A Diamond for My Forbidden Bride by Jackie Ashenden

Author:Jackie Ashenden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-02-22T16:23:47+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Olivia

HE DID REGRET IT. I could see it in his eyes. Whatever he’d done to get that money and that power, he hadn’t wanted to do it.

My heart tightened. All the anger I’d felt towards him earlier seemed to have vanished, lost in the passion that had consumed us on the beach. Now what I felt was a hard tug of sympathy, and a growing curiosity about the life he’d led after he’d ‘died’.

It hadn’t been an easy one, that seemed obvious, and it had pretty much crushed the boy he’d once been. The kind, loving boy who’d once been so good to me.

Yet, had that boy been entirely stripped away? Certainly, I could see traces of him in the food he’d had made for me and the French champagne in the ice-bucket. In the way he’d gently washed me in the bath, and in the way he was holding me now.

Protectiveness had always been in his nature.

It made it difficult to tell whether all of that—the dinner, the drinks, the talk of the past—had been manipulation or whether it had been him genuinely being kind.

I didn’t know. Perhaps I needed to stop thinking about that boy and start concentrating on the man.

A ruthless, charming man. Manipulative, yes, yet also driven; I could see that. However, while he seemed quite happy to talk about our past, his was a different story.

And you don’t want to push him on it.

No, I didn’t, not now.

We had something of a détente and, while I hadn’t meant to lie here comfortably in his arms, naked but for a silky tunic, I was strangely okay with it.

I hadn’t wanted to initially, finding the thought of sitting in his lap a little too much like being his plaything for comfort. But he hadn’t insisted, and somehow I’d found myself changing my mind. It seemed silly not to be physically close to him after what had happened on the beach, and if I wanted it, then why not?

It was my choice and that didn’t make me a doormat. Besides, as I’d told myself as he’d picked me up out of the sea and washed me carefully in the bath, what was between us was merely physical. Just pleasure, nothing more.

It didn’t mean anything was going to change.

I was still engaged to Constantine, and I still fully intended to find my way back to him. Val was wrong about him, I was certain, and those debts needed paying.

I also still wanted an heir, and it was clear what Val’s thoughts were on the subject. His response to the lack of a condom had been unequivocal. He did not want children.

But he’d given me the most unbelievable pleasure, and, as I knew a marriage to Constantine wouldn’t give me that, why shouldn’t I take this while I could?

I’d worked hard for my father for years, so why shouldn’t I have something for myself for a change? Constantine might take issue with it, but if he did it wouldn’t be because he wanted me in particular.

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