“Marry you?” Travis Carson echoed, his brilliant dark gaze rampant with incredulity as he abruptly cast aside the financial report he had been studying. “I… I don't understand. Why would I want to marry you?”
Freya's slender hand was shaking. Hurriedly she set down her coffee-cup, her courage sinking fast. “I was just wondering if you had ever thought of it.” Her restless fingers made a minute adjustment to the siting of the sugar bowl. She was afraid to meet his eyes. “It was just.. an idea.”
“Whose idea?” he prompted softly. “You are perfectly content as you are.”
She didn't want to think about what Travis had made of her. But certainly contentment had rarely featured in her responses. From the beginning she had loved him wildly, recklessly, and with that edge of desperation which prevented her from ever standing as his equal.
Over the past two years, she had swung between ecstasy and despair more times than he would ever have believed. Or cared to believe. This beautiful, luxurious apartment was her prison. Not his. She was a pretty songbird in a gilded cage for Travis’s exclusive enjoyment. But it wasn't bars that kept her imprisoned, it was love.
She stole a nervous glance at him. His light intonation had been deceptive. Travis was silently seething. But not at her. His ire was directed at some imaginary scapegoat, who had dared to contaminate her with ideas, quite embarrassing ideas above her station.
“Freya,” he pressed impatiently. Under the table the fingernails of her other hand grooved sharp crescents into her damp palm. Skating on thin ice wasn't a habit of hers with Travis.
“It was my own idea and... I'd appreciate an answer,” she dared in an ironic lie, for she didn't really want that answer; she didn't want to hear it. She was scared of hearing it.
Travis could not have looked more grim than he did now, “You have neither the background nor the qualifications that I would require in my wife. There, I said it,” he delivered with the decisive speed and the ruthlessness which had made his name as much feared as respected in the business world. “Now you don't have to wonder anymore.”
Every scrap of colour slowly drained from Freya’s cheeks. She recoiled from the brutal candour she had invited, ashamed to discover that she had, after all, nurtured a tiny, fragile hope that deep down inside he might feel differently. Her soft blue eyes flinched from his, her head bowing. “No, I won't need to wonder anymore,” she managed half under her breath.
Having devastated her, he relented infinitesimally. “This isn't what I would term breakfast conversation," he murmured with a teasing harshness that she easily translated into a rebuke for her presumption in daring to raise the subject. "Why should you aspire to a relationship within which you would not be at ease... hmm? As a lover, I imagine, I am far less demanding than I would be as a husband."
In the midst of what she deemed to be the most agonising denouement of her life, an hysterical giggle feathered dangerously in her convulsed throat. A blunt, sun-browned finger languorously played over the knuckles showing white beneath the skin of her clenched hand. Even though she was conscious that Travis was using his customary methods of distraction, the electricity of a powerful sexual chemistry tautened her and the fleeting desire to laugh away the ashes of painful disillusionment vanished.
With a faint sigh, he shrugged back his shirt cuff to consult the watch on his wrist and frowned.
"You will be late for your meeting." She said it for him as she stood up, for the very first time fiercely glad to see the approach of the departure which usually tore her apart.
Travis rose fluidly upright to regard her narrowly. "You are jumpy this morning. Is there something wrong?"
The other matter, she registered in disbelief, was already forgotten, written off as some impulsive and foolishly feminine piece of nonsense. It wouldn't occur to Travis that she had deliberately saved that question until he was about to leave. She hadn't wanted to spoil the last few hours they would ever spend together.
“No... what could be wrong?” Turning aside, she reddened. But he had taught her the art of lies and evasions, could only blame himself when he realised what a monster he had created.
“I don't believe that. You didn't sleep last night.”
She froze into shocked stillness. He'd known?
He strolled back across the room to link confident arms round her small, slim figure, easing her round to face him. “Perhaps it is your security that you are concerned about.”
The hard bones and musculature of the lean, superbly fit body against hers melted her with a languor she couldn't fight. And, arrogantly acquainted with that shivery weakness, Travis was satisfied and soothed. A long finger traced the tremulous fullness of her lower lip. “Some day our paths will separate,” he forecast in a roughened undertone. “But that day is still far from my mind.”
Dear God, did he know what he did to her when he said things like that? If he did, why should he care? While his hunger for her remained undiminished, she took no compliment from the desire she had once naively believed was based on emotion. She had emerged from the soap-bubble fantasy she had started building against reality two years ago. He didn't love her. He hadn't suddenly woken up one day to realise that he couldn't live without her…and he never would.
“You'll be late,” she whispered tautly, disconcerted as he skimmed her upturned face. When Travis decided to leave, he didn't usually linger. The fingers resting against her spine pressed her closer, his other hand lifting to wind with cool possessiveness into the curling blonde hair tumbling down her back.
“Freya,” he said huskily, bending his dark head to taste her moistly parted lips with the inherent sensuality and the tormenting expertise which all along had proved her downfall.
Stabbed by her guilty conscience, she dragged herself fearfully free before he could taste the strange, unresponsive chill that was spreading through her. “I'm not feeling well,” she muttered in jerky excuse, terrified that she was giving herself away.
“Why didn't you tell me that sooner? You ought to lie down.” He swept her up easily in his arms, started to kiss her again, and then, with an almost imperceptible darkening of colour, abstained long enough to carry her into the bedroom and settle her down on the tossed bed.