Page 59 of On His Bride's Terms

‘I wasn’t trying to blind you,’ Faye said miserably.

I was too busy being blinded by you and falling in love.

‘So what was your plan? Wait out the six months then take your leave, as per the get-out clause? No harm, no foul?’

Faye nodded. ‘I didn’t think it would be an issue. I believed we’d be living very separate lives, and that when it came to it you wouldn’t want to stay married anyway. But then...it became something else.’

Everything.

‘You didn’t know that the best sex of your life would happen within a marriage of convenience?’ Primo laughed harshly, ‘Well, go figure...me neither.’

Faye winced. ‘You’ll find another wife and—’

He cut her off. ‘That’s what you thought? That I’d just weather the fallout of a failed marriage and get on with choosing wife number two?’

She winced. ‘I’m sorry, Primo... It all happened so fast and I was sure it wouldn’t last...’

Primo closed the distance between them so quickly that Faye couldn’t speak. He took her arms in his hands.

‘What wouldn’t last, Faye?This?’

His mouth crashed down on hers, and even amidst the tension and the anger and the recriminations Faye melted into Primo, every cell singing to be close to him, to have him touch her.

He pulled back, eyes blazing. ‘Does that feel like it’s going anywhere?’

No. It felt stronger than ever. Like a live force.

She pulled free of Primo and put some distance between them. ‘I never meant for this to happen,’ she said. As if they could have controlled it!

‘It happened,’ Primo said flatly.

Faye lifted her gaze and forced herself to meet Primo’s blistering blue one. Not hot anymore. Cold.

‘I’m truly sorry, Primo, for not telling you the truth. It’s a painful secret I’ve kept from almost everyone for ten years. It’s part of the reason I haven’t been in any relationships beyond the very superficial. After my husband rejected me, I didn’t believe I’d be enough on my own for anyone. Maybe I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to be in a position where you felt you had to stay with me out of some sense of loyalty.’

She continued painfully.

‘But it doesn’t change the fact that I cannot give you a family, Primo, and there’s not enough to sustain us without that family. It’s better that I leave now. We’ll get a quiet divorce and you can get on with choosing a more suitable wife. I don’t think your reputation will be too damaged—men seem to have more leeway in that regard than women.’

Primo was reeling with everything he’d just learned. With how badly Faye had deceived him. It threw up stark questions. Like what would he have done if she had told him this from the start? Would he still have married her? If he’d had to sit down and seriously consider if he wanted a family would he have been happy to settle for an affair? And where would they be now if he’d done that?

He had a feeling they might still be exactly in this very place, and it was disconcerting. But all he could see when he looked at her was the face of treachery. Here in this place where a dream he’d never admitted to having, had just crystallised...only to be smashed to bits in the same instant.

He couldn’t look at her, because looking at her was creating too much cognitive dissonance in his head.

He turned away from her.

‘I’ll go, Primo.’

He also couldn’tnotlook at her.

He turned around again. ‘It’s that simple? You just walk out of here and what...? Get on with your life?’

She bit her lip. She looked pale, eyes huge, but he couldn’t let that affect him.

She said, ‘Whatever you think about me, you deserve to get on with your life and have everything you want. A family.’

But that dream was now tarnished. That angered him almost more than anything else. The fact that she’d been the one to inspire that dream only to destroy it.

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