“Why not?”
He sounded genuinely curious. Liliana frowned at him. The urge to tuck herself away in her usual, comfortable shell was strong. More than strong—it was as if her bones want to curl in on themselves, the better to hide her from the searing power of her guardian’s dark gaze.
But once again she felt split in two. There was how she’d always behaved, which hadn’t ever led anywhere she’d wanted to go. Her strict boarding school, for example. A constrained little life where she was always the outsider. The odd one out. And then there was how she’d behaved around Izar since she’d found him in her bedroom tonight. Maybe it wasn’t all wine. Maybe wine was the catalyst and this was the version of herself she’d always wanted to let out. Maybe his presence had simply...opened her up.
And she couldn’t bear the thought that they would fall back into their usual roles now. That Izar would retreat into his aloofness and she would cease to exist for him outside of a few scribbled lines here and there. That even now, even after what had happened and the fact he had been inside her, he would treat her as if she was nothing more than his ward.
As if she would never be anything but his ward.
There was nothing in his suggestion of marriage that made her imagine any of that would change. And Liliana didn’t care particularly to examine all the feelings that swirled around inside her at that thought.
“You don’t like me,” she said, testing herself. But she didn’t cringe away the moment the words left her mouth. She didn’t automatically lower her eyes or make her voice soft and apologetic the way no small part of her urged her to do. Her voice was even. “And forgive me, but I’m not all that fond of you.”
His hard mouth flirted with the faintest curve, and Liliana felt it the way she had back in her apartment, as if he was licking that fire all over her skin. She had to fight to repress a telling little shiver.
“Perhaps you are too inexperienced to realize that when a woman comes apart in a man’s arms as you did tonight, it suggests a certain fondness whether she is cognizant of it or not.” He shrugged, as much with his chin as with his shoulder, reminding her how very Spanish he was. “But in any case, this sounds a great deal like every marriage I have ever witnessed.”
“Cynicism is not attractive,” she dared to tell him. “Surely one of your nine thousand paramours—this year, anyway—must have mentioned this to you at one point or another.”
Izar laughed. Laughed. She had the vague, muddled impression that he might have laughed while they’d both been stretched out on her bed and the world had gone mad, but this was different. Much different. It wrapped around her even as it cascaded through her. It held her so tight she wasn’t sure she’d ever move again. Nor wish to.
“I am not cynical, gatita. I am a realist, that is all.” The laughter faded from his voice, his simmering black eyes. He looked almost kind then, and that was enough to raise the fine hairs on the back of her neck. “I do not require that you fall in love with me, if that is your concern.”
“Did you imagine that was likely?” she managed to say, hoping against hope that he couldn’t possibly know how hard her heart kicked at her at that word. Love. That dangerous, impossible word that had no place here. It made her dizzy to hear it on his lips.
“Innocent girls are forever imagining themselves in love,” Izar replied, condescending and insulting at once. She had the sense it was deliberate—but that hardly made it any better. “This is the danger of deflowering virgins, of course. There are usually emotions. Recriminations. Pleas and promises, et cetera.”
Liliana thought her jaw might have turned to metal, it was so tight.
“Let me hasten to assure you that you’re perfectly safe from me.”
“I am pleased to hear it.” He studied her a moment. “Then there should be no silliness or misplaced missishness about marrying me, no?”
Missish, Liliana thought, was one of the most patronizing words she’d ever heard in her life. Particularly tonight. She had to ignore it—or give in to her simmering temper and hurl something heavy at him.
She opted for the former. Barely.
“The only silliness is that you would even mention marriage.” When he continued to do absolutely nothing but sit there and watch her, with that hint of a curve to his mouth and that glitter in his dark gaze as if he knew all kinds of things she did not, Liliana plowed on. “You don’t know me. You don’t want to know me or you might have made an effort to do so at some point in the past decade.”
If possible, he looked bored. “Is that necessary? I certainly do not expect you to know me. That sounds a ghastly and uncomfortable exercise. I am talking of marriage, Liliana, not an excavation.”
She was only aware she’d curled her hands into fists when she felt her nails dig into her palms. But ordering herself to unclench her fingers didn’t seem to work, so she ignored the sharp little sting and kept on.
“What do you think a marriage is?” she asked him. Incredulous—and something else. Something that felt a whole lot more like insulted, which she was terrified was entirely too close to hurt. “Because I think you’ll find it’s a little more complicated than your usual relationships, which require only that a woman of appropriate looks hangs on your arm, keeps her smile bright and her neckline low, and never, ever questions you. About anything.”
Again, that laugh of his, which should not have struck her as so...disastrously marvelous.
“The only thing you know less about than relationships in general is a relationship with me,” Izar replied. Did she imagine that his tone was darker? That his gaze was harder? Or was it her body’s reaction to him that made it seem that way? “I beg you, do not embarrass yourself, gatita.”
Liliana was past embarrassment. She was into a whole new realm that was half humiliated and half furious, and she felt like nothing so much as an overinflated balloon stretched thin and on the verge of popping. She focused on him, instead.
“I was only speculating, of course, the way every tabloid in the world does every time you venture into public with the latest model. Though I should tell you, this conversation is not exactly changing my mind.”
Izar smiled faintly. “I do not recall asking you a question that required your input.”
“I’m not marrying you.” She belted that out and it felt good, no matter how odd and hollow she felt inside. As if she was arguing against herself instead of for herself. She had no choice but to take it further, to prove she would never be so masochistic. “I would rather die than marry you and, no, that’s not melodrama. That’s a fact.”
Izar’s dark eyes gleamed, but he said nothing as the air steward appeared and fixed him a drink without his needing to order one, offered Liliana only sparkling water, then fussed about with several platters of hors d’oeuvres.
“Did you ask him not to give me a drink?” she asked the moment the man left. “Was there a secret signal?”
“It is standard protocol not to ply impressionable young women with alcoholic beverages unless they request them.” Izar’s head tilted slightly to one side as he swirled his own drink in its glass, the sharp scent of it crisp in the air between them. “Or do you imagine my staff can discern your wishes from the ether? They are good, of course. But no one is that good, I’m afraid.”
Liliana forced herself to stop gritting her teeth. She leaned forward slightly, glaring at him, and it was suddenly unbelievable to her that she’d ever felt intimidated by this man. From across oceans, no less. Or that she’d been entirely tongue-tied during their cumulative fifteen minutes of conversation via telephone over the course of the past ten years. Because her worry tonight was that once she started—and God help her, she’d already started—she’d never, ever stop.
“Tell me what you think marriage looks like,” she suggested, her voice a little hard. Perhaps more than a little. “Not in a philosophical sense. This marriage.” She indicated the two of them with a sharp flick of her wrist. “What do you think this marriage wou
ld look like?”
“It would look like this,” Izar replied, as if that should have been obvious. He took a pull from his drink and settled back against the sofa again. “Well. Not precisely this. I cannot say I find your belligerence attractive.”
“That is heartbreaking news,” she murmured. “I am devastated to hear it.”
Izar’s dark gaze slid to hers, as if her sarcasm was a slap. “I am willing to overlook the night’s excesses, as it did provide a bit of clarity in the end. But let me be clear. I do not intend to lie in a marital bed built of spite. I do not plan to spend my days fencing words with my wife. That holds no appeal for me at all.”
“Then I suggest you find yourself the appropriate automaton and practice your nonproposals on her,” Liliana retorted.
Izar sighed slightly, then settled back against the sofa as if he had never been more at his ease in all his charmed life.
“I expect my wife to be beautiful yet modest, and never showy or common,” he told her. Very much as if she hadn’t spoken. “She must exude elegance at all times, in public and private. No slouching, Liliana, or clothes that would better suit an overwrought American teen in the midst of an identity crisis. No flinging herself on the furniture or stamping her feet, like an obstreperous child. She must always appear sophisticated in public, beyond reproach with exquisite manners, but must never become jaded. She must be as obedient as she is educated. Interesting without ever becoming attention seeking. I have no patience for petty squabbles in public or private, extended interrogations about my decisions or tiresome, manipulative negotiations over sex.”
“You are describing an animated corpse, I think. Or a blow-up doll.”
“There will certainly be no back talk or smart remarks in my marriage, so I would suggest you get them out now. My wife must be prepared to act as my second when necessary, particularly in business situations, but must never imagine herself my equal.”
“Certainly not. The world would crumble beneath our feet were this paragon to make such a crass and overreaching error.”
His brows rose at her dry, arch tone, but he didn’t address it.
“I will require an heir at some point, of course. Perhaps two children, but no more. They will have to share the running of an empire, after all, and that will be difficult to do if there are too many competing factions.”
Liliana felt pale, though there was no reason for it. After all, her guardian’s cold-blooded approach to matrimony had nothing to do with her, no matter what he said or seemed to believe. She would watch from afar and pity his eventual wife, but that was as much as it would affect her.
There was absolutely no reason for that hard knot in her stomach, then. None at all.
“I view a marriage as no different from any business arrangement,” he was saying in that same arrogant, high-handed way of his, cradling his drink in his large, remarkably clever hand. And she knew exactly how clever now, didn’t she? “Though it is in many ways more simple, as its success will not depend on the market.”
“Do you lecture your business associates about the dangers of tiresome, manipulative negotiations over sex?” she asked when it seemed he’d run through his awful little list of preferred attributes, like the world’s most offensive personal ad. “Because if so, I’m suddenly much more interested in entering the corporate world. I’d always heard it was far more boring.”
“When in doubt, Liliana, remember that there is a hierarchy.” His black eyes gleamed. “Just as there is now. I make the decisions. You abide by them. Nothing could be simpler.”
He lifted his drink to his lips as if the conversation was over. And Liliana found she was no longer anything like furious. She felt...deflated, almost. And so cold inside she worried that if she started to shiver it might tear her apart.
“Izar.” She waited for him to look at her. Of course he took his time. “You must know that no woman would ever sign up for that. Any of that. It’s insulting at best.”
Again, that quirk in the corner of his arrogant mouth that should not have felt wired directly into her core. “You underestimate the draw, I think.”
“You have yet to mention any draw at all. It’s all medieval rules and what I suspect must be a deep vein of the worst sort of misogyny. Which, in case you wondered, is moving past unattractive into the realm of actively horrifying. And is not, in any sense of the word, a draw.”
“The draw, gatita—” and he didn’t smile then. He didn’t have to smile. But his eyes seemed to glow with a very male knowledge that undid her “—is me.”
That sat there between them, humming and spinning over plates of fine cheese and cured meats. And Liliana was appalled to feel something inside her soften, against her own wishes. As if some part of her actually yearned for that cold, austere, robotic life he’d just described—but that was impossible, surely. She would have to hate herself very deeply indeed to choose to erase herself like that in service to a man so stern, so unreachable. Or she would have to be entirely mad.
Unbidden, her mind trotted out one vivid image after the next from earlier in the evening. Taunting her. Shaming her. Perhaps you are too inexperienced to realize that when a woman comes apart in a man’s arms as you did tonight, it suggests a certain fondness, he’d said. Dreadful man.
Yet there was no denying the fact that she had done exactly that. Again and again. And wanted to again, to her shame. She pulled in a breath.
Liliana had spent too long under his thumb already, and thank God it had only been figurative. She’d had only four short years at Barnard plus the few months since trying to figure out who she was. She couldn’t shortchange herself now. She couldn’t give up. And certainly not when it was for so little. A man she hardly knew. A man who fascinated her far more than he should, yes, but who couldn’t even stir himself to work up a marriage proposal that wasn’t as much an insulting slap in the face as it was an invitation.
Liliana had been twelve—not two—when her parents had died. That meant she remembered them. Looking at all the pictures of them in magazines and online, it was tempting to lose herself in her mother’s effortless beauty or her father’s tawny good looks, but she remembered the other side of all the elegant photographs. They’d laughed. They’d huddled together on the sofa in front of the fire and talked for hours. They’d taken long walks in the country, always holding hands. They’d had tempestuous fights in three languages, and her mother even threw breakable things when it suited her, but they’d always settled their disagreements one way or another before the next morning. They’d prided themselves on that. Sometimes, when she was meant to be in bed, Liliana would catch them dancing in slow sweeps around the front hall and into the various living rooms, their eyes closed and their arms tight around each other.
Her parents had loved each other. She had no doubt. They had loved each other fiercely and passionately, and they had loved her much the same way. More than this, they’d enjoyed each other’s company. They’d listened to each other. When they were apart they would call each other, and Liliana could remember the way they’d talked about their separate days as if it was necessary for both of them to know all the details of each. Then they’d whisper things she could only imagine now, things they’d likely not wanted their child to overhear. She could remember her mother’s low laugh, her father’s deep voice, each spiced with what she could only describe, in retrospect, as endless longing.
Her parents had truly loved each other. Liliana had no intention of settling for anything less than that. It would be a betrayal of them, of the lives they’d led and had lost too soon, of what she imagined they’d have wanted for her.
Some part of her felt almost sad that Izar hadn’t seen them in the same way, that he hadn’t been as moved by them as she was or inspired to find his own piece of what they’d had—but then, he had been their business partner. She had no real idea what his relationship to them had been. Liliana was their daughter. Their legacy. She could do no less than honor them.
&nbs
p; “Thank you,” she said politely. After a very long moment. After deciding that it wasn’t worth mentioning true love to Izar Agustin, who would likely curl his lip at it the way he had at her apartment. And no matter how the word had sounded in his mouth. “But I think I’ll pass.”
* * *
Izar did not mention marriage again. Not once throughout the rest of the flight across the dark Atlantic and on into a crisp new dawn over Europe. Not on the brief helicopter ride from the airfield high in the Alps, dodging between towering mountains and far above the crystal-clear lake that stretched across the valley floor. Yet Liliana felt it was looming there between them, clutching at her, casting an ominous shadow over the spectacular scenery arrayed outside her window as they traveled halfway up a gleaming, snow-covered mountain to Izar’s villa.
Saint Moritz itself was as tony as it was picturesque, just as Liliana recalled the collection of aristocratic little towns from the few trips she’d taken here as a schoolgirl, ostensibly to expose the students to the sorts of lives their wealthy, often titled parents and guardians expected them to live after graduation. Plump and manicured villages nestled beneath towering mountains and lakes so blue they rivaled the sky, yet bristled with high-end shops and a particularly exclusive, extraordinarily blue-blooded resort culture in alpine air so fresh and dry it was known the world over as the Saint Moritz champagne climate. The hotels were among the finest and most expensive in the world, catering to royals and oligarchs alike and fazed by neither. It was a place of quiet, in-depth exultation in the generations of wealth and privilege that were on display at every turn, some with old-money restraint, others with all the expected heedlessness of the nouveau riche.
Izar’s villa was a three-story mountain paradise in the local style, all high wood beams and stout stone fireplaces with modern touches to distinguish it from a hunting lodge off in a far less impressive woods somewhere. High windows overlooked views of the pretty Engadine Valley in all directions, complete with a private chairlift that led away from the side of the villa, up the mountain and directly into the famous Saint Moritz pistes.
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