Princess From the Past (9 page)

What did that say about the kind of man he was? But he was afraid he already knew, and he did not care for the twist of self-recrimination that the knowledge brought him.

He could remember all too well his father’s thundering voice booming through the halls of the Di Marco estates, the shouting and the sneering, his mother’s bowed head and set, miserable expression. He remembered the way his mother had flinched away from the strong, cruel fingers on her upper arm. He remembered the curl of his father’s lip when he had referred to her, when she’d not been in the room—and, worse, when she had been.

Leo did not like the juxtaposition at all.

But it was impossible, he told himself grimly. He was not Domenico Di Marco, the bully. He had never laid a finger on his wife. He had never done anything that should make any woman cower from him in fear, much less this particular woman. He had spent his life ensuring that he was absolutely nothing like his father.

Except … He remembered the look in Bethany’s eyes three years ago. That misery. That fear. He had found it infuriating then—unacceptable that she could be so desperately miserable when he had given her so much and asked for so little in return. It had never crossed his mind that she might have had the slightest reason to feel that way.

She’d had no reason! he told himself angrily. Just as she has no basis for her accusations now!

Later, he sat in a boardroom packed with financial advisors and consultants who were paid to impress him. He pretended to watch yet one more presentation with
the discerning eye for which he was so renowned. But he could not seem to concentrate on dry facts and figures, projections and market analysis. He could not seem to think of anything but Bethany.

I do not think marriage should be a monarchy, he heard her say over and over again on an endless loop in his brain. I am tired of feeling flattened by you.

His instinct was to dismiss what she said out of hand. She would say anything to try to hurt him. She had proven that to be true over and over again. She was interested in scoring points, that was all.

But he could not quite believe it.

It would have been one thing if she’d lapsed into her customary hysteria. It was so easy to ignore what she said when it was screamed or accompanied by a flying missile in the form of priceless china or ancient vases. But the Bethany who had faced him this morning had not flown off the handle, though she had been visibly upset by one more round in their endless, excruciating war.

She had fought for calm instead of succumbing to her temper and emotions, yet even so he had seen exactly how much that fight had cost her. He had seen the defeat and the pain written across her face as if, once more, he had disappointed her.

He wished that did not eat at him, but it did.

You only want me if you can keep me in a convenient box of your choosing, she had said. It resonated within him in a way he hated. She had accused him of wanting to be the father figure, the parent, the adult in their relationship. He had never wanted that, had he? That had been a reaction to her, hadn’t it? Never a husband, she had said. Always the parent. What could I be, except a child?

A feeling he did not like at all snaked through him then as he accepted the fact that three years ago, he would not even have tried to figure out where she was coming from. He had not bothered.

He had simply let her go when it had occurred to him that perhaps the polish and experience of a few years’ growth might work wonders for the brand new, far-too-young wife he had inexplicably taken, upsetting a lifetime’s worth of expectations. He had been weary of all the fighting, all the wild uncertainty and drama. He had wanted her to turn into the wife he had been expected to marry all along, the wife he’d always been told he, as the
Principe di Felici
, needed to marry to fulfill his obligations. He had wanted her to be dutiful and unobjectionable.

What was that, if not a box? The very same box, in fact, in which he had lived his whole life?

The day’s business was concluded in due course, and Leo sat through a tedious dinner with his soon-to-be new partners, forcing himself to play along with the expected joviality when he could not have felt less disposed to do so. Finally, after an endless round of drinks and toasts—that he found slightly premature, given the contracts that had yet to be signed and his lawyers’ ability to ferret out objections to every clause they viewed—he was able to retire to his rooms and drop the act.

He had long ago stopped questioning how Bethany could haunt him so thoroughly in places she had never been. And yet, as he sat out on the balcony and soaked in the mild Sydney autumn night, it was as if she sat beside him, astride him. It was as if he could smell the rich, sweet scent of her skin, as if he could hear the
cadence of her voice echo all around him, as if from the city itself.

Was every man doomed to become his father? He rejected the idea, but it was harder to push away than it should have been. Because, if he cast aside his own anger and frustration long enough, the view into their marriage from Bethany’s perspective was not at all pretty. He had failed her.

He faced the truth of that and sighed slightly.

He had not protected her from his spiteful cousins, when he should have known the trouble they would cause with their insinuations and their ingrained snobbery. He had not properly prepared her for how different his daily life was from their Hawaiian idyll. And he had been the older, experienced one. He still was. It had surely been his responsibility to make sure she felt secure, safe, at home in a place that he knew had been wildly foreign to her. And he had not done it.

He had not done it.

He had been so quick to accuse her of all manner of ills, but he had never thought to examine his own behavior. Who was the child—the woman who had been so sheltered and naïve? Or the man who had such a high opinion of himself it had never occurred to him to see what responsibility lay at his feet for the mess of his own marriage?

Leo sat in the dark for a long time, staring out at the lights of the city, lost in his own thoughts. In the past. Deep in a pair of bright blue eyes he was determined he would see smiling once again, if it killed him.

“I
DO NOT
wish to put you in a box,” Leo announced, striding into the small drawing room off the principessa’s suite.

Bethany was so startled she dropped the book she was reading, letting the heavy first edition thud to the floor beside the gracefully bowed legs of the scarlet and white settee.

“Quite the contrary.”

She had not seen him in days. Four days, to be precise.

She sat up, swinging her legs to the floor and straightening her shoulders as her eyes drank him in, as they always did and always had, no matter how angry and hurt she had been when he reappeared. She could not seem to help herself. Her heart leapt, no matter how sternly she lectured herself against such foolishness.

Since she could not control it, she tried instead to ignore it, and focused on him instead.

He looked …different, somehow. Bethany’s senses, more attuned to him than she was at all comfortable with, whispered an alert.

Leo’s dark eyes glittered in a way that made the edgy need in her belly punch to life and roll lower, setting her alight. His mouth was set into a firm, determined line.
He was dressed impeccably in a black jacket over a soft cashmere sweater, his legs packed into dark trousers. Even relatively casually dressed, he was fully the prince. Only he could look so regal so effortlessly.

“I am delighted to hear it,” she said, eyeing him warily.

She felt vulnerable, somehow, as if she’d arranged herself on the settee simply to tempt him, with her curls in wild abandon and a soft wool throw over her bare feet. When, of course, she could not have known he would appear today. If she had, she would not have worn the casual denim jeans she knew annoyed him, much less the skimpy, tissue-thin T-shirt that she was afraid showed far more than it should.

She would have chosen far better armor to ward him off, to keep him at arm’s length where he belonged.

As if he could read her as easily as she’d read the novel at her feet, Leo’s full lips quirked slightly, knowingly. Mockingly, she thought, and frowned.

She did not understand the tension that rolled through the room, seeming to rebound off of the elegant wall-hangings. She told herself it was no more complicated than his sudden return, his unexpected appearance before her.

The castello had been a very different place while he’d been gone. She could remember what it had been like before, every time Leo had left on another one of his business trips. He had gone to Bangkok, New York, Tokyo, Singapore—and she had been trapped.

In retrospect, it was so easy to see how well the cousins had played on her fears. While Leo had been in residence, they’d been nothing but charming—yet once he’d left, they’d attacked. But this time the castello had been empty of their negative voices.

Bethany had been able to wander through it at her leisure, with no one whispering poison in her ear or pointing out her unsuitability at every turn. It was as if she’d come to the place brand new. As if it were scrubbed free of ghosts.

She had not cared for the softening she had felt as she moved through the place, exploring it as if it were a beloved museum of a house she’d once known, a home. As if, given the opportunity, she could truly fall in love with it as she had when she’d first laid eyes on it so long ago.

She did not feel so differently about the man, she thought as she studied him now, and that shook her, down to her bones and back again. Her frown deepened, even as her heart began to pound.

“You look as if you have seen a ghost,” he said with his usual inconvenient perceptiveness. Bethany actually smiled then, very nearly amused at her own predictability where this man was concerned, but covered it by leaning down and reaching for her book.

“Quite the opposite,” she murmured.

She straightened and pushed her curls back from her face with one hand. She wished she had tamed the great mess of them into an elegant chignon or a sleek bun. She wished she had it in her to be appropriate. But then, she reminded herself, she had no need to seek his approval any longer. She told herself she did not want to, in any event, no matter the quickening in her pulse.

She placed the book next to her on the settee, and took her time about looking up at him again. “I hope you have come to tell me it is time to visit the divorce court?”

His expression darkened. He was still propped up against the doorjamb, yet somehow he had taken over
the whole of the small room in that way of his, using up all the air, stealing all the light.

“I am afraid not,” he drawled. There was something she couldn’t quite understand in his tone, something she did not want to comprehend in his gaze. “Though your impatience is duly noted.”

“I have been here for days and days,” she pointed out mildly enough. “I did not ask you to travel half the world away. Once again, I must remind you that I have an entire life in Toronto—”

“You do not need to remind me, Bethany,” he interrupted silkily, her name like some kind of incantation on his lips. She shivered involuntarily. His gaze slammed into hers. “I think of your lover often. It is a subject I find unaccountably captivating.”

Her breath deserted her then, and she realized that she had actually forgotten all about that seemingly harmless lie. She wrenched her gaze away from his and contemplated her hands for one moment, then another, while she attempted to remain calm. Why did she have the near-overwhelming urge to confess the truth to him? Did she really believe that would change anything?

“My lover,” she repeated.

“Of course,” Leo said, his gaze never leaving her face. “We must make sure we do not forget him in all of this.”

She fought off the flush of temper that colored her face. None of that mattered now. And she knew why he pretended to care about any lover she might have taken—he sought to own her, to control her, because she bore his name. It was about his reputation. His honor. Him—and that damned Di Marco legacy that he saw as being the most important part of himself.

“I am surprised that you have taken the news of him
so …easily,” she said, holding herself too still. “I rather thought you would have a different reaction.”

“The fact that you have taken a lover, Bethany, is a grave and deep insult to my honor and to my name,” Leo said softly, a thundercloud in his coffee eyes—confirming her own conclusions that simply. But then his brows rose. “But, since you are in such a great hurry to divest yourself of that name, thus removing the stain upon the Di Marco name, why should I object?”

She stared at him, a mix of despair and fury swirling in her belly, making her flush red. He would never, ever change. He could not change. She even understood that salient truth differently now, having had these past days to really investigate the mausoleum where he’d been raised, and having finally, belatedly understood the kind of life he must have led.

He had been carefully cultivated his whole life to be exactly who he was. He’d been educated, molded, primed and prepared to assume his title, his wealth, his lands and his many business concerns. She was the idiot for having ever expected something different.

And if his belief that she could have betrayed him would help her gain her freedom, that was what she wanted. What she needed. She did not really believe that she could hurt him—that it was possible to hurt him. She told herself the softening she felt inside, the longing to explain herself, was no more than a distraction. She took a deep breath and refused to allow herself that distraction.

“What is your excuse this time?” she asked finally.

She raised her gaze to his and was surprised at the expression she found there. Not the fury she might have
expected. Something softer, more considering. More dangerous. Her pulse skipped, then took on a staccato beat.

“For not going to court immediately?” she hastened to add.

He shrugged, a wonderfully unconcerned Italian gesture that should not have warmed her as it did. What was the matter with her? Their most recent parting had been bleak, and yet she practically fell at his feet simply because he’d bothered to return?

She was aghast at her own weakness. Her susceptibility. She knew that his vow to keep from touching her was a godsend. It might very well be the only thing that saved her from herself.

“It is Friday afternoon,” he said. When she stared at him blankly, he laughed. “The court is not open on the weekend, Bethany. And Monday is a holiday. I am afraid you must suffer through a few more days as my wife.”

She could not understand the undercurrents that swirled between them then. It was as if he’d changed somehow, as if everything had changed without her noticing it—but why should it have? She remembered his bitter expression in the breakfast room, the things he’d said, the same old cycle of their frustrating conversation. Blame, recrimination and that ever-tightening noose of shame and hurt she carried inside of her, made all the more acute when she was with him.

She’d had days to ponder the whole of that interaction, and had come away none the wiser. Yet somehow she was even further determined to simply put an end to the back and forth. What was the point of it, when it got them nowhere, when it only made her feel worse?

He moved farther into the room and Bethany had to fight the urge to rise to her feet, to face him on a more equal physical level. The room was too small, she told herself, and he too easily dominated it. That did not mean he dominated her. She would not let it. She would not let him.

“Have you ever wondered what would happen if I did not, as you say, keep you in a box?” he asked, his voice so smooth, so quiet, it washed through her like wine. Like heat. It took her too long to make sense of what he’d said. She blinked. If he had produced a second head from the back of his sweater and begun speaking with it, Bethany could not have been more surprised.

“Of course I have,” she said, too shocked to be careful. “Just as I wonder what the world would be like if Santa Claus were real, or if all manner of magical creatures walked among us.”

He did not take the bait. His inky dark brows rose, daring her, and she felt herself flush. Then, unaccountably, an edgy kind of anger swept through her, cramping her belly and making her pulse pound.

“I am not going to play games with you, Leo,” she said stiffly, a sudden, terrific storm swirling inside of her, clouds and panic and thunder. She shot to her feet and found her hands in tight fists at her sides. “I am not going to have fairy tale conversations with you, or salt the wounds with discussions of ‘what if.’”

“Coward.”

It was such a little word, said so softly, almost kindly—yet it set Bethany ablaze. She felt the kick of her temper like a wildfire and clamped down on it desperately. She would not implode. She would not give him the satisfaction of making her do so. She would not crack, not now, not after she had worked so hard to
remain calm and cool around him. She only glared at him mutinously.

“You are a coward,” he repeated with a gleam in his eyes that she could not mistake for anything save what it was: satisfaction. That he was getting to her. That he could poke at her. He was not the only one with the ability to read things he should not be able to see. “You have complained at length that I did this thing to you, that I insisted upon it—but, when I ask you to imagine what it might be like if I did not, you lose your temper. You cannot even have the conversation. What are you afraid of?”

“I do not see the point of hypothetical discussions,” she said as icily as she could.

She recognized on some dim level that she wanted to scream. To let everything out in a rush, like a tidal wave. But why should she feel this way? Surely there were any number of things that he’d already said to her that were far, far worse than this game he suddenly wanted to play.

“Then by all means let us not dwell in hypotheticals,” he said smoothly—almost, she thought with sudden suspicion, as if he had planned this. He opened up his hands and spread them wide, as if between them he held all the world. “Consider yourself out of the box, Bethany. What happens now?”

She knew then, with shattering insight, why her reaction was this unwieldy surge of rage, this piping-hot furnace of anger—it covered up the dangerous longing beneath. The quicksand of her long-lost dreams, her once-upon-a-time, naïve wishes, the epic and impossible hopes she’d pinned on this frustrating man. Her prince.

For a long moment she felt suspended in his knowing
gaze, lost in it, as if he was truly offering her the things she was afraid to admit she still wanted.

Wanted once, she amended quickly, but no more. I want nothing from him any longer—this is only a memory. Just a game. It’s not real.

It could not be real. What she felt as she stared at him was an echo, surely? Nothing more.

“Why would you want to do this?” she heard herself ask as if from afar. As if someone else had said it.

The drawing room, with its scarlets and golds, its exquisitely crafted furniture and graceful wall-hangings, disappeared. She could not feel the floor beneath her bare feet. She could not see anything but his fierce, focused gaze. There was only Leo and the vast sea of things she wanted from him that she could never, ever have.

“Why not?” he asked in the same tone, as if they stood together, yet still not touching, on the edge of a vast precipice and below them was nothing but darkness and turmoil. “What is left for us to lose?”

Bethany understood in that moment that she was every bit the coward that he had called her, and it galled her. Deeply. She felt her temper dissipate as if it had never been, leaving her slightly nauseated in its aftermath. But she took a deep breath, blinked away the sheen of anger and panicked temper in her eyes and confronted the facts. They were steadying, somehow, for all she would have preferred to ignore them.

There was truly nothing left to lose here, just as he’d said. So why was she so determined to protect herself? Why did she imagine her girlish, silly fantasies about who they could have been would matter once these strange in-between days were finished? Why did she
act as if it would kill her to let him know how much she had once wanted him, and how desperately?