A Touch of Temptation(18)
Of course he was going to squeeze the moment for everything. “What kind of different?”
Amusement glinted in his gaze. “Are you fishing for a compliment, minha esposinha?”
“Maybe... And stop calling me your wife.” She smoothed her hands over her thighs. The soft, lush silk only heightened her anxiety. “This is not me. I much prefer—”
“Conservatively cut clothes that say ‘look at my brain, not at my breasts.’”
Did he miss anything? “I have to present the right image, work harder than a man for the same level of respect. Not everyone in the business world is as forthcoming as you are with their confidence in my capabilities—much less their...money...” she finished slowly, realizing how much truth there was in her words.
She knew firsthand how ruthless a businessman he was, that the only allowances he made were for hard work. He might have invested in her company in the most twisted way possible, but he hadn’t had to. If he’d truly wanted to leave her with no options he could have really let it all go down the drain...
“Thank you for your investment—for your trust in me,” she said, trying to breathe past the tightness in her chest.
He shrugged. “Only a fool would doubt your company’s success, or your ability to run it whatever your personal life.” His gaze moved over her again quickly. “Although I have to tell you it doesn’t really work.”
She blinked, her skin tingling at his appraisal. “What doesn’t?”
He smiled, apparently finding her stupidity very amusing. “Whatever you wear—even those trousers and shirts that you are so fond of—it doesn’t hide the fact that you’re hot.”
Something latent uncoiled in his gaze—a spark—but was gone before the meaning of his words even sank in. How did he do that? How was he so effortlessly able to look at her with so much desire in his eyes and in the next bank it down to nothing?
She stared at his dark head as he powered up his tablet.
She had thought nothing had changed in him in six years. She was wrong. A lot had—and not just his success.
The man she had married had been a passionate twenty-one-year-old, quick to anger and to love. His emotions had simmered on the surface almost like a glow, a blaze of undiluted energy that lured everyone toward him.
His drive to succeed, his determination to squash anything that lay in his way—she had understood that ambition. But this new, refined man...he had a disconcerting calm, a control to him, that gave no clue as to what was simmering beneath the surface. Unless he told her with that piercing honesty.
She had expected him to question her about the pregnancy. He hadn’t. She had expected him to walk away without a backward glance. He hadn’t. And on top of that he was really here, in New York. Because he wanted to give their marriage a real try.
She couldn’t get the measure of him because everything she had taken for granted before was now hidden beneath a veneer of sophisticated charm, of polite courtesy.
But she knew the man beneath it, and she didn’t buy that façade for a second. If she lowered her guard, if she let him into her life any more than she absolutely had to, she had a feeling he would only strike again. And this time she wouldn’t be able to walk away unscathed.
A scowl on his face, he flicked the tablet off. He leaned forward in a sudden movement, his jaw tight. “So, why the change in how you dress?”
She had a feeling he’d meant to say something else—as if he was working to control himself first. “It’s a friend’s design. I agreed to do her a favor and wear it tonight. Except she tricked me and didn’t deliver it until an hour ago. She knew I wouldn’t—”
“You wouldn’t wear it otherwise? Smart woman,” he said. “She knows that the only way to get you to do something for others is to trick you or to manipulate you.”
His words pricked her with quiet efficiency. “Is this what you mean by creating a happy environment to raise a kid? Throwing continuous barbs at me? Because I’ve seen that marriage. I’m a product of that marriage. And, believe me, it only screws up the kids.”
She leaned back against the seat, feeling as fragile as a piece of glass. How stupid had she been to believe even for a moment that there could be truce between them? Six years of separation wasn’t enough to thaw this anger between them. Or the attraction, for that matter.
“I had...I have every intention of making this work.”
His words weren’t bereft of emotion now. On the contrary, they vibrated with a dark intensity that gave her goosebumps.
“Except you make it so hard to be civilized with you.”