any words passing between them. She communicated with a slight tilt of her chin that she knew exactly what game he was playing—knew that he was trying to rile her because it amused him—and he, in turn, acknowledged the truth in that.
The moment unnerved her.
‘I don’t like being told what I can wear and what I can’t,’ she confessed shortly.
‘So I’m taking it that part one of your complaint has been dealt with? You’re in agreement with me that London would be the best base for us?’ He sighed. ‘Decisions have to be made,’ he said heavily, ‘whether you like it or not. Your parents are more than welcome to come and stay with us whenever they want and let’s cut to the chase: we’ll only be together for just as long as it takes for the ink to dry on our marriage certificate...’
‘It’s awful. I never thought that I’d end up getting married for all the wrong reasons...’
It was a sobering thought. An arranged marriage—a marriage of convenience—was a marriage without love, and she had always imagined love and marriage as two words inextricably bound together. Yet to some extent her parents’ marriage had started on lines very similar to those she was now having to endure.
This tangent threatened to lead them down all sorts of unfamiliar paths, and meandering chat about emotional issues just wasn’t his forte, but when Theo looked at the heartfelt expression on her face he found it hard to feel exasperation.
‘Love disappears,’ he said gruffly. ‘And even when it doesn’t it burns so strong that it consumes everything around it and ends up self-imploding.’
They were leaning into one another, unconsciously promoting a space around themselves that excluded everyone else in the restaurant, and for that he was glad—because a bride-to-be with a downcast, near to tears expression could in no way be interpreted as a bride-to-be contemplating the happiest day of her life.
As it looked from the outside, they were two people huddled and whispering sweet nothings to one another.
He entwined his fingers with hers and absently stroked her thumb with his to promote the illusion.
‘I prefer not to think that way. I prefer to think that you can really find your soulmate and, yes, live happily ever after without everything “self-imploding”, as you say. Or else disappearing like water down a drain. That’s not how love works. I might be stupid, but I’d like to think that the man for me, the man who can make me happy, is out there...and I’ll find him. We’ll find one another.’
‘And who’s to say that won’t happen...?’
‘What do you mean?’ For a few seconds Alexa was genuinely disconcerted. Was he talking about them? Insinuating that their marriage of convenience could end up becoming the real thing?
‘I mean you will move on from me and find this man of your dreams—maybe a little later than you originally planned, and not quite in the order you might have anticipated, but who knows...?’
‘What’s made you so cynical?’ she asked, flabbergasted at the casual way he was happy to dismiss their marriage and divorce as just something a little inconvenient—something that could be swept aside in the future as though it had never happened.
Whether they were married for twelve months or twelve minutes, and whether she liked him or not, he would leave an impression. She would not be the same person she had been before.
‘Let’s leave that thorny subject for another day,’ Theo told her wryly. ‘I’ll let you know when we’ll be leaving for the States...’
‘I didn’t say that I was coming with you.’
‘Are you going to argue with each and every small thing until we finally part company and go our separate ways? Because if that’s your intention it’s going to be a very long twelve months.’
‘I’m not being argumentative.’ She glared at him mutinously and in return he raised his eyebrows in cynical disagreement. ‘But if I’m obliged to fall in line and never complain then I think it’s only fair that you fall in line a bit as well.’
‘Are we about to have another bracing conversation about the “separate bedrooms post-marriage” clause?’
‘I’d like you to sample how I live,’ Alexa continued doggedly. ‘You want me to go to all sorts of stupid fancy social dos—’
‘Don’t write them all off. You might find that you actually enjoy some...’
Alexa chose to ignore that interruption. ‘The least you could do is try and understand what I’ll be sacrificing.’
Theo raised his eyebrows and began standing up. He was at a loss to understand what she was talking about. Of course the ‘pause’ button would have to be pressed on her fairy-tale love and perfect soulmate, but she was young. Plenty of time for her to find that once their committed spell together was at an end.
Frankly, he could tell her that airy-fairy dreams were a certain recipe for disappointment—but what would be the point of that? She would find out soon enough. She was an enduring romantic, while he...he had about as much faith or interest in romance as a turkey had in signing up for centrepiece duties next to the carving knife on Christmas Day.
She had asked him why he was cynical. He could have told her that he’d had a close-up view of just the sort of pain love could bring—the sort of pain that no one in their right mind would want inflicted on them.
It tended to turn a guy off marriage. Although, in fairness, he knew the day would come when marriage would make sense, and when that day came he anticipated something very much like what he now had—but without the complication of a partner in search of the impossible. Emotions would not take over, leaving him vulnerable to going through what his father had gone through.
Of course he was a very different man from his father. Stefano had met his wife when they had both been young. They had fallen in love when they had both been green around the ears. Theo was anything but green around the ears. The opposite. And he prided himself on having the sort of formidable control that would never see him prey to anything he didn’t want to feel.
An arranged marriage with the right woman—a woman who wasn’t looking for anything that wasn’t on the table—would be the kind of marriage he would eventually subscribe to. It made sense.
‘Do tell me what that would be. What great “sacrifices” will you be making? Tell me. I’m all ears...’
They were outside now, walking in the balmy sun. He had a case load of documents to read before his trip to New York, but he didn’t think that a few minutes prolonging their conversation would hurt.
‘I can show you.’
She hailed a cab and leant forward to give the taxi driver an address. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that time was money, but he desisted. Why provide her with another excuse to stage an argument? He had never met a woman as stubborn and as mulish as she was, and those were traits he had no time for. His life was stressful enough, without having a woman digging her heels in and finding objections to every single thing he said or suggested.
‘We’re here.’
‘Here? Where?’ The designer shops and smart cafés
