her as if he expected another argument, but she didn’t have to convince Sandor of her point of view. In this instance, it was her opinion that mattered and his confident insistence wasn’t going to change it.
“I am not relying on his word alone,” Sandor said. “I had you investigated.” His expression showed not even a hint of remorse at the claim.
“What? Why?”
“When I first started considering you as a potential wife, I thought it prudent.”
“You are kidding.”
“No.”
“I would have thought you too arrogant to believe you needed anything besides your own reading of a person in a situation like this.”
“You have called me arrogant before.”
“Have I?”
“Yes, the time I told you who would win the Super Bowl.”
“You were so sure you were right and you aren’t even a football fan.”
He shrugged. “And yet I was right.”
“Well, you’re wrong about me being a virgin.” And as much as the memories of the reason for her lack of innocence hurt, she felt a certain grim satisfaction in catching him in the wrong.
Maybe she should be offended he’d had her investigated, but she wasn’t. She was, however, bothered. If Sandor wanted a relationship with her, why hadn’t he made the effort to get to know her better rather than having her investigated? Maybe it wouldn’t be so worrisome if he’d done it in addition to the investigation, but he hadn’t.
The similarities to her dad were piling up and not in a good way. She’d been raised by a man who would have done the exact same thing in such a situation, who even now kept her under constant surveillance—ostensibly for her safety’s sake. After all, she was the daughter of a very wealthy and influential man. However, he wasn’t above using that so-called security to monitor more than her safety. She didn’t know what her father thought his knowledge was going to do for him.
If he wanted a better relationship with her, he wasn’t going to have it via a silent security detail. Only maybe that was just the way he liked it. He felt like he was doing his fatherly duty without getting emotionally involved.
“My investigator is very thorough,” Sandor said, breaking into her derailed thoughts.
“Even the best investigators make mistakes.”
“Perhaps.” But she could tell he didn’t believe her.
Instead of annoying her, it made her laugh. “We could go back to my apartment and I could prove it to you.”
He looked far from amused. His dark eyes glinted with a warning she had no intention of heeding. “Are you trying to shock me, pethi mou?”
“Challenging you, I think.” Recklessness filled her to bursting.
She didn’t know if it came from the unexpected proposal that had mentioned not one word of love, from memories she’d prefer to forget, or from the renewed evidence that her father wanted no emotional connection to her, but the strictures of a lifetime were falling like dominos around her.
No, she wasn’t the type of woman to view sex casually, but she wasn’t a virgin and she was darned if she would marry a man who could turn himself off from her so easily. She didn’t want Sandor to be like her father. She couldn’t stand for their relationship to be as cold and distant.
“Why do you feel the need to challenge me?” he asked, sounding baffled.
It was almost cute, in an arrogant, macho reaction to what should have been a straightforward topic kind of way.
“Why don’t you want me enough to have seduced me?” Or even accepted her sometimes not too subtle invitations?
“I told you.”
“You believe I’m a virgin, so that puts me off-limits until the wedding night.”
“Essentially…yes. Perhaps not until the wedding night, but definitely until the wedding is a date on the calendar.”
“This is not the Dark Ages.”
“Integrity has no time limit.”
“Is that one of your grandfather’s sayings?”
For a second his eyes burned with a pain that could not be mistaken. “As a matter of fact, yes.”
“I don’t understand why you want to marry me. You don’t love me.”
“And your friends have all married for the sake of some ephemeral emotion that cannot even be counted on to last past the cooling of the sheets in most cases?”
“No.” She wouldn’t pretend that all her acquaintances had married because they were in love. “But they aren’t me and I happen to believe in that ephemeral emotion. I want more from marriage than a businesslike merging of two people’s lives.” She wanted more from life than that, period…but had no idea how to get it.
Other people found love so easily, but not her. But that didn’t mean she had given up hoping to find it.
“And you will have more. We are compatible, in every way. We will have a family. You even enjoy my mother’s company.”
“She’s easy to like, but you say that like it’s a major consideration.”
“Since I choose to have my mother live near me like a good Greek son, it is.”
“I wouldn’t mind living with your mother, but I’m not so sure about her son.”
“So, you are considering my proposal?”
Was she?
