by Anna Durand
He gazed at me with approval, tinged with surprise. "My clever wife."
Maybe I hoped for a miracle, but I asked anyway. "Would you come for a walk with me?"
"Can't. I'll be spending the day at my office in Loch Fairbairn." He turned away to roll his caber toward the pile at the edge of the green.
Thus dismissed, I started for the garden door. On the threshold, I looked back at him. "Will I see you for dinner?"
He dumped the caber. It thunked onto the pile. "Don't wait for me."
I slammed the garden door behind me, not entirely because the heavy thing wouldn't close.
It was my turn to watch out the window, though I hugged myself as Rory's Mercedes rolled down the drive and out of sight.
*****
A final cry of ecstasy tumbled from my lips, my voice hoarse from the ruckus I'd made while Rory drove me wild with pleasure. My knees were hooked over his shoulders while his hands were planted on the mattress at either side of my body. He hunched over me, frozen at the apex of his last thrust, our position ensuring he'd taken me deeper than ever before. Droplets of salty moisture from our sweat-slicked bodies dribbled down my side and dripped from his skin to strike my belly. The scent of sex and perspiration permeated the air.
Despite his repeated command I not wait up for him because he'd be back very late, he'd arrived home shortly after ten o'clock. Though I wanted to dash downstairs to greet him, I'd reined in the joyful instinct and waited for him in my bed.
Sure enough, he skulked into my room fifteen minutes later.
No talking. He got straight to seducing me, though his lust seemed tainted with a confusing desperation as if he needed to be inside me to assure himself I still existed. I'd let him seduce me because I needed the same thing — reassurance.
I disliked the separate-bedrooms thing, but I hated his determination to slink out of my room right after sex. I'd resolved to let him do this for a while, though, and try to ease him into a new dynamic. The typical married-people kind. I'd let him into my bed, knowing he'd split the second we finished, for one simple reason. I loved the pleasure he gave me.
Even if that made me a desperate moron.
Rory crawled out from under my legs to kneel at my feet. My knees remained bent, my sex still exposed.
His gaze darted to the door.
Despite the chill of unease trickling through my veins, I understood what I must do for him. "It's okay. You can leave."
He swung his legs over the bed's edge, hesitated, and then leaned over to kiss my forehead. "Good night, Emery."
I forced a weak smile. "Good night, Rory."
Sliding off the bed, he padded to the door.
On the threshold, he paused. "I ran into Graham in the village today. He's developed an odd fascination with you, asked how you were adjusting to your new home. Cannae understand what he wants but be cautious if you see him. Anything you say might be printed in his grimy paper."
"I won't tell him about our arrangement or the contract."
"Graham has a way of wheedling things out of people."
With two fingers, I drew a cross over my heart. "I'm wheedle-proof, promise."
As the door clicked shut behind him, I rolled onto my side and pulled the covers up to my chin. A sour taste tainted my mouth.
In time, he would want to share a bed with me. He had to. If not… Well, his therapist wouldn't let him get away with this for much longer.
During breakfast the next morning, he marched into the kitchen to announce, "I'm having a gate installed at the end of the drive. No car will approach the house without permission again."
A reaction to Graham's intrusion in the garden and Rory's encounter with him in town. Rory needed to reassert control of his privacy.
"The entrance doors are to remain locked at all times," he said. "I'll give you a remote for opening the gate once it's installed."
Without a kiss or a grumbled goodbye, he departed the house.
As he had on the day of the caber-tossing session, Rory avoided me for the next two days by traveling to his office in the village, but by the day after that, he'd gone back to holing up in his home office. I granted him a reprieve from my presence and stayed out of his office unless he invited me, though he never did.
For a week after I'd won our bet, I put up with the mistress-wife treatment. Every night after he left me, I pulled the covers over my head and fought against crying. In the daytime, Rory would seek me out for a kiss — one brief lip-lock at first, but as the days passed our playful kisses became long, luxurious make-out sessions in any and every part of the house, even outdoors under the shade of the larch trees.
I'd begun my search for a new life's purpose, driving to Erica and Lachlan's place to learn about farming and to Calli and Aidan's home to explore the life of a librarian, with Calli as my guide. Catriona let me shadow her for a day while she taught history workshops at local schools. Despite having a PhD in archaeology, she couldn't get a full-time job with it. Yep, we bonded over our mutual lack of gainful employment.
On the seventeenth day of my acquaintance with Rory, the twelfth day of our marriage, we'd concluded a steamy round of how far can we go with kissing without going all the way when Rory surprised me.
He wound a lock of my hair around his finger, spellbound by the strands. "You haven't come to my office lately."
"Thought you'd rather be alone."
"It seems… quiet without your visits."
Crazily, that simple statement made my pulse accelerate. I supposed calling his office "quiet" without me was as close as he'd get to admitting he missed me.
"I'll see you at dinner, then?" he said.
The heaviness trapped in my chest for days disintegrated. We hadn't convened for a meal in more than a week.
"Yes," I said, "at dinner."
He released my hair and nodded. "Good."
With that, he returned to his office.
I hadn't asked him to dine with me, not since the day I'd traipsed into his office and curtsied at his feet. His offer had been his choice. Hooray, my heart cheered. My mind took a more pragmatic attitude, unwilling to celebrate yet. We continued to sleep in separate rooms, after all, with no sign he'd ever relent on that dictate. Why was I letting him get away with relegating me to mistress-wife status? I'd allot him two more days of solitude and then…
Watch out, Rory MacTaggart.
That evening, we met in the dining room to share a meal and casual conversation. Afterward, we retired to my room for energetic sex followed by a good-night kiss.
In the morning, I'd stretched my leniency so far the rope had frayed into a flimsy thread. Time to tell Rory how much his nightly departures bothered me, not only because I'd sworn to be honest with him but also because I'd stopped doing silly things like spinning and skipping. This wild swan had forgotten how to fly.
Not acceptable.
I busted into his office, the door slamming shut in my wake.
He flinched, his head jerking up. "Emery?"
The shadows under his eyes matched the ones I must've sported. Maybe sleeping alone didn't agree with him as much as he claimed.
I sprawled in the chair across the desk from him, one leg draped over the arm, foot swinging. "We need to talk about the separate-bedrooms thing."
He discarded his pen, sitting back in his chair. "We've already discussed it."
"No, you issued your decree and I went along with it." I rested a hand on the knee of my dangling leg. "Separate bedrooms isn't in the contract. Did you make your ex-wives sleep alone?"
His lips thinned into a sharp line.
"Well?" I said. "Did you?"
"No."
"Mm-hm." I rapped my knuckles on my knee. "Did you order them not to say your name during sex?"
He fingered the top button of his shirt like he'd forgotten it was undone.
"I'll take that as a no," I told him. "What about your one-night stands? Did
you tell them not to speak your name or close their eyes?"
He tugged at his collar and scratched his throat.
"Another no." I scraped my nails on my jeans, eliciting a scritch from the denim. "Why do you invent rules for living with me? I'm trying to understand this, Rory, but you've got to help me out. Why am I the special one who gets banished to the other end of a very long hallway?"
I suspected he treated me differently because we'd grown close and it scared him, but I needed him to reach that conclusion on his own.
He fiddled absently with the papers on his desk. "You're not banished."
"Sure as hell feels like it. Either I'm your wife or I'm your mistress. Make up your mind."
He jolted forward, head down, and made a show of stacking the papers on his desk, then putting them in a file folder. "This is our arrangement. You agreed to it."
"I never agreed to these cockamamie rules," I said. "I know you have issues with trusting women, but I'd like to know what I've done to give you the impression you can't trust me. I've been supportive and understanding, right? Haven't I accommodated all your hang-ups?"
"You've done all of that," he admitted without glancing at me.
"Do you trust me?"
He plucked up his pen, hovered it over a page, and set it down again. "I can't sleep with you. It's that simple."
"No, it's this simple." I shoved out of the chair. "Sometimes I'm not sure if you like me, or if you tolerate me because you require the use of my body at least twice a week."
He'd called me irreplaceable and his wild swan, and he often treated me with exquisite tenderness. Though he'd rescinded some rules, others remained — no sex outside the bedroom, no daytime sex, no sharing a bed. I couldn't reconcile Rory the affectionate husband with Rory the damaged and frightened man.
At last, he looked at me. "I have never said I require the use of your body."
"It's in the contract." I slapped my palms down on the desktop. "You require sexual congress at least twice a week. Since you can't bring yourself to spend the night with me, that means you need my body and nothing else."
"Emery."
"Shut up and listen, Rory." I speared him with my razor-sharp gaze, praying I could get through to him. "I tried to be cool with you screwing me and running off to your room, to hide behind a locked door. I tried to be patient and not question your hang-ups, to wait until you were ready to talk. And you have, a few times, and I appreciate that."
His eyes widened a fraction.
"But it's not enough," I said. "You're making me feel like your in-house whore."
"You are not a whore."
"Aren't I? You're paying me half a million dollars to fuck you for a year."
"You signed the contract." His expression hardened, his mouth twisted downward. "If you're waiting for me to fall in love with you, it will never happen."
The bleakness in his eyes contradicted his dispassionate demeanor.
"I'm not trying to make you love me," I said. "A few days ago on the green, after your impressive demonstration of caber tossing, I asked you to show me a little common decency. You stayed with me on our wedding night, for heaven's sake. You fell asleep with me the night we met and only left at dawn. Is it really such a hardship for you to let me into your bedroom?"
Or into your heart, I yearned to ask. Christ, I shouldn't want him to love me. He'd warned me he wouldn't do it, but my stupid heart refused to believe him.
"If you leave me now," he said, "you'll walk away with nothing. Not a shilling of my money."
Despite the flintiness in his voice, something in his eyes and in the tightness around his mouth evinced a deep vulnerability. I'd witnessed this act before — the detached solicitor with no feelings. I hadn't believed it in the past, and I didn't buy it today.
"I know what you're doing," I said. "This is how you keep your distance. You want me to think you're a cold bastard, so I won't like you anymore, but I'm onto you. If you were really a bastard, you wouldn't act like one."
"Your bum's oot the windae."
"I am not talking nonsense." When surprise flickered on his face, I straightened and lifted my chin. "Erica told me what that saying means. You're the one who spouts nonsense on a regular basis."
He gave me an oh please look.
"What I said about bastards," I explained, "means they are bastards, all the time, it's no act. You have to put on a show to convince me you're a jerk, but I see what you're doing and I don't buy it."
He bent his fingers claw-like atop the desk. "Separate bedrooms. That's my final word on the matter."
"Your summary judgment, you mean." My throat had gone thick, my scalp tingled. "I don't want your money, I never did. If you think that's why I married you, then you are the most clueless, blindest man on earth."
I whirled toward the door.
He caught up to me at the threshold, snaring my arm. "Don't love me, Emery. I will only hurt you. Willnae mean to, but…"
Voice trailing off, he let his hand fall away from my arm.
"You are hurting me," I said, "every night when you walk out the door. You'd better think about what you really want, Rory. If we keep going this way, I'll have to do whatever is necessary to protect myself."
I left him standing in the doorway.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I took the stairs two at a time down three flights, veering down the ground-floor hallway to the huge bathroom at the other end, directly under Rory's office. A wall separated the large claw-foot tub from the toilet while the shower lay across from the tub. The toilet area housed a sink with a fancy, curved faucet. All the hardware was a pale bronze-like shade, including the metal racks that held the plush, Rory-size towels.
Bent over the sink, I splashed water on my face until my cheeks stopped burning. A couple deep breaths made me feel less shaky. In the mirror above the sink, my reflection stared back at me, refreshed but not cheery. I looked miserable, maybe because I felt miserable. Rory had thrown the contract in my face. Though I understood his defensiveness stemmed from past trauma, it still stung.
Blame fell at my feet too. I'd done what I swore I wouldn't do, pushing him to give up another of his rules.
I hung my head, hands clamped over the sink's rim. What if he didn't come to his senses?
His ex-wives had done a nasty number on him. Isobel criticized his lack of money and his chosen profession, insisting he wasn't good enough. Una had emasculated him. What had the second wife, Lilias, done to him? He hadn't divulged that bit of his history yet, but I already knew his former wives had wrecked him.
Poor Rory.
I wanted to race back to his office and leap onto his lap to cuddle and kiss him until we both forgot what we'd argued about a few minutes ago. It wouldn't solve anything, though. He would abandon me every night, and I would feel used and empty every time he did.
Fresh air. I needed to fill my lungs with clean, fresh Highland air to clear my head and regain some perspective.
I marched out of the house and straight to the walled garden, where I lay down on the grass beneath the peaked lattice roof of the arbor, on my back with my hands buckled over my belly. Vine roses crawled across the sides and roof of the arbor, coiling around the latticework, transforming the structure into a floral tunnel. Faint sunshine filtered through the spaces between the leaves and flowers, dappling me with shadow and light.
The delicate fragrance of the roses wafted around me.
I shut my eyes, allowing the twittering of birds and the whisper of the breeze through the foliage to lull me into a half-awake state, a lovely place where the world retreated from my awareness and thoughts vacated my mind. The grass felt cool against my arms. It formed a natural blanket beneath me, cushioning the hard ground. I began to hum, unaware of what I was humming, my mind drifting to another dimension where hopes and dreams lived.
"Alas, my love, you do me wrong —"
My eyes flew open, my heart thu
dded. A deep, masculine voice kept singing the lyrics to the tune I'd been humming, and I blinked up at the figure silhouetted in the opening of the arbor. Rory stood tall and erect near my feet, his face in shadow. Though I couldn't see his expression, his voice was gentle.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Don't you get tired of asking me that? It should be fairly obvious, anyway. I'm lying in the grass."
"I can see that." He sank into a crouch, and a shaft of buttery sunlight streaked across his face. "If you were trying to get away from me, I can go."
"Hiding isn't my thing. I wanted some fresh air, that's all."
Wary brown eyes studied me. "May I join you?"
"You want to lie in the grass?"
He concentrated on my feet. "I want to lie beside you, wherever that might be."
My heart, melting. As a tender warmth spread through me, I scooted over and patted the ground.
Rory stretched out beside me, his shoulder whisking against mine. We glanced at each other at the same instant, and something passed between us, something sweet and tender. He gazed up at the ceiling of roses and leaves and slipped his hand into mine. With our palms pressed together, he intertwined our fingers.
I admired the rose-covered roof too, succumbing to the lovely, unspoken connection forged in this moment.
"That's a sad song," he said softly, "the one you were humming. Greensleeves."
"Guess it is."
"The song and the look on your face earlier, they mean you weren't angry. You were hurt. It's worse, isn't it? Worse than if you'd shouted at me."
"I hate being angry. I hate being miserable too."
He kneaded the back of my hand with his thumb. "I've never done well with upset women. No idea how to respond to it."
"Congratulations. You're a typical man in at least one way."
"I have behaved like a bastard." He raised our hands to his face, laying my palm against his cheek. "I trust you, m'eudail, and I will make this up to you."
"Why did you have to point out I'd get nothing if I left you today?"
"It was — I don't know." He turned his face into my hand. "That will never happen again."
The longer we lay here together, the faster all my misgivings crumbled away. I wanted to believe him. My heart urged me to believe, but my head kept sending me flashbacks to the moment in his office when he'd reminded me, in that flinty tone, I wouldn't get one shilling of his money if I walked out now. I knew his coldness had been an act, and I'd seen his true feelings in his eyes, but I couldn't shake the worry he'd choose loneliness over me.
