Page 38 of Cruel Mate

Clearing her throat, she stepped away again and pointed toward the staircase. “I should freshen up and get dressed. I usually tend my garden first thing in the morning.”

Zander glanced out of the kitchen window and smiled. “I noticed you have a lot of plants.”

Layla shrugged. “It's a hobby of mine.”

She held her breath, half-expecting him to taunt her about it.

“Many of them are medicinal, aren’t they?” he asked instead, and Layla gasped.

“How did you know that?”

Zander cocked a brow and smiled at her charmingly, “You learn a thing or two when you have to live off the land during a difficult war.”

The things he must have seen made Layla shiver.

“There’s still a thing or two I don’t know. Maybe you could fill me in sometime?” Zander suggested, and Layla’s heart raced. He wasn’t the first or even the second guy she had dated, but not one of them had ever been interested in her garden.

“I’d be happy to,” she smiled, her cheeks growing hot.

“Let’s eat,” Zander suggested, gesturing to the plates of food he had set out on the breakfast bar. “Then you can go and freshen up and we’ll figure out how we get through this first day as a married couple.”

Layla cringed at that. Getting through the day didn’t sound like a very good description of the first day of married life, and yet, oddly, his words were also a comfort. He looked at her with respect, which was far more than she had ever received before, and for the first time she imagined what they might be like together.

A team. It was an odd thing to think, yet it felt better than anything else they might have been. She was independent. He was strong. Maybe if they could get past their differences and find some common ground, they might actually make something of this mating situation.

Having washed and put on a summer dress that seemed to be the only thing she could get into with her bloated stomach, Layla headed back down the stairs to find that Zander was no longer in the kitchen.

Oddly enough, he had already managed to clean away everything from their quiet yet pleasant breakfast and there was no sign of him. Not until she heard the sound of thudding and grunting coming from the back garden.

Heading for the kitchen window, she caught sight of him at the far end of the garden. On the wooden deck where she sometimes lounged on a towel in the sun, he had placed a training dummy. And he was hammering at the poor thing as if he wanted to destroy it.

Dressed in nothing but shorts, his feet bare, Zander kicked, punched and slashed at the dummy with just about every close combat fighting move Layla had ever seen.

Sweat glistened off his gloriously tanned skin, and every inch of muscle rippled as he moved. The effort he was putting into training showed in the sounds he was making, sounds that made Layla’s stomach flutter with desire, for they were awfully close to the grunts and groans he had made in the woods that night when they had conceived the small life growing inside of her.

Damn, he was so hot it was hard to take her eyes off him. Whether it was her or her pregnancy hormones, she wasn’t sure, but she wanted him more than ever. And that was just as infuriating as before. How were they supposed to get to know each other, how could she learn to trust him, if all they did was fall into bed with each other?

No, she told herself firmly, I have to control myself.

And so, she took her time grabbing a tray with two glasses of fresh-made lemonade with lemons from her own tree before she headed outside and placed it on the garden table.

Zander seemed so intent on his training that she quietly started to go about tending her garden. Dropping down onto her knees by one of the beds, she started checking for any signs of dead or withered plants, removing any snails that had found their way past the measures she used to try and keep them off.

And as she worked, she idly turned her gaze every so often to her husband, astonished to realize how easily they had fallen into this. Strangely, it didn’t feel awkward. It felt normal to go about her business while he went about his, content in each other’s company.

She smiled, hoping it would last. Having decluttered and tidied up one bed, she moved to the next, and so on and so on until she reached the herb patch by the deck.

And that’s when Zander finally stopped. He turned to face her, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his hand as he asked, “So, how is your garden fairing?”

Layla couldn’t help but smile. He actually sounded interested.

“Maybe you should try my lemonade and tell me?” she suggested, gesturing to the drinks on the table.

She watched Zander leap off the wooden deck and pick up both the glasses, bringing one to her before he took a swig.

Layla sipped her own, watching over the rim for his reaction. When his eyes widened and he gasped, she already sensed what was coming. “This is the best lemonade I’ve ever tasted.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” she said, blushing, though when she took another sip of her own, she knew it was close.

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