“I’m not so sure about that anymore, to be completely honest with you, Nagy.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw.
“Well, that’s regrettable,” Alice said on a sniff of disapproval. “But perhaps you will realize the error of your ways. You can have a successful marriage despite how unfortunately your last attempt at being a couple ended.”
“A-attempt?” Imogene spluttered. “You say that as if I made the decision to leave Valentin lightly, when I can assure you I did not.”
Alice waved a slender hand in the air as if Imogene’s words were of no consequence. “The facts here today remain that you each requested a life partner when you contracted Match Made in Marriage. All the data gleaned during your screening process supports my—our—decision to match you. I’m aware you two have issues—”
“I-issues?” It was Valentin’s turn to splutter now.
“Hear me out, please,” Alice commanded with a quelling glare at him. “Can you both honestly say that seeing each other again leaves you totally cold?”
Valentin shifted a little in his chair, all too aware that his physical reaction to Imogene when he’d seen her today had been as fierce and as instant as it had ever been. He still remembered the first time he’d met her, when she’d brought a child from her primary school into the ER where he was a trauma specialist. Even as he’d switched into his clinician’s role seamlessly, he hadn’t remained unmoved by her presence. Now, with her seated beside him, studiously avoiding his gaze when he turned to look at her again, he observed the proud posture of her slender body and the surprisingly determined line of her jaw. A jaw he’d traced with kisses. His body clenched on a surge of desire—his instinctive need for her as overwhelming as it had ever been—and he turned his stare back to his grandmother.
“No, I cannot,” he said with great reluctance.
“And, Imogene? When you realized it was Valentin waiting at the altar for you today? How did you feel when you saw him?”
“Confused,” she said bluntly.
“And?” Alice prompted.
“Fine, I was attracted to him. But attraction isn’t the only thing necessary to make a marriage work. We proved that already.”
“Yes, you did,” Alice conceded. “But since that attraction still burns between you, don’t you think you owe it to yourselves to find out if, under different circumstances from those in which you originally met, you can make an honest attempt at a good marriage?”
“I believed I was making more than an attempt at the time,” Imogene protested. “I loved Valentin with all my heart. A heart he subsequently broke.”
Alice sighed and leaned back in her chair, settling her hands in a loose clasp in her lap. “I see,” she acknowledged. “And it still hurts, doesn’t it?”
Imogene gave Alice a stiff nod.
“Then you still have unresolved feelings for my grandson, don’t you?”
Valentin made a sound of protest. “Nagy, that’s not fair. She made her decision a long time ago. You can’t make us do this. It’s cruel and unnecessary.”
“It’s never easy facing your failures,” Alice said, slowly and stiffly rising from her seat. “I will leave you two for a few minutes to discuss this further. I strongly urge you to give your marriage one more chance. Your circumstances have changed dramatically since then. Neither of you is as young or as volatile as you were and, I might point out, neither of you has found a more suitable mate since. Please, discuss this as rational adults. Be certain that you won’t spend the rest of your lives wondering if you should have given each other another chance. I will wait outside for your decision. Don’t make me wait too long.”
Two
The door closed as Alice left them alone in the room.
“She’s a piece of work, your grandmother,” Imogene said harshly. “How dare she do this?”
“She dares because it’s what she does.”
Imogene rose from her chair, her gown whispering with her rapid movement and her breasts heaving above the jeweled neckline.
“What she does? Seriously? You’re condoning her behavior?” Imogene forced a short laugh from her throat. It was either that or scream.
“No, I’m not condoning it. I’m as angry and as shocked as you are. I never thought in a million years...”
She stared at Valentin as he rose to his feet and faced her. Always a big man, he dwarfed the room, but she wasn’t scared of him. She knew all too well how gentle he could be—how tender his touch was. Her pulse kicked up a beat and she fiercely quelled the direction of her thoughts. This wasn’t what she’d signed up for.
“A million years wouldn’t be long enough,” she murmured, and turned her face from his piercing blue-eyed gaze.
No, she thought. The end of time wouldn’t be long enough to undo the ravages of their first union. He’d taken her love, her adoration, her heart. Then he’d thrown it all away. She’d never forget that moment she’d walked into their small house and smelled the distinctive heady perfume one of his colleagues at the hospital had always worn. Nor would she forget walking on legs that had become stiff and wooden toward the bedroom where she’d discovered said colleague, still naked and drowsy in her and Valentin’s bed.
The sheets of the bed had been tumbled in disarray. The combined scents of fresh sweat and sex had been heavy on the air. Imogene had heard the sound of the shower running in the tiny bathroom down the hall but she hadn’t waited to see her husband. When his colleague Carla had asked if she was looking for Valentin and gestured to the bathroom, she’d turned on her heel and marched straight back through town and stopped at the first law office she’d seen.
Numbly she’d gone through the motions of filing to dissolve the marriage that had obviously meant so little to Valentin and yet had meant the world to her. He had meant the world to her. Until she’d been faced with his infidelity.
She’d been in such a state of shock. Was it possible she’d misunderstood Carla? But then again, if she had, why had Valentin so easily given her up? If he was as innocent as he protested himself to be, why—at any time in the next few weeks—didn’t he find her at the hotel she moved her things into until she could be released from her teaching contract and get the next flight back to the States? Instead, he’d simply let her go, which smacked of a guilty conscience to her—both then and now. Besides, she didn’t want to think for a minute that she’d made a mistake, or that she’d behaved rashly in the heat of the moment. Carla had had no reason to lie, and Imogene knew the other woman and Valentin had been an item before her own arrival in Africa. Valentin himself had told her. More fool her, she’d believed him when he’d said it was over—that Imogene was the only woman for him.
She was dragged back into the present by the sound of Valentin clearing his throat.
“So I’m guessing you’re a no, then?”
“You’re guessing right,” she answered adamantly.
“Not even prepared to think about it?” he coaxed.
“Not even,” she said firmly. “I will not marry a philanderer ever again.”
“Imogene.” He said her name softly, with a tone of regret lacing the three syllables together in a way that struck her at her core. “I was never unfaithful to you.”
“I know what I saw, Valentin. Don’t take me for a complete idiot.”
He shoved a hand through his hair in a gesture of frustration. “What you saw was—”
“Your mistress, curled up in my sheets, in my bed, and stinking of you!” she answered viciously.
“It wasn’t what you thought it was.”
“Oh, so now you’re going to tell me you never slept with her?”
“You know I can’t tell you that, but I told you the truth when I said that had all been in the past. I was never unfaithful to you,” he affirmed.
“You say one thing. I saw another.”
Valentin to
ok a step toward her and she took a step back, but her motion was halted by the wall behind her. She looked up at him, her nostrils flaring, her mouth drying as she studied his oh-so-familiar features. Involuntarily, she stared at the lines that had deepened around his eyes, the new ones on his forehead, the stubble that persistently made its presence felt even though he would have shaved only a short time ago. His face had been so dear to her once. If she closed her eyes now she could recall every aspect of it—the color of his eyes in exquisite detail, the short dark lashes that intently framed those eyes, the way that special shade of blue darkened and deepened when he was aroused. The way they were doing now.
A bolt of desire hit her. There had never been any other man who had this effect on her. Ever. Only Valentin. No one had ever come close to him, nor, she admitted ruefully, would again. Which left her between the devil and the deep blue sea, didn’t it? Go against everything she’d promised herself she would never accept, or settle for less than what she knew Valentin could give her.
“Can we call a truce?” Valentin asked, his voice husky.
She knew that sound, knew he was gripped by the same intense need for her that she suffered for him. But in her case it was only for him. Could he say the same? She doubted it.
“Maybe,” she answered reluctantly.
“What brought you here today?” he asked.
“You tell me first,” she insisted, unwilling to show any weakness to this man who’d had the power to love her forever or destroy her, yet had chosen the latter.
“Fine,” he said abruptly. “When I asked Nagy to find me a wife, I had a clear picture in mind. I wanted a companion, someone to come home to at the end of the day who I can share my innermost thoughts with. Someone, most of all, who wants a child, or children. After you left me, I thought I could live my life without a family of my own, but as I grow older I find I can’t see a future without a wife and children in it, nor do I want to be alone for the balance of my days. I guess it’s part of the human condition to want to be a part of something, to know a part of you will continue long after you’re gone.”
Imogene felt unexpected tears prick at her eyes. The words he’d chosen, his reasons for being here today, they were so similar to her own. How could they have this in common and yet be so wrong for each other at the same time?
Valentin continued, “Is that why you approached Nagy’s company, too?”
“If I’d known it was your grandmother’s company, I would have run in the other direction as fast as I could,” she said defiantly. But then she softened, the fight spilling out of her. “Yes,” she said simply. “That’s exactly why I signed my contract. I want children in my life. Not just other people’s children. My own. To love. Unconditionally. But more than that, I want a partner. Someone I can rely on. Someone I can trust.”
* * *
Trust.
The word hung on the air between them. Valentin drew in a deep breath. Trust had been in short supply back in Africa, and not just within his marriage. All around them had been the constant threat of danger as a struggling government fought against corruption on every level. Even within the hospital there had been those he knew he could not rely on.
“Trust is a two-way street, is it not?” he asked gently.
“Always. You never had any reason not to trust me, Valentin. Ever.”
“Whereas you feel you cannot trust me. That’s what you’re saying?”
“Based on past experience, what else can I say? You broke our marriage vows, not I.”
The old frustration and anger bubbled from deep inside. She wouldn’t listen to him back then; he doubted she’d listen to him now.
“So that leaves us at a stalemate, doesn’t it? Unless you’re prepared to put the past aside.”
Imogene looked at him incredulously. “You think I should just forget you screwed another woman in our bed?” She deliberately chose strong language, not prepared to soften what he’d done by describing it with any moniker associated with the word love. “Just put it aside as if it didn’t matter?”
“It doesn’t matter because it never happened. Did you see me that day, Imogene? No, because I wasn’t there. You wouldn’t give me a chance to talk to you before having that lawyer serve papers on me. Perhaps you will at least do me that courtesy now.” He pressed on, knowing he had a captive audience. It had bothered him intensely that Imogene never allowed him the opportunity to present his side of what she thought she’d seen. If anything it had underscored how wrong they’d been for each other that she’d been prepared to cast him in the villain’s role so immediately. “Look, I know you were shocked to discover Carla in our house, let alone our bed. When I gave her the key to the place it was supposed to be so she could get some sleep between shifts because the doctors’ lounge had been appropriated for more patient beds. You know the crazy hours we were working and the volume of patients we had to deal with. Carla was overdue a break and I said she could use our place because it was close to the hospital. I didn’t know she planned to have company. Imogene, I barely got to see you. If I had free time, why would I have spent it with her?”
“Why indeed,” Imogene answered with an arch of her brow and a lift of her chin.
He let go a huff of irritation. “I wasn’t the one with her that day.”
“That’s not what she led me to believe.”
“She told you I was there?”
Imogene hesitated. Replayed the words in her head as she’d done so very many times before.
“Not in so many words,” Imogene conceded.
“And yet you still don’t believe me.”
“I don’t. I can’t.”
Hearing the underlying pain in her words made Valentin think again. She sounded as though she were in an internal battle. That maybe, just maybe, she wanted to believe him. He wondered how he’d feel in the same situation. Torn. Confused. And facing the realization that if she believed him, then that would have made the past seven years of loneliness and sorrow, the end of their marriage, all her fault. But it wasn’t. While he had never been unfaithful to Imogene, he knew he should have done more at the time to fight for their marriage—followed after her, insisted she see him instead of letting her hide in the only decent hotel in town until she flew out.
He knew Carla could be intimidating. The woman had a confidence many women he’d met lacked. She’d set her sights on Valentin as soon as he’d arrived on his volunteer service and they’d had a brief, intense fling. It wasn’t until Imogene came on the scene that Carla had begun to eye him again, and she’d made it clear to everyone, Imogene included, that he was hers for the taking. But Carla had been wrong. From the minute Valentin had seen Imogene there had been only one woman for him.
She still was that woman.
Admitting that didn’t come easily. Pride had always been an issue for him. A child prodigy, he wasn’t used to making mistakes. His world had been filled with successes, each more glowing than the last. His failed marriage to Imogene had been the one black mark on the pristine blotter of his life. It was something he felt bound to rectify. If he could persuade her to give him, them, another chance, then maybe they could make things work.
His grandmother’s words repeated in the back of his mind. Be certain that you won’t spend the rest of your lives wondering if you should have given each other another chance. Would he regret it if he didn’t try again? Looking at Imogene now, resplendent in her bridal gown—the same woman who’d stood with him in a hurried civil ceremony all that time ago, and yet different in subtle ways he ached to explore—he knew the answer to that was a solid, unequivocal yes.
He chose his next words carefully. “So is there nothing I can do to persuade you to consider marrying me again?”
“I can’t believe you even want to think about us marrying again,” she shot back.
“Why not? Let’s remove emotion from the equatio
n and try to look at this logically. We both approached marriage this time in a more clinical fashion, and yet look at us. Here together again. Let’s not discount the science that went into our pairing.”
“Science!” She snorted in disbelief. “More like your grandmother’s tampering with the results.”
“And why would she do that if it would only make us unhappy?”
He knew he had made his point when she conceded.
“So what are you suggesting? That we give this a go? I’ll be honest with you, Valentin. I don’t hold hopes for things being any different than they were the first time. We may have gotten along in bed, but we had very little in common outside of it. Carla aside, and as difficult as it is to admit, I don’t think we’d have lasted the distance. We met in a hothouse of extreme circumstances. It wasn’t a normal relationship in any sense of the word.”
“Then why not give it a chance and see how we do in a more traditional setting? We’re unlikely to find another match that can make us both feel like this,” he said, before reaching out one finger and tracing the line of her lower lip.
Shock and desire warred with each other as he felt her softness. Her warmth. The gasp of heated breath as her lips parted. Every muscle in his body clenched in anticipation of closing the distance between them. Of tasting that tender flesh and discovering if she was still as sweet, and as tart, as she used to be. Valentin watched as a light flush colored Imogene’s cheeks and as her pupils dilated to almost consume her irises.
While she battled with her emotions, Valentin pressed on. “Imogene, look at it this way. We have a rock-solid prenup in force. We have a three-month out clause. What have we got to lose?”
He saw her internal battle reflected in her eyes. Heard it in her every ragged breath. Sensed the moment of weakness, the chink in her armor, and took the opportunity to drive straight through it.
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