"Yes. Apparently they are scared of what you might do-it didn't take me long to find out that you have a reputation, husband." She scowled, and he knew she'd question him on that reputation later. "Now I'll have peace. I said that-" her voice dropped a few octaves "-my husband would not be pleased with their attentions."
He gave up trying to hold in his laughter. "God, you're amazing!" He tugged her into his arms and kissed her smug little face.
"I am glad you understand that." "So what will you do with your degree once you've finished?" he asked, hungry to learn her dreams, to be allowed into the secret world of her hopes and wishes.
"Well, I've only just started but.. .1 thought I might like to be a teacher like the ones at the university."
He caught the uncertainty in her tone. "You'd make a wonderful lecturer."
Her smile bloomed. "Do you really think so? I'd have to do much more studying to become such a teacher. It will take a long time, especially since I want to spend a lot of time with the boys when they are ours, but I think I can do it if I work hard"
"I have every faith in your stubbornness, cher," he joked, touched by the way she was embracing his dream. "If you're not careful, you'll make us respectable. Can you see me at some faculty dinner, discussing business theory?"
She laughed at his horrified tone. "I shall try very hard not to tame you-it's fun having a husband with a reputation such as yours."
He grinned. "Tell me more about your day." A frown marred her face. "Well...many people asked me if I was a model, as if a woman with a certain kind of face could be nothing else."
He moved his hand to her hair and undid her plait, sending that midnight-and-gold glory tumbling over his hands. "I suppose people think that that would be more glamorous than studying."
"Hmm."
"Why didn't you model? Wouldn't it have been a way out?"
"I thought about it." She settled herself more comfortably against him. "It will be hard for you to understand, coming as you do from this country of ultimate freedom, but I'm very old-fashioned. I don't believe in showing my body to anyone but my husband.
"I couldn't do it, not even to escape my home. It would've been a betrayal of myself, a surrender to my father's attempts to change me from the woman I am. I always thought I would think of something else."
"I like being the only one who's seen your body," he whispered, touched by her confession of her deeply held beliefs, of her determination not to compromise those beliefs, even in an attempt to escape the life she'd hated.
Her fingers undid one of his buttons and touched skin. "I know. Every time you look at me, I know you're congratulating yourself on acquiring me."
"Men don't acquire women. We woo them." He bristled.
"When did you woo me?" It was only when she met his gaze that he realized his lovely lady of a wife was enjoying herself by teasing him.
Grumbling, he captured her laughing face and proceeded to kiss her until she was whimpering and agreeing to his every demand. Then he teased her.
Things had been going a little too well as far as Marc was concerned. He supposed he should've expected it all to come falling down around his ears. He'd been kicked viciously by life too many times to take anything for granted.
'There's a letter for you in the mail my assistant just dropped off," he called out, striding into the kitchen the next day. After waking at 4:00 a.m. for an international telephone conference, he'd had no desire to head into his city office. The fact that Hira had had no classes, either, had cinched his decision to telecommute. "It's from within the States."
Hira's face was as curious as his when he handed her the pale-lilac envelope addressed to her, care of his company's post office box number. 'That's strange. I don't know many people yet."
She didn't object when he walked around to stand beside her, one hand idly stroking over her curvy hip. At that moment he was simply interested in the unexpected letter, with no knowledge of the pain that could result from a single small envelope.
Hira tore open the flap and pulled out a card with the words I Love You emblazoned in red on a white background. Marc felt his whole body tighten in readiness for a fight. Who the hell had dared to send his wife love greetings?
"Perhaps it's one of the boys-they make me cards sometimes," Hira muttered, flipping open the cover. Almost immediately she slammed it shut.
"Who is it from?" he insisted, his hand clenching on her hip.
Her face was pale but her answer honest. "Romaz."
"The man you loved?"
"The man I thought I loved," she corrected. "He wasn't who I believed him to be."
But, Marc thought with a gut-wrenching shaft of pain, she'd cared very deeply for this man at one time and there had been no coercion involved. Not like their marriage.
"What does he want?" His wife was entitled to her privacy and he wanted her to trust him.
"He's in the country with his new wife, but he wishes to visit me." She sounded vaguely shocked.
"I see."
Her head jerked up. "What do you see, husband?" Her voice was soft.
He was furious at the gall of the man in contacting Hira through him. "You had feelings for this man once. Now you're my wife, so you won't be seeing him." It came out sounding like an order.
Her eyes narrowed and he knew he'd made a mistake. "Ah, so you never see the women who have been in your bed?"
He blinked. "That's very crude coming from you."
"Perhaps I've decided that with you, a lady will only get crushed into the dirt." She turned to face him fully, those wild eyes of hers furious. "You didn't answer my question."
"Tit for tat?"
"Do you really think me so shallow?"
He rubbed the back of his neck. "No. But I still don't want you seeing him."
"Why?"
There was no answer he could give her that wouldn't betray his snarling possessiveness. Hands fisted, he moved away. "If you're determined to meet him, I can't stop you." His tone was harsh.
Silence, then a quiet, "I'll write him a short note telling him a visit is not possible. Even he should be given
a response."
She turned and walked away, leaving him shaken by the power of the relief he felt at her decision.
That night as they lay in bed Hira turned to her husband. "I've sent Romaz a letter saying that I'm happily married and have no wish to meet with him." She knew her husband would never ask her what she'd said, having too much pride. A woman who married a hunter of a man like him had to know when to bend, for a hunter's pride was part of his emotional armor, something no true wife would ever steal away.
He turned to her, arms folded behind his head, ghost-gray eyes glinting silver in the moonlight shooting through their bedroom windows. "Are you happily married?"
It wasn't a question she'd anticipated. "I suppose I'm happy."
"That's not exactly an avowal of joy." "No, it's not." She sighed. "When I was a girl, I dreamed many dreams about the man I would marry, though I was aware from a very early age that my father saw me as a commodity. I always knew I'd be part of a business deal, so it wasn't such a shock to marry you."
"Ouch." Her husband rose to lean over her, a wry look on his savagely masculine face, a face mat made her heart sigh and her stomach tighten in desire, no matter how hard she tried to resist. And when he smiled that slow smile...
"I thought you might've fallen for my charm."
"You tease me, for you know we didn't speak much before our wedding night." Marc had seen her one night, and the next day he'd agreed to her father's desire to seal the deal with her hand.
At that stage she'd met the American stranger who'd offered her a way out of her father's house exactly twice. And yet he'd seemed by far the better choice. Her womanly instincts had craved him from the first, though the dark intensity in his eyes had scared her.