Читать книгу Hot Picks: Secrets And Lies - Dani Collins - Страница 18

THE RATTLE OF china made Henri lift his head.

Millicent Whitley—Milly—came in with a tea tray. She set it up on the coffee table before him. The only noise was the sound of the dishes, but she made a statement with the force with which she served him.

He knew that Cinnia had had words with her mother at different times about their relationship and his refusal to offer a ring. Milly had never said a word to him about it, though. She was too wellborn, too possessed of impeccable manners.

Today, however, she brilliantly conveyed that she would love to see him choke to death on his petit four.

“Thanks, Mum,” Cinnia said in a subdued tone as she came back.

“Eat one of the sandwiches,” Milly said to her, pointing at the stack of crustless triangles as she straightened with the now empty tray, adding as she passed her daughter at the door, “You’re behaving like a harridan.”

“Gosh, I hope I haven’t ruined my chances for a proposal.”

Her mother shut the door on that comment and Cinnia made a face.

“How is your health?” Henri asked her, grasping for a lifeline of fact and logic to keep from being blown into the abyss of unknowns circling in his periphery.

Cinnia blew out a breath that lifted her fringe and came to perch next to him. She reached for a sandwich. “No issues. The weight packs on fast, which is expected. I’m not watching calories, but I try to avoid the empty ones. I’ve started drinking my tea black and I skip things like mayonnaise and sweets.”

He nodded, watching her bite into what looked like plain tuna with a slice of tomato between two dry pieces of bread. Her lips looked fuller. Plump and kissable.

“There haven’t been other women.” His voice came out a shade too low.

She choked, hand going to her mouth before she reached for her tea and took a cautious sip, clearing her throat and flashing him a persecuted look.

“I’m ready to be civilized, but let’s agree to be honest, shall we?”

“I had to date, you know I did.” If she was offended that he’d accused her of deliberately getting pregnant, he was insulted that she believed he’d slept with all those women—any woman—since her. “Our breakup was well documented. I couldn’t appear to be carrying a torch, could I? That wouldn’t be safe for you.” He’d been plagued by concerns regardless, teetering on wishing she would find a man to look out for her while passionately hating the idea.

“Well, you did an excellent job of convincing me you weren’t carrying one.”

He waited for her gaze to come to his, but she kept her attention on the plate she held.

Her features were softer and, if anything, prettier for it. More feminine. She wasn’t wearing makeup, her hair was clipped at her nape, but he found her casual elegance as fascinating as ever.

He wanted her, every bit as much as ever.

He pushed to his feet, restlessly moving away from temptation. He was still processing that she was pregnant. His brain was not ready to take in twins and he was still very much reeling from the anger she’d thrown at him.

“There were no other women,” he repeated. “I’m not going to say it again.”

It was too much of a blow to his ego. He couldn’t screw other women. She wanted them to throw toxins at one another? Fine. He would love to tell her how much he resented her grip on him. He felt like a cheat merely allowing another woman’s hand to rest on his arm. Had he realized that would be a by-product of a long-term, monogamous relationship, he never would have entered into one.

Damn. He wished that was true, but Cinnia had entranced him from the first time he’d seen her. She still did, sitting there cutting a suspicious glare at him from beneath pulled brows. This connection between them was as base as an alpha wolf imprinted by a mate.

He wasn’t comfortable being ruled by anything so visceral, but even now, as he was reeling from this life-altering news, part of him was soaring with the knowledge that he now had the perfect excuse to yank her back into his bed.

“As for expecting things of me, you expected me to behave badly and set me up to do so.” He pushed his hands into his pockets. “How long did you think you could hide this? I can see if you had a single baby, you might have convinced the press it was someone else’s, maybe pretended your infidelity was the reason we broke up. But twins? Of course they’ll assume they’re mine and go stark raving mad! How did that even happen?” He tried to wrap his brain around it. “Are they identical? Do you know?”

“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!”

He thought of all the ugly conjecture that had followed them for years.

“They pushed her into a breakdown and I swear they caused my father’s death. He might have withstood nearly losing his child, but trying to keep us out of that microscope? There was no pity for the pressure he was under! If he showed signs of cracking, they turned it higher. I know.” He smacked his hand into his chest. “I stepped into his shoes. The corporation is enough for any man and then to be worried sick for the rest of your life that another attempt would be made? All because those vipers insist on making us into demigods?”

He threw an accusatory point at the closed curtain, vainly wishing, yearning, for the ability to incinerate every camera on earth.

“I hate them. I bloody well hate them. They’re vile and they set us up to be victimized in every way—by trolls, by opportunists, by criminals who want to steal a child for profit.”

He ran his hand down his face, trying not to think of such a thing happening to his child. He pointed a railing finger at her.

“You have no idea what they’re really capable of. And you definitely don’t have the resources to hold them at a decent distance. So, no. Do not think for a minute that I will leave it to you to ‘handle’ security. I can’t even say I will take the babies and let you live your life away from us because you are part of this now, like it or not. So you will come to Paris with me and I will handle security.”

At some point she had pulled a cushion across her chest and had drawn her knees up, buffering herself against his outburst.

He pushed his fingers through his hair, scratching at his tight scalp, feeling like a bully now that the worst of his temper was spent, but—

“This was why I didn’t want children. This is how I knew it would be.” He was defeated by circumstance. “But we’re here now, so we’ll do what we must. You’ll marry me.”

“No,” she said in a husk of a voice, lips white.

He drew in a tested breath, frustration returning in a flood of heat. “Did you hear what I just said? You can’t stay here.”

“Yes, I heard you. Fine. I’ll live behind your iron curtain, but—” She swallowed. “But I won’t marry you.” Her chin came up in what he knew was her stand-ground face.

His ears buzzed as he sifted through her words. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I’ll live with you, but I won’t live with you.” She flushed and pulled her shoulders up defensively around her ears.

“You don’t want to sleep with me?” His heart bottomed out. She couldn’t mean that.

She flinched and looked away, blinking hard. “No. I don’t.”

“Liar.” It came out of him as a breath of absolute truth. A dying wish.

She made a face that held shame and guilt and self-contempt, but when she brought her gaze back to his, she didn’t try to convince him she was being honest. She couldn’t.

The naked vulnerability in her expression caught at something inside him, though. It was out of character and gut-wrenching, making him tamp it down with resistance. Cinnia was tough. He had always liked that about her. He needed her to be resilient and as impermeable as he was. It was too much on him if she was fragile.

Despite the revelation of weakness, however, she was resolved.

“We can carry on pretty much as we did before.” Her voice was a tangle of conflicted emotions. “I’ll work remotely around your schedule and go into my office when I can. I’ll have to see what my doctor says about travel, but I’m not up for a lot. I was planning to take a few months off work when the babies come, but I don’t care where we are when that happens. We can figure that out as we go along, but I’m not going to take up with you again.”

“It’s not ‘taking up.’ It’s marriage.” Did she realize how deeply she was insulting him? “Are you trying to make some kind of point? Damn it, Cinnia, are you still trying to prove something to a man in your past who has nothing to do with me?” He wanted to physically hunt down the jerk and shake him.

Her stare flattened to a tundra wasteland of blue that chilled him to the marrow.

“Do you want to marry me, Henri? If I wasn’t pregnant, would you even be here right now? If I had ended things purely because I wanted to marry and have children, would you have crossed a street to even say, ‘Nice to see you’? No. So, no, I’m not being perverse. Yes, this has everything to do with you. If you want to marry me, you can damn well get down on one knee, ask nicely and mean it.”

Cinnia went upstairs to pack.

Henri forced himself to sit and drink his cold tea while he ate a sandwich, determined to regain his composure after his flare-up.

He hadn’t meant to ignite like that, but Ramon was the only one who really understood how dark that time had been after their father’s death. Grief had crippled all of them, but a fresh round of attention had fallen on them with the funeral—the girls especially. At fifteen, they’d been long-legged fillies, striking in their youthful blossom of womanhood, hauntingly beautiful in their sorrow.

He and Ramon were used to being sexually objectified by then, but nothing had prepared any of them for the reprehensible, predatory way strange men had begun stalking the girls once the photos were published. For Trella, it had been particularly insidious, sparking panic attacks that had been debilitating.

While other young men his age were drinking themselves stupid, hooking up and partying, he and Ramon had been forced to a level of maturity that exceeded any geezer on the board.

In some ways, combating those dinosaurs for control of Sauveterre International had been a much-appreciated outlet. Ramon was the verbal one, passionately arguing their case and hotly quitting a tense meeting to let off steam by racing cars.

Henri had retreated to spreadsheets and numbers, facts and figures that fueled his ruthless pushback against attempts to sideline him.

He couldn’t count the nights he’d sat in a room lit only by the screen of his laptop, angry with his father for abandoning him to this, but sorry for him. Empathizing with him while silently begging for advice on how best to protect his mother and sisters.

Things had grown easier as the girls had matured and taken more responsibility for their own safety. Hell, Trella’s self-imposed seclusion had been a relief when it came to how vigilant they all had to be, not that Henri would have ever asked her to go to those lengths.

But he’d never forgotten those first years of wearing his father’s mantle, wondering how he would withstand the next day or the one after that. The pressure was too much to expect of anyone. It had hardened his resolve against ever having children and being charged with their safety.

Yet here he was. With Cinnia.

Leaning on his elbows, he rested his tight lips against his linked fingers, examining the assumption he had made before he’d even confirmed her pregnancy. Of course they would marry. For all his reluctance to become a family man, he was the product of one. He and Cinnia were compatible in many ways. It was a natural conclusion.

But she didn’t want to rekindle their physical relationship. If the reason was medical, she would have said, “I can’t,” but her words had been “I won’t.”

Because she wanted more than sex?

Do you love me?

He jerked to his feet as though he could escape his own ruminations by physically running from them. Now, more than ever, he couldn’t afford such distractions. Look at him, dwelling on things that couldn’t be changed when he should be putting wheels into motion for all that had changed.

He shook off his introspection, decided to tell his mother when Cinnia was with him, and video-called Ramon.

When he and his brother had been children, his mother had always spoken Spanish while their father had used his native French. They had wanted their boys to be fluent in both. Before he and Ramon went to school and learned otherwise, they had thought that if someone spoke to them in Spanish, they had to reply in French. It had amused Ramon to no end when the girls had come along and done the same thing. They were all still guilty of reverting to the habit in private conversations with each other.

“Cinnia is pregnant,” Henri announced in French.

Ramon visibly flinched. “Es lamentable. Who is the father?”

“Me. I am the father,” Henri said through his teeth, offended his brother would think otherwise. “The babies are mine.” He was still assimilating that outlandish fact. Saying it aloud made it real and all the more heart-stopping.

“‘Babies?’ Twins?” Ramon choked out with disbelief. He swore. Let out a laugh, then swore and laughed again. “Es verdad?”

“So real.” Henri wiped his hand down his face, trying to keep it from melting off. “You and I need to talk. She has four months to go, but they’ll probably come early. I’ll have to curtail most of my travel this year. We’ll station in Paris, but you and I must discuss how we’ll restructure. The press will be a nightmare.” His knee-jerk response when thinking about their name in the press was to worry about how it affected Trella, which reminded him… “Trella knew. Did she say anything to you?”

“Knew that Cinnia was pregnant? No dijo nada.”

“She’s still in Paris?”

“España. But go easy.” Ramon held up his hand in caution. “She’s doing so well. Don’t give her a setback.”

Henri took that with a grain of salt. His sisters often accused him of smothering, but he still tried to head off potential problems before they triggered one of Trella’s attacks. Given how agonizing the episodes were for her, he would never forgive himself if he caused one.

He didn’t bother defending himself to his brother, though. The warning was pure hypocrisy, coming from Ramon. Ramon and Trella had the most volatile relationship among the four of them. Where Angelique was so sensitive she had always cried if her sister said one cross word in her direction, and Henri was so pragmatic and coolheaded he refused to engage when Trella was in a snit, Ramon had always been more than eager to give her a fight if she wanted one.

But Ramon and only Ramon was allowed to get into a yelling match with their baby sister. Somehow it never caused an attack and sometimes, they all suspected, it had been the only way for Trella to release her pent-up frustrations in a way that didn’t leave her fetal and shattered.

Nevertheless, Ramon would not stand between Henri and Trella on this.

“There is no good explanation for leaving me in ignorance.” If something had happened before he’d been able to set precautions in place… He refused to even consider it. “It was cavalier and reckless.”

“I’ll speak to her about it,” Ramon said.

Henri made a mental note to be in another country when that happened, saying only, “Meet me in Paris. I’m taking Cinnia there as soon as she packs.”

He ended the call and tried Trella. After a few rings, she came on the screen shoulder-to-shoulder with Angelique, both of them wearing a look of apprehension.

“I forgot you were home, too, Gili,” he said as he recognized the lounge at Sus Brazos. “Is Mama there?”

“Siesta,” they said in unison.

He nodded. Seeing them side-by-side like that, he was struck by Trella’s very slight weight gain. It allowed him to get a firmer grasp on the temper he was already holding on a tight leash. After the kidnapping, she’d gone through a heavy period. Comfort eating, her therapist had called it. Insulating. The press had labeled her The Fat One and that had been only the tip of the iceberg with the ugly things printed and said about her.

By the time their father had died, her eating habits had gone the other way and she’d been starving herself. They’d worried about how underweight she was and then the panic attacks had arrived, carrying on for years. After a lengthy bout of trying different medications, which had amounted to drug dependency more than once, she had removed herself from the public eye. Eventually her moods had stabilized, then her weight and overall health had, too.

Things had been going so well that, when Sadiq had announced he was marrying last year, Trella had insisted on coming out of isolation to attend his wedding a few weeks ago. The event had forced her back into the public eye and he and his siblings had been walking on eggshells since, holding their breaths in fear she’d backslide.

Henri wanted her to live as normal a life as their family was capable of, but that fullness in her cheeks and the trepidation in her eyes made him worry that she was not coping as well as they all hoped. He was angry, but forced himself to tread gently.

“I’m at Cinnia’s mother’s,” he began.

“I know. Cin texted me.”

That was a surprise. He hadn’t seen Cinnia fetch her phone. “Am I to understand you knew about this, too, Gili?”

“Not about Cinnia, no. Trella just explained that bit after she got the text that you were there. Congratulations.” Her smile grew to such bright warmth and sincere joy he wanted to groan. Leave it to Gili to undermine his bad mood with her soft heart and warm enthusiasm. “Twins?” She patted her hands together in a little clap of excitement. “We each get one! Merci, Henri!”

He and Ramon had thought the same thing when their mother had produced a pair of girls when they were six, one for each of them. He might have rolled his eyes, but something in what she’d said niggled.

“What do you mean, you didn’t know about Cinnia? What did you know that I don’t?”

Angelique looked at their sister.

“Um.” Trella’s mouth twisted as she bit the corner of her lip. She held Gili’s gaze with a pleading one of her own.

Gili put her arm around her, bolstering her. “Ça va, Bella. Just tell him.”

“Cinnia didn’t tell you where we bumped into each other?” Trella asked, catching his gaze in the screen, then flicking hers away.

“Here in London, I presume. You’ve been coming to see a client the last few weeks, haven’t you?”

“Sort of. Cinnia is a client, right? She couldn’t buy maternity wear from anyone else without risking a tip-off to the press.”

“Bella,” he said in his most carefully modulated tone. “I’m trying very hard not to be angry with you, but I have every right to be. Don’t make it worse. Whatever you need to tell me, spit it out.”

Her eyelashes lifted and she finally looked at him, speaking swiftly and sharply. “We saw each other at the clinic. The prenatal one. I’m pregnant.”

He sat back, absorbing that along with the three dependents he’d just picked up—six, actually, because Cinnia’s family would be under his protection, as well. Now, his vulnerable, fragile baby sister was…

He closed his eyes, unable to take it in.

“How…?”

“I was blessed by God, obviously. Same as Cinnia,” Trella said with a bite in her tone. Then she picked at a nail and mumbled, “It wasn’t anything bad. I had a chance to be with someone—”

“The prince. The one you were photographed with a few months ago?” His sisters were even more difficult to tell apart than he and Ramon, especially in photos, but he’d known at the first glance that Trella had been the one caught kissing the Prince of Elazar. Since he’d helped her impersonate Gili himself as part of her process of moving in public again, he hadn’t been too hard on her for going rogue.

Now, however…

“You didn’t even know him.”

“I won’t confirm or deny until I’ve figured out what I’m going to do,” Trella mumbled.

“Speaking as a man who just missed several weeks of impending fatherhood, don’t do that, Trella. It’s bad form.”

“I’m the one who told her to hire guards and I offered to pay if she couldn’t. And speaking as a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy, this isn’t about you. I will handle this, Henri. But I have enough on my plate worrying about myself and my baby without bringing the father into the mix. So does Cinnia, by the way, except she has two babies to worry about. Plus, you were the idiot who didn’t ask her to stay when you had the chance. That’s why you missed those weeks, so don’t throw that on me. Ugh. I have to go to the bathroom.” She pushed to her feet.

As Trella stormed off, Gili gave him a sympathetic look. “Pregnant women are moody.” She skipped her gaze in the direction Trella had gone. “Don’t tell her I said that. But, you know, keep it in mind with Cinnia.”

“How is she, really?” he asked.

Gili’s brow pulled with worry, but there was a wistful, pained quality to it. “She’s trying so hard not to lean on anyone, especially me. Obviously it’s a lot to deal with, but I think that’s why she’s refusing to, you know, tell the father. She doesn’t want to feel like a burden again. Give her some time, okay?”

“Oh, I have quite enough to keep me busy here. But you’ll tell me if she needs me.”

“I will,” she promised.

“And how are you?” Had it really only been yesterday that she’d sent him that beaming photo of her with Kasim? She had captioned it “this time we’re serious.”

He expected a joyful response to his question, but she pulled a sad face.

“Kasim had to go back to Zhamair. I won’t see him again until the end of the month. But we want to have a little engagement party.” Now came the smile and she was incandescent. “That will take a few weeks to organize, given all our schedules, but I’d like to do it here. Now I’m wondering about Cinnia traveling?”

“We’ll have to check with her doctor.”

“Please do. If we have to go to London, we will, but I’d rather stay here.”

“Agreed.” They all relaxed at their childhood home in a way they never could anywhere else.

Besides, he anticipated making his home there with Cinnia, at least at first. His mother still lived there, but she would be thrilled to have them while they worked out exactly where they wanted to live and built their own heavily guarded accommodation. She had despaired for years at having no grandchildren and had been fond of Cinnia. She would express only delight when she heard they were reunited and expecting.

He ended his call with Gili and took the tray to the kitchen, checking in with Milly.

“Thanks, love,” Cinnia’s mother murmured. She was leafing through an old-fashioned telephone book, flipping through the C section, he noted as he set the tray on the island across from where she stood.

“If you’re looking up churches, don’t bother. She said she’ll live with me, but refuses to marry me.” He skipped the part where she’d refused to “take up” with him—it still stung.

“Mmm. Claims to be the sensible one.” Flip. “Perverse is what she is. My husband was the same. It’s his fault she’s like that, too. The mess he left when he died. Same reason, too. Figured he knew better and the government could go hang with their taxes and formalities and such.” Flip.

“She seems to be doing well for herself, helping people navigate those regulations and avoid that kind of debt.” He had to defend Cinnia. She worked hard. Surely her mother saw that.

“Oh, she does. I only mean she has that same streak of independence my husband had. And his stubborn… She calls it a failure to plan, but no, it was a kind of anarchy, his refusal to fall in with what was clearly the accepted approach. He was being a bit of an ass, trying to prove he knew better. She’s the same, completely determined to show her dead father the choices he should have made. And show me that a woman should never rely on a man,” she added pithily. “The exact same obstinacy channeled in a different direction. But you’re quite right. I’d have been in the poor house long ago if not for Cinnia knuckling down with her career and sorting things out for all of us.”

Flip.

Henri thought again about how hard life had been after his father had passed. Their situations were very different, but Cinnia’s devotion to her family, her desire to look out for them, was every bit as strong as his. She must have been overwhelmed.

“How old was Cinnia when you lost your husband?”

“Fourteen.”

“Fourteen,” he repeated, wondering why he didn’t know that already. For all the times she’d admonished him as being reticent, she wasn’t terribly forthcoming about herself. “That must have been a lot on you at the time.”

“On Cinnia,” she amended with dismay. “Little Dorry was barely walking. I was a wreck. Well, you know. It’s devastating for the whole family when the cornerstone is gone, but I was completely unprepared. I didn’t know how to even pay a bill. Genuinely didn’t know how to write a check or how to call a plumber if the sink backed up. All I knew was that I needed to keep my girls in this house. It’s the only home they knew. That’s all you think, isn’t it?” She set her hand on the open book and looked at him, old grief heavy in her expression. “Hang on to what’s left so you can stay on your feet after such a terrible blow.”

Henri nodded. She was stating it exactly right. His mother had been shattered, his sisters distraught, he and Ramon overwhelmed.

“Cinnia doubled up with Dorry so we could let her old room along with the rest. It wasn’t worth asking the other two to share. You’ve met them. You know what I mean,” she said with an exasperated shake of her head. “The blood wouldn’t have come out of the carpets, but at least they express themselves. Not Cinnia. No, she and Dorry bottle everything up and use it like fuel to get where they’re going. Heaven help you if you try to give either a leg up. Dorry is allowed to answer the phone because Cinnia pays her to do it. Quid pro quo, but if I so much as pick it up so it stops ringing? Well!”

Henri folded his arms, thinking of the way Cinnia had refused to let him glance over her business plan until after she’d secured financing elsewhere. Then there had been her reluctance to tell him what she was looking for in a flat, let alone the location she preferred or the price range she could afford. As it turned out, living above her office space had been her plan all along, and a sensible one, but he’d been in the dark on the entire thing until she’d closed the deal. It wasn’t just that she hadn’t wanted his help, he was seeing, but she needed every last shred of credit to be hers. She was independent to a fault.

“That self-sufficiency isn’t just because of your husband’s situation, though, is it? Tell me about that boyfriend she lived with in London.”

“Avery? That is a perfect example of how obdurate she can be. She let that, well, it’s not fair to call him a ne’er-do-well, but you could tell at first glance he wouldn’t amount to much. I made the mistake of saying I thought she could do better and that was it.” Her hand went up in surrender. “She let that boy attach to her like a lamprey. I say ‘boy’ deliberately. Her first suitor wasn’t ready to act like a man, but you could see straight away he had some stones. You remind me of him, if you want the truth.”

Henri wasn’t sure how to take that, especially when Milly was taking his measure with such a shrewd eye. He didn’t like talking about Cinnia’s past, either. Not when it included men her mother knew so well.

Aside from Cinnia, his mother had rarely met any woman he’d slept with. Cinnia was the only woman he’d ever trusted enough. First he’d taken her to watch Ramon race a few times, then he’d included her in a dinner with Gili in Paris after she began staying with him there. They’d been seeing each other a full year before he’d taken her to Spain for his birthday, where she’d finally met Trella and his mother.

Those had been big steps for him and she hadn’t pressed him to meet and mingle with her family, either, disappearing for a dozen lunches and overnights to see them before she’d started inviting him to accompany her.

He’d been relieved, but now it irritated him that other men had come and gone from this kitchen. He’d had many lovers before Cinnia. Why did he care that she’d had two?

“James would have been a good match for her, but they met too young. He let her down,” Milly continued with a disheartened sigh. “She went to the opposite end of the spectrum with Avery. Saw him as safe, I suppose. Not so capable of breaking her heart.”

That was why he hated the thought of her previous lovers. No other women had impacted him the way Cinnia had, but those other men had been fixtures in her life. They’d shaped her. They affected how she reacted to him.

“Avery could barely spoon his own oatmeal. It was my fault she got in so deep with him, of course. ‘Mum thinks we should marry for money.’ I never said that.” She held up an admonishing finger, then waved it away. “But that doesn’t matter. She had to prove she’s a feminist who can support a man, like someone would pin her with a Victoria Cross for that. Oh, she wanted so desperately to make me eat my words about him. And how did that turn out? He was a complete waste of her time and stole a thick slice of her savings, didn’t he? Exactly as I called it.”

She lowered her nose to the book and gave another page a loud flip.

Everything she’d said had given him a fresh view of Cinnia. Not so much a new angle, as a deeper understanding of her edges and shadows. Was this why she was holding him off? He came on strong at the best of times and his children’s safety was a red line for him. She had to live with him.

He shouldn’t have lost his temper, though. That must have scared her.

At the same time, she must also know he wouldn’t let her down the way those other men had. He kept his promises.

You said when I was ready to start a family, you would let me go. Are you going to keep your word?

Of course.

The pit of his belly roiled.

“I have my opinions about you, too, Henri,” Milly told him without looking up. “Not all of you falls short so if my daughter decided to marry you, I would support her decision.” Her head came up and her mouth was tight, her brows arched. “Exactly as I will if she refuses.”

He was absorbing that statement as she dropped her attention to the book, adjusted her glasses and set a fingernail onto the page.

“There we are. Classifieds. If she’s leaving, I can let out the rooms again, can’t I?”