“I don’t think so,” she countered, shooting him a quick glare while she hopped on one foot to pull on her shorts. “I think you said just what you meant.”
He got dressed too, but with more casual, easy movements than she managed. “You are overreacting.”
“Really?” She hooked her bra and then grabbed her shirt. Pulling it on, too, she asked, “Then what would your reaction be if I asked you to forget about prosecuting my family?”
He went still as stone, his pale blue eyes fixed on her, looking like chips of ice.
“Could you let them go?” She already knew the answer but she had to hear him say it.
Then he surprised her. Again.
“If I let them go,” he said shortly, his voice as cool as the gleam in his eyes, “what do I get out of it?”
She threw her hair back out of her eyes. “I’ll stay with you.”
“For how long?”
This cost her. Humiliation flushed her cheeks as she realized she was blackmailing her husband into keeping their marriage alive. He wanted her. The passion between them was strong. And this last week she’d seen a side of him she hadn’t seen since five years before. Maybe, she told herself, if she stayed and they were together long enough, love would eventually win the day.
“Forever,” she said simply, surrendering her last ounce of pride. “Or for as long as you want me.”
He took a long, deep breath and steadied himself. His eyes were shuttered, emotions sheathed to keep her from reading whatever he was thinking. It seemed to take forever before he finally said, “It’s a deal. The Corettis go free and you stay here. With me.”
She should have been happy. This was exactly what she had wanted so badly. To be able to remain with Rico here on the island. But getting it this way left her feeling as empty as she had during the previous five years. She could only nurture that small, now silent surge of hope and pray that eventually it would prove enough to conquer Rico’s heart at last.
* * *
That hadn’t gone at all as he’d planned.
Rico had spent the last week being the most attentive husband in the world in an attempt to get her to beg him to let her stay. That way he could keep his word to her family and hold on to his pride at the same time.
But she’d turned the tables on him.
Pacing the perimeter of his office two days after their sojourn at the waterfall, he felt caged. As if somehow he had wandered into a trap of his own making and now there was no way out.
“It was telling her that I wouldn’t let her leave if she was pregnant,” he muttered, scraping one hand across the back of his neck.
But he didn’t know how he could have handled that any differently. Yes, he wanted her. Yes, he loved her still. But he couldn’t tell her that without handing her all of the power in the negotiation that was sure to follow. So instead he got a wife who had once again become a hostage for her family.
She had traded her freedom for theirs and now he would never know if she would have chosen to stay simply because she loved him.
“Idiot.” He kicked his desk for good measure as he made another pass around the room and the resulting pain was only what he deserved.