Not even a trace of their temporary connection had remained as he’d presented her with a freshly squeezed orange juice courtesy of the juice-maker on his sparkling kitchen island, scrambled eggs with asparagus on wholemeal toast courtesy of the pan on the pristine cooker, and rich herbal tea courtesy of the instant hot-water tap at the plush sink.
She had plastered a beatific smile to her lips and pretended not to notice that the vulnerable Kaspar had disappeared as abruptly as he’d appeared. Pretended not to care that he hadn’t dipped his head and kissed her the way she’d so ardently wished he would as they’d stood in that room, her hand over his heart, trying to feel whether it was beating as loudly and as quickly as hers had been.
But he’d remained as shut off to her as he always had been. A closed book.
‘So you do actually use this kitchen for cooking?’ It had been an effort to keep her tone upbeat at first. To tease him. ‘I’m impressed.’
‘You should be. It was your father who taught me how.’
‘His only real signature was all-day breakfasts,’ Archie had corrected him, this time striving for a laugh. Surprised when it was actually more genuine than she’d expected. ‘He was useless at most other cooking.’
‘You’re right.’ Kaspar had nodded after a moment’s consideration. ‘I’ve been making his famous all-day breakfast since I was fourteen.’
‘Ah, yes. You and Robbie would cook it every single Sunday of every single holiday.’
‘I seem to remember you wolfing it down as fast as anybody.’
‘I had to.’ Archie had feigned indignation. ‘I had to keep up with you two. You didn’t exactly want a twelve-year-old following you around. You both always tried to ditch me.’
‘Yeah.’ Kaspar had chuckled. ‘And you’ve no idea the rollicking your father gave us whenever we were successful.’
They’d laughed and, for a moment, it had felt good again. Until she’d realised that all Kaspar’s light-hearted banter was a way of keeping her at arm’s length. Even as she lived in his home as his wife, carrying his child.
* * *
Shaking off her thoughts as she reached the expansive glass sliders that led from the poolside to the cool lounge, Archie sensed, rather than saw, Kaspar coming up behind her as she entered the house.
‘Archie? Is everything okay?’
She wanted to shout and rail and vent all her frustrations. Instead, she simply turned to greet him with a pleasant, if rather flat smile plastered onto her lips.
She should be grateful he cared.
She should be.
‘I’m fine. The baby’s fine. I just wanted to head in for a while.’
He didn’t believe her for a moment. His gaze pierced through her, making her blood fizz in her veins in a way that even the hot sun hadn’t managed.
Dammit, when was she ever going to get a grip of herself around this man?
‘What’s wrong?’ he demanded. ‘You’ve been more and more jittery with each passing day.’
Fear that he could read her so easily, that he might guess the embarrassing truth, lent her voice a frustration she hadn’t intended.
‘I’m sick of being cooped up in this house, unable to even go out, when you refuse to talk to me about anything remotely important. I can’t take it any more. I’m getting my trainers and I’m going for a walk along the beach.’
He eyed her again, the same intensity, the same knowing expression in those unfathomable depths. How was it that he seemed to find it so easy to read her while she had no idea what he was thinking, most of the time? It was hardly fair.
And now she sounded like the kind of petulant teen she liked to pride herself that she’d never been.
‘Have I upset you in some way, Archie?’ Evenly. A little too calmly.
‘No.’ She gritted her teeth.
‘Have I treated you badly and not been aware of it?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Then perhaps you would care to tell me why I suddenly seem to have become your enemy.’ His eyebrows shot up. ‘Only here was I thinking I was looking after you.’
He had been. That was the problem. He was looking after her for the baby, which was right and proper, but not because he also wanted to look after her. The difference was subtle, but it was there. And it hurt.
Logic, it seemed, stood little chance against a heart that yearned for something else. Especially when that something else was Kaspar Athari’s love.
Archie balked at the realisation.
Surely she wasn’t still imagining herself in love with Kaspar? No, that had to be the baby mushing up her head.
‘You’re right.’ She backed down abruptly. ‘Sorry. Maybe I just need to get out of the sun.’
The last thing she needed right now was to engage in a bit of verbal back and forth with him. Or stir up more emotions in her that her hormone-riddled head might mistake for love. It was all she could manage not to squirm beneath his unrelenting gaze. Assessing her, as he always did.
‘Get changed,’ he bit out unexpectedly. ‘I’m taking you out for the afternoon.’
* * *
Flitting around the city, playing the tourist with Archie and doing the sightseeing thing was certainly not the way he’d been expecting this day to turn out. Yet here they were in downtown Los Angeles, soaking up the atmosphere.
To his surprise, he found himself enjoying it, even forgetting his concerns for Archie, and for their baby, for a while.
Over the last week he’d become more and more aware of the beatific yet simultaneously false smile that she’d flashed him from time to time. He was aware that, to a greater extent, it was his own fault. After opening up to her that one night he’d not so much regretted it but, more, had had his misgivings. At loading something like that onto Archie when she already had enough to worry about. And, yes, about opening up so easily, so naturally. As if it hadn’t been the greatest secret he’d lugged around for his entire life, which had defined him, driven him, moulded him. And as though it didn’t even matter any more. Not when he had Archie.
Because the truth was, he didn’t have Archie. She may have married him, but only because she’d been pregnant with his baby and he’d insisted on it. He would do well to remember that before he risked letting himself get carried away with this sham marriage of theirs. The marriage he was altogether too happy to accept. So he’d managed to shut himself off to her as he always had. A closed book.
But always aware that Archie could so easily take him off the shelf, blow the cobwebs away and open him up if she took it into her head. Encouraging him to give up his stories, his secrets when they were better left unread.
Unseen.
‘The Walt Disney Concert Hall?’ she breathed, a look of quiet awe on her face as she dragged him back to the present.
‘Yeah, well, I figured with your background in construction this might be of particular interest.’
‘It is.’ Archie nodded, taking in the iconic structure in front of them. ‘The way it looks and, I believe, the sound are incredible.’
He dipped his head in confirmation.
‘The LA Philharmonic are performing next month. I have tickets. Accompany me.’
It was meant to be an invitation but he knew it sounded more like a command. Even more unexpectedly, however, Archie merely looked up at him in surprise and then smiled. A genuine, sweet smile that he felt everywhere, as if she were running her hands over his bare flesh the way he knew her eyes had been doing—albeit against her will—earlier in the afternoon at the pool.
She made him feel so good. Perhaps too good. He didn’t have any right to still want her the way he did. As wrong as he knew it was—she was the mother of his child, after all, and he was supposed to be caring for her, protecting her—he couldn’t seem to stop it. She preyed on his waking thoughts. And most definitely his sleeping thoughts.
<
br /> ‘Come on.’ He forced one leg in front of the other, but his hand still reached for hers as he led her around the building he’d somehow known she would love to see.
The tour should have been a welcome distraction, allowing him to clear his head, but Kaspar was too preoccupied to enjoy it. He was just grateful that Archie seemed happy, throwing herself into the history and the story as though nothing was more important to her.
After that, they toured the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, the gardens at the exposition centre and another museum whose name he couldn’t remember afterwards. Yet each time she barely seemed to notice he was even accompanying her while, for Kaspar, the drive in the back of the chauffeured car was becoming a little harder with each journey. He couldn’t shake an irrational urge to jolt her, to remind her that he wasn’t just the guy who’d got her pregnant, he was her husband. Whatever that meant.
‘Where now?’ Archie asked as she glanced out the window as if she had any idea where they were.
‘Home.’
It was ridiculous how those words rippled through him, but it was only when Archie shivered that he realised she wasn’t quite as immune to him as he’d let himself believe. With mounting curiosity he watched her force herself not to react, grasping instead at the first thing to come into her head.
‘You mean that incredible house you own with the stunning views? Though I couldn’t describe it as a home.’
‘By which you mean...?’ he prompted when she stopped talking with a strangled sound.
‘Forget I said anything.’
He knew he should do precisely that. Let it go. It wouldn’t do any good to encourage the kind of conversation they’d had the other night. Yet he couldn’t just stay silent. He wanted to know what she thought. It mattered to him.
He didn’t care how dangerous that sounded. At least it was something more than the trivial conversations they’d been having recently. He told himself he was being foolish. But that didn’t seem to matter at all.
For her part, despite all the biting of her lip, which he was fast recalling meant that Archie was trying to bite back words she knew she shouldn’t say, Archie swivelled her head to look at him.
‘It’s hardly a home, Kaspar. It doesn’t have an ounce of heart. It doesn’t tell a visitor the slightest thing about the person who owns it. It’s a beautiful building but it’s soulless. There’s nothing of you in it.’
She was right, of course. Because that was exactly how he’d wanted it. At some point he’d come to equate being unreadable with being invulnerable. Not that he would ever have admitted that before now, of course.
‘So change it.’ He shrugged as though it was no big deal but his eyes never left hers.
As if somehow that way he could convey all the thing he couldn’t, shouldn’t, say. He told himself it was part of the plan. A necessity. To break down the barriers in order that they could grow close enough to be the kind of parents their child would need. It wasn’t about wanting to break down barriers with Archie.
He wasn’t sure even he believed himself.
What the hell was wrong with him?
‘Sorry? Change what?’ she pushed tentatively.
‘Change the house.’ He waved a hand that he was glad to see didn’t look as leaden as it felt. ‘We’re married and we’re having a baby. That place is your house too now, so make it a home. The family home of your dreams.’
‘What, to match the marriage of my dreams? I can change anything, but without your input it will just be my home in your house. It still won’t reflect you at all.’
The tone verged on hysterical. Out of nowhere, or so it felt. The words cracked out like a whip slicing through the air. He had to fight not to flinch.
‘So?’ he replied coldly, not trusting himself to say any more.
The silence was so stark that he could hear the almost silent hum of tyres on tarmac. Archie blew out a deep breath.
‘I just don’t understand you, Kaspar.’ She splayed her hands out on her knees. ‘It’s like we take one step forward only to take a giant leap back.’
‘I disagree.’
‘Really? One minute you’re telling me we won’t be playing happy families, the next you’re hauling me off to the registrar. You kiss me like we’re in some kind of epic movie, but then you don’t even look sideways at me. You open up to me finally about something that actually matters, and then you shut me out as though I have no right to know anything about you. Now you’re telling me we can redecorate your house like a real couple but you barely react when I challenge you about this not being a real marriage. Which version of Kaspar should I believe in?’
‘The movie version sounds good. This is Hollywood after all.’ He didn’t know how he managed to sound appropriately dry. Even amused. ‘This place loves a good “Girl Next Door Tames Playboy” love story after all.’
‘This isn’t a movie,’ she snapped, a little shakily. ‘This is my life.’
‘Now it’s both.’
She exhaled again. Even deeper this time, and more forcefully.
‘If this really were a movie, Kaspar, you wouldn’t be shutting me out.’
He really didn’t like the way his blood suddenly rushed through his body at her accusation.
‘I haven’t shut you out,’ he managed, although even on his lips the words sounded hollow. ‘I opened up to you.’
‘One conversation? One night?’ She was incredulous. ‘That’s your idea of opening up? You cracked the portcullis a fraction and then the next morning you’d not only slammed it back down but you’d dug a moat, filled it and set me squarely on the other side.’
His jaw locked so tightly he thought his bones might crack, but he couldn’t refute her accusation. More to the point, why did he find he even wanted to?
‘What did you expect me to do?’ he demanded. ‘Rage and roar and gnash my teeth? That isn’t who I am, Archie. I thought you knew that.’
She flinched, just as he’d expected she would. But then she rallied. Quickly.
‘I didn’t expect you to treat me like the enemy because you regretted even that tiny show of vulnerability from yourself. I didn’t expect you to push me even further away. I didn’t expect you to shoot down any conversations that involved anything real.’
‘You saw a bike with stabilisers in a shop and asked what colour we would for buy our baby,’ he stated in disbelief. ‘The baby isn’t even born yet.’
‘It was hypothetical. And it wasn’t just that. It was about getting an opinion from you on anything at all. You know exactly what I mean. Every conversation. Every time.’
He shot her a deliberately disparaging look.
‘I don’t know anything of the sort. You’re being overly dramatic.’
He did know, though. That was the issue. For a moment she didn’t answer, but when she did it wasn’t to say what he might have expected.
‘Please, Kaspar. I know you do understand.’
Her soft plea scraped away inside him. Raw. Guilt-inducing. He tried to ignore it. Turned his head to watch the LA landscape as it sped past the window, the sights and smells as clear to him as if he’d been able to taste then, feel them, without the thick glass and metal in the way.
Abruptly he hit the intercom, instructing his driver to change direction.
‘What’s Hector’s?’ Archie asked, despite herself, and, incredibly, a smile began toying with his lips.
How did she change the mood so easily? Bring him around when he’d thought things too dour?
‘You’ll see,’ he replied, only half-surprised when the hint of teasing didn’t satisfy her. ‘Fine, it’s a crazy golf course. I used to go there all the time when we first moved out here and I was sixteen.’
She eyed him, a little too knowingly.
‘Do you remember the course we used to sneak onto as kids? When it wa
s closed for the day and the guy who ran it knew we didn’t have enough pocket money to pay full price but he let us give him whatever money we could scrape together?’
‘And then he’d leave us whatever pastries hadn’t been sold that day and were going to get chucked out anyway?’ Kaspar added.
Archie laughed, her face flushing with pleasure.
‘You were really good at crazy golf. Robbie used to hate it because sometimes you’d hit the shots backwards just to give him a chance.’
‘Considering how co-ordinated he was at other sports, he really was remarkably bad at the game. So were you, for that matter. The athletic Coates kids, foiled by a crazy golf course.’
‘I wasn’t that bad,’ she objected.
‘You weren’t that good either.’
‘Now wait a minute...’ She paused, then jabbed her finger at the tinted glass with barely disguised delight. ‘There. Is that Hector’s?’
He knew the drive without even looking.
‘That’s Hector’s.’
‘Come on, then.’ She was out of the door the minute the car pulled up. ‘I reckon today might be the day for a little payback.’
He vaulted after her.
‘Payback, huh? Care to wager?’
‘How much?’
‘Not money. A forfeit.’
She wrinkled her nose.
‘What kind of forfeit?’
‘Winner gets to choose.’ He shrugged, striding ahead and slapping the money on the counter of a rather disinterested-looking young man.
‘Surely that’s not Hector?’ Archie whispered as they ducked through the paint-chipped turnstile.
He wasn’t fooled.
‘Changing the subject, Coates. Are you that doubtful about your crazy golf abilities?’
‘I am not.’ She selected her club and thrust her chin in the air. ‘Fine. A forfeit. Winner’s choice.’
In the event, the game was more fun than he had anticipated. Light relief after the tension. He’d never thought that revisiting any element of his past could ever be anything but painful, but he was beginning to understand that in his need to bury his childhood he had lost many happier times. Almost always concerning the Coates family, the way her father had taught him to be a man, or the way Robbie had shared everything with him, or the way Archie had treated him like another annoying big brother. They had made him feel like any other normal boy. A person, not an it.
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