his temper. She couldn’t have agreed to their bargain, much less adored him for years, if she hadn’t known those things as absolute facts.
The real danger was that he’d somehow find out how much she loved him, and then either reject her feelings outright, or worse, pity her for having them.
“You haven’t got much out of our deal, have you?”
Reece’s question was jarringly direct and a signal that he might have guessed the real reason she’d wanted this talk. The growl in his voice had softened, though his stony expression hadn’t.
Leah sensed something, perhaps regret, perhaps guilt, but she automatically discounted that impression and considered it nothing more than wishful thinking. A longing heart would always see a banquet in a table crumb. Pride roared up to keep her from revealing even a hint of her true feelings.
“I’ve gotten exactly what I bargained to get,” she told him, then made her stiff lips relax a little into a smile. “And I have Bobby. Being able to love and raise him is more than enough.”
Leah tried not to blink at the half-lie in that last part. Though at twenty-four she’d never had more than a hasty kiss on the mouth once by a boy who’d done it to embarrass her, she had the same female longing for affection and intimate tenderness as any other woman, in spite of her inexperience.
“So you’re satisfied with the way it’s been.” Reece’s gravelly words were not a question, but a statement.
Leah caught the cynical gleam in his dark eyes and didn’t understand it. Or why he’d even think to remark on whether she’d been satisfied or not by the way things between them had gone.
The past eleven months had revolved around the boy, the ranch and the polite day-to-day cooperation between a stay at home wife who cared for a house and child, and a rancher who spent hours a day working outdoors or doing paperwork in the den. The emotional sterility between the two of them had been so heart-numbing that Leah often wondered if they were even friends.
“I’m…satisfied we’ve both done what we agreed to do.” Leah cringed inwardly at the small hesitation, but it was hard to face the relentlessness she suddenly sensed in Reece.
It was even harder to maintain eye contact with the dark eyes that seemed to flicker with perception when she was trying so hard to hide the truth, at least the most dangerous truth: her real feelings.
“I remember we talked about more than just protecting the boy when we started this,” he said then.
The reminder completely threw her. She recalled Reece’s remarks on that subject with distressing clarity. It had been in this very room at almost the same time of day that he’d made them.
It was the only time either of them had so much as hinted at the possibly of having other children. Or of personal needs, having sex in particular.
“I reckon sex will be part of this deal, since it’s a marriage,” he’d said, and it hurt to remember the bleak, almost grim look in his eyes, as if he was resigned to the task only because he saw it as a marital obligation.
“Won’t be likely for a time,” he’d gone on, glancing away from her before he’d added, “but we’ve both got needs.”
His low voice had trailed off and she’d got the impression that the thought of sex with any woman but Rachel was not only vaguely distasteful to him, but that he also couldn’t imagine that sex would ever again be something more than a biological function, perhaps to have more children, but mainly as a physical release.
At least he’d not insulted her obvious lack of desirability by rejecting the possibility of ever having sex with her. And because he’d also let her know that he was willing to have other children with her if she wanted them, he apparently hadn’t considered her an unworthy recipient of his seed.
Of course, eleven months had gone by and if Reece had ever had a “need”, she’d never known about it. Which only confirmed the idea that Reece felt so little for her that he didn’t think of her in terms of sex.
Reece’s gruff voice brought her back to the present. “You remember that, don’t you?”
His dark gaze shifted downward to flash quickly over her body. So quickly it seemed almost mechanical. As if it was expected that a man who’d brought up the subject of sex might at least make a cursory inspection to familiarize himself with the physical attributes of the woman he’d suggested it to.
Leah felt her cheeks go abnormally hot with a mix of feminine shame and very feminine indignation. Without so much as a single nonaccidental touch between them in all these months, and no hint of personal affection from Reece, sex was the last thing she’d consider. Particularly when the look he’d just given her had been so clearly obligatory. Not even she was so hungry for love that she’d allow herself to be so coldly used.
“I think we’ve moved past the point where the things we talked about that night might have made sense,” she said stiffly, just managing not to give in to the fiery hurt she’d sustained. “I think you’ve realized that too.”
Her heart was pounding so hard that she felt a little dizzy. Her refusal had set off sparks in Reece’s dark gaze and she felt a corresponding nettle of resentment. It took so, so much to keep her voice even and her words reasonable.
“Neither of us was thinking straight after Rachel died,” she told him. “Now that we’ve had these months to put things into a more moderate perspective, I think we both have doubts about going on together.”
There. She’d got it said and the world hadn’t come to an end. The minor softening of Reece’s stony expression had vanished, but he was still silent. She tried not to fidget while his dark eyes bore into hers like twin drills.
There was something in the way he stared over at her that compelled her to go on, something that suggested he needed to hear more to be convinced. Leah made a try at doing just that.
“As I said, we made the decision to marry at a time when we weren’t quite ourselves,” she said calmly, careful to keep her tone mild, though she couldn’t keep the tremor out of it. “Lately you’ve seemed…unhappy. In a different way than before, so I…thought it was time to discuss what might need to change, even though the change that probably seems most sensible is divorce.”
The booming silence that followed was as much a sudden assault on the room as a thunderclap would have been. It had impacted with such power that it was difficult, even in the aftermath, to decide if an actual clap of thunder had sounded around them, or if it had truly been a silent shockwave.
But maybe it had been an actual thunderclap, because the storm was suddenly visible in Reece’s harsh face. His dark eyes snapped with angry surprise, and the ruthless line of his mouth now seemed more promise than vague threat.
“Are you asking for a divorce?”
The blunt question wasn’t unexpected, but his gravelly tone of voice carried a steeliness that warned how rigidly he controlled himself. Leah felt her heart skip faster, and forced herself to shake her head.
“There’s a difference between asking for a divorce and offering one.”
The moment the words were out of her mouth she wondered why she’d put it that way. She should have simply answered “yes”. The huge tide of
