Princess From the Past (5 page)

He would allow for no other outcome.

She looked tired, he thought, eyeing her critically. She was unusually pale, though her head was high with the same kind of quiet pride she had showed in Toronto. He did not want her pride, he thought; he wanted her passion. And then her acquiescence.

Because he could think of no other way to reach her. And he had exhausted his futile attempts to pretend that that was not exactly what he wanted.

She wore a tight white T-shirt that clung to her pert, full breasts and a sweater wrap that hung down to her thighs in a soft blue that made her eyes glow even brighter than usual. She still wore those faded denim jeans. In some kind of deliberate rebellion, he had no doubt, though the triumph he felt that he had managed to bring her home far outweighed any disapproval he might have felt about her choice of wardrobe.

He wanted to touch her, taste her. Trace the shape of her graceful neck, sink his fingers into her dark curls. Welcome her back to her home, her responsibilities, him, in the way they would both find most pleasurable. In the only way he knew would bind her to him without having to touch on all that seemed to threaten from beneath the certainty of the fire that raged between them.

If he could only have that fire again, he thought, he would know better how to tend it. He would not let it go again so easily.

The vast room seemed smaller suddenly and her eyes widened with awareness. He smiled slightly. Bethany looked away and swallowed. Leo let his gaze trace the fine column of her throat and saw the wash of red that began to climb there.

“I do not understand why I was dragged from the inn of my choice,” she said after a moment.

“I see you are starting at once on the offensive,” he murmured, mildly reproving. “Are you not tired of it yet? I feel certain we have enough to discuss without any unnecessary histrionics.”

Her brows rose in astonishment. “There is no reason for me to stay here. It is hardly histrionic to say so.” Her voice was matter-of-fact, and rubbed him entirely up the wrong way.

“Why?” he asked coolly. “Other than the fact you’d made your usual dramatic proclamations about how you would never return, what objection can you possibly have to staying in the castello?”

She stared at him with a curious expression that Leo had never seen before—one that suggested that he was not very bright. It made him feel …restless. A slow beat of that same old anger and a very familiar frustration began to hammer in his gut, mixed with a new edge that had everything to do with the calm, cool way she looked at him. As if he was the person outside the bounds of propriety and self-control when that had always been her role.

“I do not want to be here.” She said it very deliberately, her gaze still on his in that insulting manner. “I need no other objection than that.”

Leo straightened from the doorway, coldly amused at the way she jerked back, as if she expected him to lunge at her. He wished he could. He wished he could simply throw her over his shoulder and take her down with him to the soft mattress of the bed behind her. But he knew that, as delightful as it would be to lose himself in her body, it would only delay the inevitable.

Sex had never been their problem. It had been a
weapon, a hiding place, a muddying of already murky waters. He knew with a sudden, devastating insight into the part of himself he preferred to ignore that he could not let it be used as such any longer.

He wanted her back where she belonged, and this time he would have all of her.

“Let me be clear,” he said, his voice clipped. Authoritative. “You will not stay in the village. The fact that you attempted to do so after the childish stunt you pulled with your flight—without my ring on your finger or my name, though you are easily identifiable and must know the shame that casts upon this house—only underscores your selfishness.”

He watched that red flush on her skin deepen one shade darker, then two. Her soft mouth firmed into a hard line he found unaccountably fascinating.

“How incredibly patronizing you are, Leo,” she said coolly, though he could hear temper and something else crackling through her voice. “Patronizing and dismissive.”

Leo shrugged. “If you feel you must call me names because it is difficult for you to accept that you have returned here, I will not blame you,” he said.

Whatever it took, she would truly be his wife again, he vowed. She would be the principessa he had imagined she could be. He would not allow for any other outcome. Not this time.

Her blue eyes blazed into hard sapphires.

“I am having no difficulty at all accepting that I am here,” she bit out. “I am, however, unable to process the fact that you feel comfortable speaking to me as if I am a child.”

“I am well aware that you are not a child,” he said.
His gaze met hers and held. “It has always been your behavior that causes the confusion.”

Her eyes narrowed. He could sense her temper skyrocketing, but could not imagine what it was that so enraged her. The simple truth? He was surprised she had not already thrown something at him, or launched her own body at his, nails like claws, as she would have done in the past.

He watched, fascinated despite himself, as she visibly fought for control. This was not the Bethany he knew. His Bethany was a creature of passion and regret, rages and tears. She threw precious china against the wall, screamed herself hoarse, threw tantrums that shook the ancient stones beneath their feet. She was not capable of reining in her temper once it ignited, like the woman before him.

He could see it in her eyes, the rage and the passion, the fury and the heat. But she did not move to strike him. She did not scream like a banshee. She only faced him.

He did not know if he admired her unexpected fortitude, or felt it as a loss.

“I will not be spoken to as if I am a recalcitrant adolescent or a lowly member of your staff, Leo,” she told him, her voice tight and hard. “I understand that you live in a world where you need only express a desire and it is met, but I am not your underling. I am a grown woman. I do, in fact, know my own mind.”

Leo let out a short laugh. “I am delighted to hear it,” he said. “Does that mean the antique vases are safe from your rampages? I will notify the household staff.”

Her face darkened, but she did not scream at him. Against his will, Leo’s fascination deepened.

“Treat me like a child and I will treat you exactly
the same way,” she said instead, her words very precise, very pointed. “And I very much doubt your exalted sense of self could handle it.”

She was an adult? She had outgrown her childishness? He was thrilled, he told himself, eyeing her narrowly. Overjoyed, in fact. Wasn’t that why he’d allowed her to run off to Canada in the first place? She had been so very young when he had met her; far younger than her years. Hadn’t he wanted her to mature?

He had only himself to blame if he did not quite care for the specific direction her show of maturity had taken—if he found he preferred the angry child to this unknowable woman who stood before him with unreadable eyes.

“You are still my wife,” he said after a long moment, his tone even. “As long as that is true, you cannot stay in the village. It will cause too much comment.”

“Thank you for speaking to me as an adult for once,” she said. Her chin tilted up and her bright eyes sparkled with a combination of defiance and a certain resignation that made his hackles rise. “What does that say about you, I wonder, that it was so hard to do?”

“I
TRUST
that was rhetorical,” he said mildly enough.

But Leo’s gaze was too sharp, and Bethany knew that she could no longer maintain any pretense of calm if she continued to look at him.

She moved, restless and more agitated than she wanted to admit, wandering further into the room. She let her gaze dance over the painting that dominated the far wall, a richly imagined, opulently hued rendition of the view outside these very windows, give or take a handful of centuries, painted by no less an artist than Titian.

Murano glass vases glowed scarlet and blue on the dresser, picking up the light from the Venetian chandelier that hung from the ceiling high above. Bethany knew that one of this room’s more famous occupants hundreds of years ago had been the daughter of a grand and noble Venetian family, and this room had ever since been adapted to pay homage to her residency.

What legacy might Bethany have left behind, she wondered, had she stayed? Would she have left her mark at all or would she have been swallowed whole into this castle, this family, this history? Annoyed by her sentimentality, and that wrenching sense of loss that inevitably followed, she shook the thought away.

She pretended she was not aware of Leo still standing in the doorway that connected his suite to hers. She pretended she could not feel the weight of his gaze and the far heavier and more damaging crush of the memories she fought to keep from her mind tugging at her, pulling at her, making her feel as if she waded through molasses.

Yet, despite herself, she was attuned to his every movement, his every breath.

“Dinner will be served at eight o’clock,” he said in his inexorable way when the silence in the room seemed to pound in her ears. “And, yes, we still maintain tradition and dress for dinner.”

She turned back toward him, hoping the fact that she was wearing jeans annoyed him as much as it had three years ago, when he had had his social secretary admonish her for her relentlessly common fashion-sense. She had been seen wearing them in the village, where anyone might have recognized her—oh, the horror.

“As you are not a student but the
Principessa di Felici
, it would be preferable if you dressed in a manner more befitting your station,” the dry, disapproving Nuncio had told her.

She reminded herself that she had only moments ago claimed to have grown up; such spiteful, petty thoughts rather undermined that claim.

She smiled with as much politeness as she could muster and waved a hand toward her bag where it stood near the door.

“As you can see, I brought very little,” she said. “I doubt I have anything appropriate. I am more than happy to take a tray in my room.”

“There is no need,” Leo said smoothly, a smile playing near his sensual lips.

He moved then, his long strides bringing him far too close to her until he stopped at the large dressing-room that led away from the bed chamber itself. He opened the door and indicated the interior with a slight nod.

“Your wardrobe remains intact.”

Bethany felt her mouth open and snapped it closed.

“You cannot mean …?” She blinked. “I have been gone for three years.”

Leo’s smile deepened. “Eight o’clock,” he said soft ly.

She did not know why she should feel so …disarmed. She did not know why it felt as if he had kept her things out of some sense of emotional attachment to her—when she knew such a thing to be impossible. Leo did not have emotional attachments, to her or to anyone. It was far more likely that he had simply forgotten this room existed the moment she’d left and the contents of her closet along with it.

Still, she felt a fluttering in her stomach and a kind of ache in her chest.

Leo was too close now, within a single step, and she knew the exact moment that both of them realized that: the air seemed to disappear even as it heated. His eyes grew darker, more intent. His smile took on an edge that made a tight coil of need twist inside of her.

“No,” she said, but it was little more than a whisper. Need. Longing. She did not know which was worse.

“What are you refusing?” he asked, taunting her. “I have offered you nothing.”

Yet, was the unspoken next word. It seemed to shimmer between them. Bethany could imagine his hands cupping her face, his hard, impossible mouth on hers. She knew exactly how it would feel, exactly how deeply and fully she would feel it.

But she knew better than to let him touch her. She
knew better than to trust herself this close to him. It was not him she feared, it was herself. Once she touched him again, how could she ever stop?

“I am here for one reason, Leo,” she said, wanting to back away from him but worried that doing so would make her look weak, and encourage him to push his advantage. “I am not here to dress in fancy gowns for lavish dinners I do not want, much less to play bedroom games with you.”

“Bedroom games?” His voice was like chocolate, dark and sweet. “I am intrigued. What sort of games do you have in mind?”

“A divorce,” she said, feeling desperate. He still had yet to move! He simply looked at her in that knowing, shattering way, and it made her shiver. Her body wanted everything he had to offer and more. It always had. “All I want is a divorce. That is the only thing I have on my mind.”

“So you have mentioned, I think,” Leo said in that low, rich voice that seemed to connect directly to her nerve endings, sending sensations rippling throughout her limbs. “Repeatedly.”

There was no magic, she told herself fiercely. He was not magical. It was simply because she was here, in this room, in this castle, in Italy. It was not his voice. It was not
him
. It was only the past, yet again.

If she turned her head too quickly she feared she would see her own ghost and his entwined together—on the thick rug beneath their feet, up against the door, on the window seat. They had always been insatiable. As their marriage had worn on and worsened, that had often been their only form of communication.

But those were ghosts, and this was now, and she knew exactly what that light in his eyes meant.

“I am sorry if I have begun to bore you,” she managed to say. “A solution, of course, is to allow me to remain in this room until we go to court. You need never see me until then.”

She sounded desperate to her own ears, yet Leo only smiled, a lazy, knowing smile that sent heat spiraling through her until her toes curled inside her shoes. It would be far too easy simply to move toward him. She knew he would catch her. He would sweep her into his arms and she would lose herself completely in that raging wildfire that was his to command.

A huge part of her wanted that, needed that, more than she wanted anything else—even her freedom. And that terrified her.

If she touched him, if she pressed her lips to his, she would forget. She would forget everything, as if it had all been a nightmare and he was the light of day. Wasn’t that exactly what he’d done for her after her father had died? But she had no idea how she would ever fight her way out of it—not again. Not whole.

And she could not be this broken again. Not ever again.

“That would not suit me at all,” he said, his attention focused on her mouth. “As I think you know.”

“I don’t want you to touch me!” she threw at him from the depths of her fear, her agony and her broken heart. Because she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she could not trust herself, not where he was concerned. She still wanted him too much. She bit her lip but then pulled herself together somehow, even as his arrogant brows climbed high.

“I beg your pardon?” He was all hauteur, untold centuries of nobility.

“You heard me.” She looked around as if there was
anything that might redirect her focus when he was standing so close. She sucked in a breath and returned her gaze to his. “The chemistry between us is damaging. It can only lead to confusion.”

“I am not confused,” he offered, smirking slightly.

“I do not want you,” she lied, in a matter-of-fact voice. She did not smile; she met his gaze. “Not in that way. Not at all.”

She expected his temper. His disbelief. She was unprepared for the full force of his devastating smile. He crossed his arms over his tautly muscled chest and gazed at her almost fondly. Somehow, that was far worse than any sardonic expression. It made her almost yearn.

“You are such a liar,” he said softly, without heat. Flustered, she began to speak, but he cut her off. “You want me, Bethany. You always have and you always will, no matter what stories you choose to tell yourself.”

“Your conceit is astonishing,” she said even as her heart leapt in her chest and her legs felt shaky underneath her. Even as she felt the roll and sway, the seductive pull, of all that grief just beneath.

“Just as I want you,” he said, shrugging as if it was of no matter to him—as, she reminded herself forcefully, it doubtless was not. “It is inconvenient, perhaps, but nothing more dangerous than that.”

“Leo, I am telling you—” she began, feeling flushed and edgy.

“You need not concern yourself,” he interrupted her, his words casual, almost offhand, though his gaze burned. “I have no intention of seducing you into my bed. In fact, I will not touch you at all as long as you are here.”

She stared at him, letting those unexpected words sink in, telling herself that this was exactly what she
wanted to hear, that this would make everything easy, that this was what she wanted. Though she could not entirely ignore the empty feeling that swamped her suddenly, nearly taking her off her feet.

“I am happy to hear that,” she said. His eyes seemed to see straight through her and she was as terrified of what he might see as of what she might feel. What she already felt.

His smile took on that edge again and the tension between them seemed to crackle with new electricity, making it hard to breathe.

“I will leave it to you,” he said in that compelling voice of his that slid like whiskey and chocolate over her, through her, inside of her.

“To me?” She could hardly do more than echo him.

“If you want me, Bethany, you must come to me.” His deep-brown eyes were mesmerizing, so dark and rich, with that gold gleam within. His voice lowered. “You must be the one to touch me, not the other way around.”

“That will work perfectly,” she said, her voice betraying her by cracking even as her breasts and her hidden core grew heavy and ached, yearned. “As I have absolutely no intention—”

“There are your intentions and then there is reality,” he said smoothly. His gaze sharpened suddenly, catching her off-guard. “You cannot keep your hands off me. You never could. But you prefer to pretend that the passion between us is something I use to control you. Is that not what you said so memorably? That I would prefer it if I could keep you chained to my bed? It certainly makes you feel more the martyr to think so.”

Bethany’s mouth fell open then. There was a heat
behind her eyes and a riot in her limbs as she tried to make sense of what he was saying—what he was doing or, more to the point, deliberately not doing.

“I am not a martyr,” was all she could think to say, instantly wishing she could yank the words back into her mouth. She did not feel like a martyr, she felt adrift and unsteady, as she had always felt here.

“Indeed you are not,” he said softly, deliberately, that gleam in his eyes growing hard, seeming to take over the room, her pounding heart. “What you are is a liar. It is entirely up to you to prove otherwise.”

He thought she was a liar. He had said it before, and she had no doubt he meant it. It was almost amusing, she thought, unable to look away from him for a long, searing moment. It should have been amusing, really, and she wanted to laugh it off, but she found she had no voice. She could not seem to find it.

She could not reply in kind, or at all, and she did not know why that seemed to highlight everything they’d lost. What was being called a liar next to all of that?

“Eight o’clock,” he said with a certain finality and evident satisfaction. “Do not make me come and fetch you.”

Then he walked from the room and left her standing there, shocked, trembling and lost again, so very lost—as he had no doubt planned from the start.

There was so much she had forgotten, Bethany thought as she made her way through the castle’s quiet halls toward dinner moments before eight o’clock, as requested.

She had not expected to find so many memories when she’d ventured into her former closet and searched for something simple to wear to dinner. It was not quite a homecoming, and yet every gown, every bag, every shoe
had seemed to whisper a different half-forgotten story to her.

They had all come flooding back to her without warning, leaving her raw and aching for a past she knew she needed to keep firmly behind her if she was to escape it. But the memories had rushed at her anyway.

A night out at the opera in Milan, where the glorious voices had seemed to pale next to the fire in Leo’s gaze that she’d believed could burn out everything else in the world. A weekend at a friend’s villa outside of Rome, replete with sunshine and laughter—and with her growing fear that she was losing him a constant sharpness underneath.

A rare public eruption of his fiercely contained temper on a side street in Verona while walking to a business dinner, quick, brutal and devastating. A passionate moment on a quiet bridge in Venice; the explosive, impossible desire that still shimmered between them had been the only way left to reach each other across the walls of bitterness and silence they’d erected.

So many images and recollections, none of which she had entertained in ages, all of them buffeting her, storming her defenses, making her feel weak, small, vulnerable in ways she hadn’t been in years.

She ran her hands along the swell of her hips as she walked, smoothing the silken, kelly-green material that flowed to her feet, trying to calm herself. The simple cowl-necked dress was the only item she’d been able to find that was both relatively restrained and unconnected to any of the explosive memories she had not known she’d been carrying around with her.