Page 49 of Her Purr-fect Christmas Mate

“I’m not pretending! The Hypatia doesn’t mean anything to me. Itcan’t.”

12

Mordecai

Peony’s certainty wavered.

“Itcan’t.” She drew a deep breath. “You have your own thing going on with the Hypatia, and Ican’tget in the way of that. Not when it’s so important to you.”

Her words struck him like a blow to the chest.

All the time he’d been watching her, trying to figure out the mystery that was his beautiful, clever, troubled mate, she’d been doing the same to him.

And she’d figured him out.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” Her eyes dipped, then rose to meet his, warm and incisive. “The Hypatia isn’t just a random target for you. You want to destroy itspecifically.Not shut it down or renovate it or repurpose it. Destroy it.”

“I should have known better than to hide anything from you.”

She made a short, explosive noise. “Just because I can’t keep my thoughts hidden doesn’t mean you need to give up all privacy in this relationship. You have your reasons for wanting to demolish the Hypatia, and I… I don’t have any real reasons for wanting to keep it as it is.”

Her voice was normal. But the words were all wrong. And the glowing connection between them—it was dull. Subdued.

Something fought in her eyes for a moment, and then it was gone. “Idon’t,” she said again.

Mordecai’s dragon chittered its teeth.Something’s wrong.

Yes. I can see that.

“That’s all? You’re giving in?” He waited for her to say,Don’t sound so disappointed.She didn’t. “No mad last-minute schemes? You’re not going to lure me into a back alley and threaten me with a tire iron until I swear not to demolish the Hypatia?”

She winced slightly at the building’s name but still didn’t say anything.

A pit opened in the bottom of Mordecai’s stomach. “Peony—”

“Can we stop talking about it? I’m not going to bother you about that anymore.” She lay back with an exasperated sigh, but the part of her soul that still touched his—that he hoped always would touch his—was cold and brittle. The pit in his stomach deepened. “Today… I tied up all the loose ends. All the final Christmas orders. Everything else is admin.”

“You’re clenching your fists.”

She looked down at her hands as though she was surprised to see them. Her fingers relaxed one by one, as though she was having to convince them. “This is the first day of the rest of my life. I need to start acting like it. Time to grow up.”

The last words were little more than a whisper, but he could feel the blade in them. Aimed directly at herself.

“And what does growing up look like, exactly?”

“I don’t know?” She gestured vaguely. “Being your mate. Drinking horrible smoothies. Not… not worrying about things that shouldn’t matter to me. Like I said before, maybe if I’d made something of myself before I met you, things would be different, but…”

“Don’t say that.”

She bared her teeth at him. “I love it when you snap at me. My villainous mate.”

“You did make something of your life. You may not have meant to, but you did.”

“Well.” She looked away. “It’s too late to worry about that now. What time is it? Shouldn’t we be planning for tomorrow? If we visit your grandmother in the morning—”

“I never wanted to destroy the Hypatia.”

Peony frowned. For a moment, she didn’t believe him, and then without even searching his mind, she did. She stared at him, bristling with curiosity. “What do you mean?”

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