Total pages in book: 230
Estimated words: 217798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1089(@200wpm)___ 871(@250wpm)___ 726(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 217798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1089(@200wpm)___ 871(@250wpm)___ 726(@300wpm)
She richly deserves to be bent over the desk for this. Isabella would like it, in the end. My belt across her ass would bring her thoughts into calmness.
But a bright line has sprung up between us. The line between the bedroom and the rest of the world. An annulment. She asked me for an annulment. I won’t cross that line now. “You are not the woman I married. I won’t entertain childish temper tantrums in my office.”
“And I won’t entertain controlling bastards trying to micromanage every minute of my life. I’m not your property, Francisco. You don’t own me.”
“Thank god for that.” There’s nothing I loathe more in the world than being at the mercy of emotion, and I’m very nearly there. How was she able to wound me like this? It shouldn’t be possible. Not in the life I’ve built and the person I’ve become. It feels like I need her, but I can’t need her. I can’t allow myself that weakness. I force steel into my voice. “You’re useless to me this way. I would be embarrassed to have you on my arm.”
“Then we’re in agreement.” Pain stretches Isabella’s voice, and regret crashes into me. “Draw up the papers so I can sign. I’ll pack my things, and we won’t have to see each other again.”
“That would certainly be for the best.” Another lie.
I want to see Isabella every day. I had intended to make her training process slower, to give her time to adjust to her new life. I haven’t been able to do it. Need for her wakes me up in the morning and keeps me up after she’s fallen asleep. This morning, I was going to propose a new living arrangement. I thought she might be open to sharing a bedroom, or at least a bed.
Isabella stares at me, her arms tight across her flat stomach now. No telling what she’s waiting for. I won’t be the one to break. I won’t be the one to show her that she’s hurt me. This has gone far enough. We’ve crested the peak of pointless emotion, and I don’t see any recovery for it in this conversation. That’s not how these arguments work. They fester and spread until taut silence takes over the entire house and everyone in it.
No escape, other than death or divorce.
Or, I suppose, an annulment.
Swallowing the hurt and the attendant sting takes more effort than I would have thought necessary. I’ve already let myself indulge in this exchange for too long. It ends now. I force my face back into calm detachment and force my heart back into a steady rhythm and keep myself firmly on the other side of the desk. I won’t go to her. I won’t touch her. Isabella will get what she’s requested from this meeting.
“Anything else?” I ask, my voice ice cold.
Isabella blinks, very nearly a flinch, at my tone. It’s the same tone I’d use for any member of staff who needed to leave. Her throat moves. I very much want to grip her there and feel the tension and desire in her pulse. My mastery of myself doesn’t allow it.
“No.” Her voice wavers. “There’s nothing else.”
I’m distancing myself from her, though we stand in the same room. It’s a series of gates coming down between the two of us. Thick, heavy gates, because behind them I’m a bloody heart who doesn’t truly have his own balance. That man—that reckless, irrational one—is willing to fold first. He would go around the desk and apologize, take her in his arms, and then take her to bed. No maid. No butler. No artificial distance between us… No one but the two of them.
That man would fall to his knees, tell her he’d fallen in love with her, beg her to stay.
I’m not that man.
“Then you can go. I’ll send for you when the papers are finished.” I sit at my desk and reach for a pen. The things I need to ask for will be simple enough. Isabella hovers at the edge of my vision, swallowing and swallowing. I fix her with a cold stare. “If there’s nothing else—”
Hurt flashes through her eyes. “No. There’s nothing else between us.”
My wife turns her back on me and goes out of my office without a backward glance.
CHAPTER 12
Isabella
Packing is impossible.
I don’t know what to take. None of my old things seem to be available. I search through drawers and find myself unable to pick out any items that weren’t bought by Francisco as part of my new wardrobe. It seems unlikely that I only came here with a pair of pants, a top, and two sheath dresses, but everything seems wrong.
Perhaps it’s me who is wrong. My head is clouded with anger and the lingering cuts from his words. I thought Francisco wanted me here. I thought he wanted me at all. That was the reason for our arrangement. He chose me. And now he’s glad to be done with me.