“Until your thieving family returns my property.”
She flushed and was grateful he hadn’t seen it. Hard to argue with the truth, no matter how much she’d like to. “This is only about the dagger then?”
“Oh,” he said, turning to face her. “It is about much more than that.”
The warm, soft trade winds blew across the terrace, ruffling Rico’s collar-length black hair. His eyes were shuttered, emotion carefully hidden beneath a veneer of contempt.
She shivered a little at the ice in his gaze and remembered a time when his eyes had held nothing but heat when he looked at her. A time when the two of them hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other. A time when passion had sizzled in the air and hunger was never sated. But the past was as ephemeral as the trade winds, blowing through her heart and mind and passing all too quickly.
“What exactly is it that you want from me, Rico?”
“I want you,” he said flatly.
The ice inside her melted in a flash, dwarfed by a rush of heat that boiled her blood and fried her bones. “You what?”
“I want you here,” he said, leaning casually against the railing. Feet crossed at the ankles, arms folded across his chest, he added plainly, “In my bed.”
“You do?” Had she read him completely wrong? Had he really kept their marriage alive because he still felt something for her? Was this his way of telling her that he wanted them to be together again?
“For one month,” he qualified, splintering whatever rainbow-and-unicorn thoughts that were still revolving through her mind.
“What?”
“You heard me,” he said. “And you’re lucky I’m not demanding the five years that you were gone.”
She blinked.
“You will stay here for one month. You will share my bed like a good wife.”
“You are not going to blackmail me into sex.”
“Of course not. But we will sleep in the same bed. And when we do have sex again, Teresa, it will be your idea,” he said, giving her a knowing smile. “You remember how good it was between us…”
Oh, she really did.
“So blackmail won’t be necessary.”
He was probably right, God help her.
“As I was saying,” Rico continued, “at the end of that month, your brother returns my property and I let you go—with a real divorce this time. More,” he added when she opened her mouth to speak, “I’ll give you the evidence I hold against the Coretti family. You can destroy it yourself.”
Wow. Her brain had a lot to sift through: everything he’d said, the cold way he’d said it and the right way to react. Her thoughts tumbled over each other in a crash of confusion until she was finally able to concentrate on the single word that stood out from the rest.
“Destroy?” she asked. “You’d turn it all over to me?”
“I will,” he assured her, then lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug. “And I don’t lie.”