Matched to a Billionaire(34)

His pencil trailed across the paper and in seconds, graphite lines   appeared in the form of a woman. He groaned and shut his eyes. Then   opened them. What the hell. Nothing else was coming out of his brain.

As his long-suppressed muse whispered halting, undisciplined   inspiration, his hand captured it, transforming the vision into the   concrete. Details of Daniella's shape flowed onto the paper. Glorious.   Ethereal. So beautiful his chest ached. The ache spread, squeezing his   lungs and biting through muscle painfully.

Sweat broke out across the back of his neck and his hand cramped but he   didn't stop. He yanked more minutiae, more emotion, from a place deep   inside until he was nearly spent.

Another. More paper. Draw.

As if the drawing conjured the woman, Leo glanced up to see his wife   standing in the doorway of his office. In the flesh. Dear God, Daniella   was luminous in a blue dress and sky-high heels that emphasized the   delicate arch to her feet.

Heart pounding, he slipped a blank sheet over the drawing and shoved   everything he'd just freed back into its box. He glanced at the clock.   It was eight-thirty. And dark. When had that happened?

"What are you doing here?" he asked her and stood. Nice greeting for your wife, moron.

"I came to see you. Do you have a few minutes?" She waltzed in as if he'd said yes.

He hadn't seen her awake since Sunday, but his body reacted as if she'd   slid up against him into that niche where she fit like clinging honey   instead of taking a seat on the couch in his sitting area.

"Would you like to sit down?" she offered politely, every bit the queen   of the manor despite the fact that his business acumen paid the rent on   this office space. Or it used to. He was this close to selling   caricatures on the street if something didn't change ASAP.                       
       
           



       

He sat on the other couch. Good. Distance was good. Kept their interaction impersonal. "How are you?"

"Fine. Elise offered me a job today."

She smoothed her skirt and crossed her legs, which he watched from the   corner of his eye. It was so much more powerful a blow to witness those   legs sliding together when he knew what they felt like against his.  What  he felt like when she was near him, even when they weren't  touching.

"A job? As a matchmaker?"

"As a tutor. She asked me to help her polish the women she accepts into her program. Hair, makeup. That sort of thing."

"You'd be a natural. Are you here to ask my permission? I certainly don't mind if you-"

"I'm here to ask if there's the smallest possibility you could ever love me."

A knot the size of a Buick hardened in his chest. All his carefully   constructed arguments regarding the status of their relationship had   ended up forming a bridge to nowhere. Probably because he could hardly   convince her of it when he'd failed to convince himself.

"Daniella, we've been over this."

"No, we haven't." She clasped her hands together so tightly one of her   knuckles cracked. "I told you I loved you and you freaked."

That was a pretty accurate assessment. "Well, I don't want to rehash it.   We have an arranged marriage with a useful design. Let's stick with   it."

"Sorry. We're rehashing it right now. Extenuating circumstances caused   me to give up what I really want in a marriage. And extenuating   circumstances have caused me to reevaluate. I love you and want you to   love me. I need to know if we can have a marriage based on that."

I love you. Why did that settle into so many tender places inside all at once?

"You make it sound simple. It's not," he said, his voice inexplicably   gruff. All the emotions drawing had dredged up weren't so easily   controlled as they would have been if he'd resisted the temptation in   the first place.

"Explain to me what's complicated about it."

Everything.

"You want me to choose you over my company and that's an impossible place to be."

"I'm not asking you to do that. I would never presume to take away something so important to you. Why can't you have both?"

It was the juggling-act conversation all over again. As if it was simple   to just choose to have both. This would always be a problem-he saw  that  now. And now was the time to get her crystal clear on the subject.  Get  them both clear.

"I'm not built that way. I don't do anything halfway, something you   might better appreciate after this past weekend. Surely you recall how   thoroughly I threw myself into pleasuring you." He raked his gaze over   her deliberately to make the point and a gorgeous blush rose up in her   cheeks. Which made him feel worse for God knew what reason. "I went to a   matchmaker to find a wife who would be happy with what I could provide   financially and overlook the number of hours I put into my company.   Because I don't do that halfway, either. One side is going to suffer."

All or nothing. And when it came to Daniella, he was so far away from nothing, he couldn't even see nothing.

Her keen gaze flitted over his expression and it wasn't difficult to   pinpoint the exact instant she gleaned more than he'd intended. "But   that doesn't mean you don't have feelings for me, just that you're too   afraid to admit something unexpected happened between us."

"What do you want me to say, Daniella?" His voice dipped uncontrollably   as he fought to keep those feelings under wraps. "That you're right?   That of all the things I expected to happen in our marriage, this   conversation was so far down the list it was nearly invisible?"

Her bottom lip trembled. "I want you to say what's in your heart. Or are you too afraid?"

She didn't get it. He wasn't afraid of what was in his heart; he just   couldn't give in to it. The cost of loving her was too high.

"My heart is not up for discussion."

Nodding, she stood up. "Security is vitally important to me and I   married you to get it. It was the only way I could guarantee my mother   would be taken care of. Elise changed that today. I can support my   mother on the salary she'll pay me."

An arctic chill bit into his skin, creeping through the pores to flash freeze his whole body. "Are you asking me for a divorce?"

Please, God, no.

If he lost her, it was what he deserved.

She shook her head. "I'm telling you I have a choice. And I'm making it.   I took lifetime vows I plan to honor. Now I'm giving you a chance to   make a choice as well as to how that marriage will look. Get off the   sidelines, love me and live happily ever after. Or we'll remain married,   I'll manage your personal life but I'll move back into my own room.   Separate hearts, separate bedrooms. What are you going to do?"                       
       
           



       

Panic clawed at his insides, a living thing desperate to get out and not   particular about how many internal organs it destroyed in its quest.   She wanted something worse than a divorce. The one thing money couldn't   buy-him. His time. His attention. His love.

"That's ridiculous," he burst out and clamped his mouth closed until he   could control what came out of it. "I told you what I need, which is  for  you to be happy with what I can give. Like I've told you from the  very  beginning. You're throwing that back at me, drawing a line. You or   Reynolds Capital Management."

A tear tracked down her cheek. "Don't you see, Leo? You drew that line. Not me."

"My mistake. The line you drew is the one where you said I can't sleep with you anymore unless I'm in love with you."

"Yes. That is my fault." Her head dropped and it took an enormous amount   of will to keep from enfolding her in his arms. But he was the source   of her pain, not the solution. "My mother...she's an amazing woman, but   she has a very jaded view of marriage and I let it fool me into   believing I could be happy with a loveless arrangement. And I probably   would have been if you were someone different. Someone I couldn't love.   Be the husband I need, Leo."

She raised her head and what he saw in the depths of her shiny eyes   nearly put him on his knees, prostrate before her in desperate apology,   babbling, "Yes, I will be that husband," or worse, telling her he'd do   anything as long as she'd look at him like that forever: as though he   was worthy of being loved, even though he'd rejected her over and over   again.