His Mistress with Two Secrets(32)

“One placenta,” she said with a bemused shrug. “I realize it’s like your family has been struck by lightning three times. I’m buying lotto tickets, but I’m told that’s not how it works...”

Her joke fell flat.

She had finished her sandwich and was nursing her tea, brow furrowed in contemplation. He always had an urge to kiss that little wrinkle in her brow when she looked like that. She always tsk-tsked at him when he did, complaining it broke her train of thought.

Because he invariably wound up kissing her mouth next, and that led to making love.

That’s probably why he liked to kiss her brow.

Could they make love? What the hell was wrong with him that that was all he could think about as he faced such a daunting prospect? Escape, he supposed. Making love with Cinnia had always provided him with a sense of peace to balance the rapid juggling of priorities that was the rest of his life.

She rubbed between her brows with two fingers, like tension sat there.

“I knew I’d have to tell you,” she mumbled in a disheartened tone. “I was putting it off because I know what you’re going to say, and...” She dropped her hand and said firmly, “I don’t want to marry you.”

In his lifetime, there were a handful of words that had gone through him like bullets. Trella’s been taken. Your father is gone. Now, I don’t want to marry you.

He’d been trying to ignore what she’d said earlier about wanting children with the man she loved. He had been fairly convinced she was in love with him, even though she’d never said the words. Then she had left him.

Today, all that rage she’d aimed at him? His brain told him that came from a scorned heart. He had scorned her. Bye-bye, Cinnia. Yes, he had let her go without a fight. What was he supposed to have done? Denied her the family she had told him from the beginning that she wanted? If she had been telling the truth on her way out the door, and really had wanted to run off and find Mr. Right, to make a family with that unknown man, Henri had been honor bound to let her.

She hadn’t been telling the truth, though. She’d been testing him.

He’d failed, obviously.

Had his rejection killed whatever she had felt?

He pinched the bridge of his nose. It didn’t matter.

“You still have to do it,” he informed her.

“No. I—”

“Cinnia,” he interrupted, unequivocal. “I will accommodate your career if you want to keep working. Dorry can be our nanny. I will give you just about anything you ask of me, but you know that you are coming with me today. Our children must be protected. You know I won’t negotiate on this.”

“No.”

Cinnia had never been a pushover, something he had always admired in her, but Henri had written the book on how to get your way. He didn’t bother saying anything, only gave her a look that warned she was wasting both their time.

“Divorced people raise children apart. If you want to amp up my security, that’s your prerogative, but I’m handling things just fine.”

“Are you?” He scratched his cheek and glanced toward the draped window. “Shall I open those curtains and we’ll see how well you’re keeping the world at bay?”

“Oh, you didn’t drag a swarm of those buzzards here, did you?”

He could have taken steps to lose the cameras they’d picked up at the airport, but he’d been too intent on getting here. “You know what my life is like.”

“I do!” she asserted with a crack in her voice as the words burst out of her. “And I put up with your guards and all the awful trolls who post those nasty things and I never made a peep because it was my choice to be with you. I could have walked away anytime if I didn’t like it. And I did! So don’t ask me to sign up for a lifetime of it. Don’t try to make me.”

His fuse, the one that had slowly been burning down since Killian had set a match to it, reached powder.

“Do you honestly think either of us has a choice?” He managed to keep his voice under a roar, but it was fierce with the bitter vehemence he normally kept pent up. “Don’t tell me how hard it is to live under such attention. I know, damn you.”

She sat back, intimidated by his muted explosion, but he couldn’t contain it. Not if she was going to throw it in his face as the reason she didn’t want to marry him. Damn it, she would understand, if nothing else, that it wasn’t just a nuisance, but a life-threatening menace.

“Trella wasn’t kidnapped because we’re rich. We were valuable because we’d been portrayed as a national treasure. I didn’t sign up for that. None of us did! And did they have the decency to give us privacy after she was rescued? Hell, no! It was worse!”