by Lucy Monroe
“Surely you were expecting this.”
“Funnily enough…I wasn’t. I told you that.”
He sighed. “Yes, but I would have thought you would have at least considered the possibility.”
She just shrugged, not knowing what to say. They’d already been over the whole sex thing and their views were polar opposites. She’d been sure he wasn’t ready for a deeper relationship because he hadn’t pursued that angle and he’d assumed she’d realize he wouldn’t pursue it until she was committed to him.
“And you cannot make the decision now, knowing what you know of me, of yourself?”
“No.” Because if she did, it would have to beno. And her heart both demanded and rejected that answer.
“Is it my background?”
She stared at him. “I don’t know enough of your background for it even to be a consideration and I hope you aren’t implying I’m some sort of snob who would only marry someone born to the same world of privilege I was.”
“I am not saying that, no. In fact, your refreshing refusal to judge others based on where they come from appeals to me greatly.”
“I’m glad, because I don’t want to change that part of me.”
“But you are willing to change in other ways?”
“People grow…change is inevitable, but that’s with me to stay.”
“I am glad.”
“But you are annoyed I won’t accept your proposal right now.”
“Not annoyed…disappointed. I would think you could see the advantages to a marriage between us.”
He was disappointed, but not hurt. Which meant his emotions were not involved at all. That did not bode well. She bit her lip, realizing she must have done so before because it felt tender. It was a bad habit, but she had enough to think about without trying to break it at the moment.
“I’m sorry. I’m not like you and my father. I don’t make personal decisions based on business logic.”
“What do you base them on?”
“Emotion.”
His lips twisted with distaste just as she knew they would. He and her father had a lot in common. Maybe too much. She suspected he would be no more impressed with an emotional commitment from her than her father was.
She took a fortifying sip of water. “I know. That’s a dirty word to you and men like my father, but it’s how I live my life. You’ll have to give me some time to think.”
Silence pulsed between them until he pushed the ring box across the table. “Put it in your bag. We’ll discuss the proposal again later.”
She wasn’t sure why he wanted her to take possession of the ring. Maybe he thought that since possession was nine-tenth’s of the law, if she took the ring, she might have a harder time saying no and giving it back. The man was wily enough to have considered every angle.
“Please keep it until I give you my answer.”
“I’d rather you kept it.”
“Even if I say no?”
“I had the ring made for you. Whatever your answer, it is meant to be yours.”
Unable to hold back from looking after such a statement, she opened the box. It was a square-cut precious stone exactly the color of her eyes. Aquamarine-blue. To either side was a perfectly cut square diamond of crystal clarity, only slightly smaller than the center stone.
Emotion that had no place in their discussion welled inside her and she husked, “It’s beautiful.”
“Like you.”
She shook her head, dislodging the empty words. “I’m hardly that.”
“After all we have said about honesty tonight, you think I lie about this?”
“I think you want to flatter me, but I have a mirror. I’m passable, but I am not beautiful. You should see pictures of my mother. She was beautiful.” And she’d taken what existed of George Wentworth’s heart to the grave with her.
“You know the saying, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
She barely kept from rolling her eyes. “Yes.”
“You are beautiful to me, Eleanor.”
“False flattery isn’t going to get me to agree to marry you.”
“It is not false.” His voice was a low rumbling growl. She’d managed to make him mad again.
“If you say so.”
“I say so. Your beauty is timeless and very alluring to a man with my background.”
“I don’t understand.” What did his background have to do with it?
“You are kind. Truly compassionate. You seek to make life better for those born without your advantages. Your care for others is ingrained to the depths of your soul. In that, you remind me much of my mother. Physically you are perfect to me. Your features are soft and feminine, your body a delight to my senses, but particularly that of sight. Yet, as much as you spark my desire, you are elegant and refined, even in jeans and a T-shirt. These things are beautiful to me.”
She didn’t know what to say. She could tell he meant the words and that did something to her insides, tipping over a heart that had teetered on the precipice of love straight into its warm, sweet depths. Because as much as she’d learned he did not know about her, he had just proven he did know something about the woman she was under the skin and behind the image of a wealthy man’s daughter.
“Private schooling and deportment training can do wonders,” she said, trying to laugh it off while her heart contracted and expanded with her newly acknowledged feelings until she was dizzy with it.
“You were born with these traits, they are not something a person can learn.”
She didn’t agree. “You learned.”
“I am far from compassionate and kind.”
She’d seen the way he treated his mother. “I don’t agree, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“What then?”
“How to fit the society we move in.” She indicated the rest of the restaurant with a wave of her hand.
“But I do not fit.”
“You do.”
And yet, in a way he was right. He wore his suit, which was by a top designer and handmade, like he’d been born to it, but there was an aura of power around him that came from hard work and determination, not being born to wealth. His slight Greek accent. His direct way of speaking. They all spoke of a man not born to their world, but made.
But then she didn’t fit her world perfectly, either. All her little idiosyncrasies stemmed from the inside and only showed themselves on close inspection. In that they were alike.
“Tell me about your childhood.”
His eyes widened. “Why?”
“I want to know.”
His jaw hardened. “And if I do not want to tell you?”
“I’ll have you investigated.” She grinned at his shocked expression.
And then he laughed and she fell just a little harder as she laughed with him.
“I was born in Greece.”
“I knew that,” she teased.
“We lived there, with my grandfather, until I was ten.”
“We?”
“My mother, she was his only child, and I.”
“Where was your father?”
“Gone.”
A day ago, she would have respected the boundaries she sensed he’d erected, but a day ago, he had not asked her to marry him. “What do you mean, gone?”
“He was an American tourist. On the island for only a couple of days. By the time my mother realized she was pregnant, he was long gone. She did not even know his last name.” Sandor did not sound condemning…of his mother at least.
“That must have been very difficult for her.”
“Yes. But it could have been worse. My grandfather did not kick her out of the family home despite the shame her condition brought him. He supported her and me in the years that followed.”
At what cost though? Definitely Sandor had not come out of that home unscathed.
“What about your grandmother?”
“She had died the year before. Grandfather often said that it was
a lucky thing, for the shame would have killed her.”
“He sounds like he was a harsh man.”
“He was. In some ways. But he loved my mother and he took care of her even though what had happened went against his entire belief system.”
“She was young.” Hera Christofides had to have been a teenager when she had Sandor because she barely looked forty now. She had to be older than that, but Ellie was guessing it wasn’t by much.
“She was sixteen. Grandfather forgave her, but he never forgave the man who made her pregnant.”
“Theonly a man without honor would take the virginity of a woman he’s not married to, thing?”
“Yes. And that man’s blood runs in my veins.”
She wondered if that was something else his grandfather had maintained, but she didn’t ask. She merely said, “You can’t know he wouldn’t have stood by her, if he’d known about you, I mean.”
“He knew she was a virgin, but he left her. He never returned to check on her. He did not care.”
“Maybe. He probably wasn’t much older than she was. There might have been reasons for why he didn’t come back.”
“Yes. Those reasons were that hewas an irresponsible teenager himself who should have kept his pants zipped if he wasn’t prepared to deal with the aftermath.”
“Like you said, he was a teenager. It probably never occurred to him that there even was an aftermath.”
“Ignorance does not change the outcome.”
“No, it doesn’t, but I have a hard time believing that any man who fathered you could have been totally without a sense of responsibility.”
“I get my sense in that direction from my grandfather and mother.”
“You can’t know you got nothing from your father…since you didn’t know him.” She didn’t know why she argued, only that is seemed important to make him realize life was not as black and white as his grandfather had obviously taught him it was.
“What is this about? Are you worried bad blood will tell?”
She sighed. “I hate that saying. It’s just so wrong. Even if he was an all out jerk without a bit of good in him, that has no bearing on who you are today.”
“Not everyone sees things that way.”
“I know, but I’m the one who is right.”
“And perhaps I am not the only arrogant one at this dinner table.”
“Knowing when I am right is not arrogance,” she teased.
“I will have to remember that defense.”
“You do that, but somehow I don’t think it’s a new concept for you.”
He just smiled.
“For the record, I for one am glad your dad didn’t keep his pants zipped and I bet your mom doesn’t regret it, either.”
The smile disappeared and his expression looked hewn from granite. “Why would you say such a thing?”
“Because, if he had,you wouldn’t be here.”
“And you think that is a good thing?”
“Yes, and I’m sure your mom agrees.”
“But you hesitate to marry me.”
The man was tenacious. “My reasons have nothing to do with you not being a pretty amazing person I’m glad is alive.”
He raised his brows at that. “Then what are your reasons?”
“More to the point, what are yours?”
CHAPTER THREE
“IHAVE EXPLAINED …I find you beautiful inside and out. I am ready to marry and have a family. I want to do that with you.” Sandor knew instinctively that if he mentioned the business deal with her father, it would make Eleanor balk.
It was not the overriding reason for him choosing her to be his wife, but it had played a role. That did not bother him, but he suspected she would react very differently to that knowledge. As she had said, she did not make her decisions based on the same considerations that swayed men like him and her father.
She wanted an emotional reason for marrying him. She wanted to be loved. He had gleaned that much, but that was not something he could give her. It was not something he wanted to give her. Love was an overrated emotion he preferred to steer clear of. He had loved his grandfather and he loved his mother, and that love had come with a price. He had paid in vulnerability when nothing else and no one else got to him.
His mother’s unhappiness hurt when he let nothing else touch him. His grandfather’s disapproval left wounds he swore no one else would ever get the chance to emulate. He would have to convince Eleanor there was enough going for them without the love he wanted no part of.
“My mother said she fell in love with my father at first sight.” He didn’t know why he’d mentioned that, but it supported the argument he was about to make, so he did not regret it. “The emotion you think such a panacea for pain is in fact one of the biggest instigators of it that I know. Her love led her into his bed. My grandfather’s love kept her with him even though he could never overlook her indiscretion completely. His love for me drove him to push me harder, to demand more of me than he would have his own son. He would not allow me to become like the man who had sired me. Irresponsible and without honor. But his lessons were often painful and I knew they were born of love.”
“Love does not always lead to pain.”
“Yes, it does, and I do not want the pain that is inevitably born of love in my marriage.”
She gasped and he grimaced. He had said more than he intended, but if it helped to convince her, he would not begrudge her the truth.
“Whatdo you want?” Her sea-blue eyes were filled with a softness that called to something deep in his soul.
It had from the first moment he’d seen her across a crowded charity ball. She’d been with her father and Sandor had been instantly intrigued by this woman who was so clearly of the world he wanted to conquer, but not like it.
“I want children, a legacy—a legitimate legacy, to inherit what I have built, to build onto it. I want to please the woman who sacrificed so much to give me life and keep me with her. Even in Greece thirty years ago, a woman could find ways to end an unwanted pregnancy, but she never even considered it.”
“How do you know?”
“I asked.”
The compassion he liked so much sparked in Eleanor’s eyes. She was exactly the kind of woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. A woman who could help to calm the demons that raged in his soul.
“Your mom wants you to marry?”
“You know she does.”
Eleanor smiled. “Well, she’s not very subtle…but I figured she hinted that way to all your dates.”
“Actually, no.”
“You mean I’m special?” she asked facetiously.
“Yes. She has hinted at me enough, but never to one of the women I dated. Until you.”
“She wants grandchildren. A lot.”
“Yes. What about you?”
“I’m too young to be a grandmother.”
That was one of the things he really enjoyed about his little Eleanor. She teased him. She made him smile and she was always ready to do so herself.
“I meant do you want children?” He did not doubt her answer, she was too perfectly suited to motherhood not to want to be one, but he wanted to hear her say it.
“Yes. Very much.”
“I thought as much.”
It was her turn to grimace. “You think you know everything.”
“Apparently I do not. I thought you would accept my proposal without a lot of fuss.”
“Fuss?” she asked delicately and suddenly he knew he was treading on very shaky ground.
“I did not think it would be a difficult decision for you to make,” he amended.
“It would have been easier if you had said you loved me.”
He could only respect her courage and her honesty. “Do you want me to say it?”
“A lie of expediency designed to get you the outcome you want? What of your insistence on truth from me? I told you I won’t accept any less.”
Yet, he had a sneaki
ng suspicion that they defined honesty differently. He dismissed the niggling worry and said, “I will give all the loyalty and dedication to your happiness a man who professes such feelings would do. There would be no lie in my saying the words if you need them to feel more comfortable about our marriage.”