November Harlequin Presents 2(217)

Subtly at first—so subtly she’d hardly even noticed—he commandeered her time, thwarted every arrangement she made. A hastily arranged lunch date with her new husband reason enough to cancel a vague plan to catch up with friends, an impromptu trip invite to join him in Sydney reason enough for Lily not to spend a couple of days at her mother’s, his opposition to her getting a car…and now this.

‘Lily?’

She didn’t look up, didn’t acknowledge him at all as he joined her at the breakfast table, just carried on reading the paper as he helped himself to coffee and pastries.

‘Lily, what I said before, I think you misunderstood.’

Her lips pursed as she carried on reading the paper, her legs tightly crossed, one foot swinging to a rhythm of its own, she pointedly refused to discuss it.

‘When I said you couldn’t go to university, what I meant was there’s no need. Abigail’s been looking into it for you. Apparently you can complete your course online.’

‘Online?’ Now she spoke, shot out the word with an incredulous laugh that was completely devoid of humour. Because there was nothing funny about this, nothing funny about it at all. Again Hunter was telling her to subscribe to what he considered best. An independent woman, Lily could see the bricks of her luxurious prison rising around her and she moved quickly to pull them down, to make this man realise that she made her own rules, made up her own mind.

‘Hunter, what the hell is Abigail sorting out my schooling for? She’s your PA, or diary planner, or what ever she wants to call herself. But she’s not mine, and for the record I don’t want to study online, I want to finish my degree properly.’

‘We’ve been through this.’ Hunter voice was incredibly measured, but she could hear the mounting impatience behind it, as if he were talking to some belligerent two-year-old who was defying him. ‘You’re Mrs Lily Myles now…’

‘I’m still my own person,’ Lily flared.

‘Not for the next eleven months,’ Hunter said and she glimpsed his power, the might, the drive that tossed boundaries aside and propelled him forward. But up to this point his undeniable force had never been aimed at her—at least, not in a negative way, and the tiny doubts she had chosen to ignore, the tiny negative questions she had pushed aside all swirled together into one black hole as Hunter told her in no uncertain terms what he expected from her. ‘In eleven months you can do what you like, Lily, walk around in scruffy jeans with your fellow students, discussing the bloody meaning of life, take on every bleating charity case that comes knocking at your door, drive to your student bashes in some beaten-up old car, but for the next few months, you’ll act accordingly!’

‘According to what?’ Lily demanded. ‘Come on, Hunter, according to what? You want me to be happy, you want to know exactly what I’m thinking, you want to make love to me over and over…’

‘So you’re not happy in bed?’

‘It’s not the bedroom that’s the problem,’ Lily responded angrily. Exasperation raising her voice, she jabbed a desperate finger at his chest then pointed it over and over to his head. ‘It’s here, Hunter. You want absolutely everything of me. You want me to be a real wife, to be with you, to tell you what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling, yet you give absolutely nothing back!’

‘Do you want me to dig out the house deeds?’ Hunter’s voice was pure ice. ‘Nothing is what you had when I met you!’

‘You don’t own me,’ Lily flared, instinctively fighting back, refusing to be intimidated, stunned at the way he was behaving, sure that her anger, her fury would provoke a retraction from him. But instead she got a reaction, and one she had subconsciously been dreading—eyes, darkening in rage, lips that had always, to her at least, been kind curling in contempt as he spat out the words.

‘Oh, but, I do. And don’t you forget it.’

She felt as if she’d been hit, the sting of his words, the brutality of them hitting her with full force, momentarily stunning her. But she recovered quickly. Defiant, enraged, she faced him head on, absolutely refused to be intimidated by him.

‘Never!’ Just one word, one single word, but it was said with such strength, such conviction that it hit its mark, allowing her to glimpse just a flicker of doubt in his cool blue eyes, the tiniest of chinks in his impressive armour as her unwavering certainty reached him. It gave her the momentum to continue. ‘And don’t you ever, ever talk to me like that again, Hunter.’ Her lips were numb with tension, but her voice was clear. ‘Let’s get things straight. I am going to carry on working, I am going to university, I am going to get a car, and if you ever talk to me like that again, I’ll be out that door.’