Page 20 of Her Diamond Deal with the CEO

‘The feeling’s mutual,’ she snapped.

CHAPTER FOUR

JACKSTAREDDOWNat the magazine he was holding, a frown creasing his face. He liked this writer, and usually he found her accessible and informative, but she must have changed her style because he couldn’t remember a word of what he’d just read.

But then he hadn’t actually been reading the article, just pretending to.

His lip curled. It was bad enough having to fake things in front of Sally and the rest of the staff at Red Knots. But to be doing so on his own time, when they were alone—

He glanced over at the cause of his current inability to focus. Ondine was also reading. A book. Only, judging by the tiny vertical indentations on the smooth skin of her forehead, she was, unlike him, completely engrossed in the contents. Her mid-brown hair hung loose today, as it had most days since they’d reached the island. He liked it that way. Liked the way it shone too in the afternoon sunlight that was filtering through the window.

At that moment, she lifted her hand to tuck a stray strand of that same hair behind her ear and her cuff fell away from her wrist. Remembering what that delicate nub of bone felt like beneath his fingers, he felt his skin begin to prickle.

Oh, for—

Gritting his teeth, he swore silently as the rest of his body caught up with the scene replaying inside his head, and he felt his groin tighten. If this were a normal marriage, a normal honeymoon, he wouldn’t be sitting here on this sofa pretending to read magazines, he would be in bed with his wife. Or maybe he would still be sitting here, but Ondine would not be wearing clothes and her hand would be touching him, not her hair.

But there was nothing normal about their situation.

Not that he had any idea of what ‘normal’ was when it came to married life. Before he’d started kindergarten, his parents’ marriage was already stumbling towards the lawyer’s office and adecree nisi. As for their remarriages. His visits were too brief, too rushed and too infrequent for him to get any insight into how their relationships worked.

Of course, his grandparents had a gold-standard marriage. But all that remained of their blissfully happy union was photos of the two of them at various stages of their lives and his grandpa’s unwavering devotion to her memory.

Imagining John Walcott’s reaction to finding out the truth about his grandson’s marriage, Jack shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

He and Ondine had agreed to tell their families about the wedding after the ceremony, and he had called his grandfather outside the courthouse. Thinking back to that conversation now, he felt his pulse stutter. It was difficult to surprise an eighty-two-year-old man, but he had managed to surprise his grandfather.

‘Married?’

‘I know what you’re thinking, Grandpa.’ His voice had felt raw in his throat. ‘And I know why you’re thinking it. I’ve not been any kind of grandson, not the sort you deserve—’

‘Jack, that’s not true—’

The softness in his grandfather’s voice had almost made him unravel with guilt.

‘Please, just let me finish. I know I’ve let you down, but I do want to change, and I think I am changing, and Ondine...she’s part of that change. Right from the start, it felt different with her. I feel different when I’m with her. And I know you understand that. I know you felt that with Grandma—’

His chest had tightened. His grandfather had met his future wife when she was working as a waitress. Nobody had supported the match but love had prevailed. It had felt wrong to bring up his grandmother but it had worked.

‘I did. I still do,’ his grandfather had said softly. ‘I was so unhappy when we met. I’d inherited the business and I had all these people relying on me, only I was too proud to admit I couldn’t cope. Too ashamed to admit that I hated the burden.’

Jack had frowned. He hadn’t known that. ‘I thought you loved the business.’

‘I grew to love it. But back then, I was miserable. Then I met Candace, and it’s no exaggeration to say that she saved me. She “saw” me, the real me. I found myself telling her things I’d never told anyone else. I suppose you could say I shared my soul. That’s when I realised I loved her. You see, that’s what love is, Jack, sharing your soul.’

‘I think that’s probably long enough, isn’t it?’

Ondine’s crisp question cut across his thoughts and he turned towards her, an anger that was both irrational and unfair skimming across the skin. Because he had wanted this cool, transactional relationship. Except now that he was living it, he didn’t like it at all.

Although to say that he’d wanted this was giving him slightly too much credit. True to form, he hadn’t got much further than the wedding ceremony in his head, and as a consequence he hadn’t worked out how to do this part of the marriage.

Night-time was easiest. Having already told Sally that upstairs was off-limits to her housekeeping team, they slept apart, in adjacent rooms, and each morning he let himself back into what was supposedly the room they shared.

Days were harder.

They had established a routine of sorts. At some point in the morning, then again after lunch, they would retire upstairs and sit in silence at opposite ends of the bedroom. Then, after a decent amount of time had passed, he would go back downstairs, looking suitably rumpled, and say that Mrs Walcott was sleeping and anyone who happened to be there would smile and nod in silent but tacit understanding.

And on that first day it had seemed to work. But now, pretending to be exhausted from some daily honeymoon sex marathon while simultaneously enduring a period of self-imposed celibacy was pushing his buttons almost as much as these absurdly stiff and overpolite conversations.

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