Heir to a Dark Inheritance - By Maisey Yates Page 0,22
hard cut thanks to the flickering flames, his jaw more angular. Harder. And his eyes, they just looked hollow.
That, right there, should have been enough to erase the heat.
And yet, for some reason, her palm burned all the more.
“Do you feel rested?” he asked.
“I’m not really sure.” She twisted her wedding band, the one on her right hand. Not the one she’d been given today. A reminder. Of what was real, and what wasn’t.
Then she took a seat somewhere in the middle of the long, opulent banquet table. Sitting at the other end made her look like a coward. And she was a coward so she wasn’t going to go sit next to him.
“I thought I should make sure you ate. You touched nothing at the lunch after the wedding.”
“I was too nervous to eat.”
“You seemed very calm.”
“I’ve learned not to show too much emotion on the outside.”
“Except that day at the courthouse.”
She remembered vividly how she’d sat down and cried on the floor. She wasn’t even embarrassed about it. The thought of losing her daughter deserved that level of emotion. “Re-straint was the last thing on my mind.”
“Was everything at the wedding to your taste?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “It wasn’t. And that was my plan.”
“Your plan?” He looked over at her and frowned. “Come sit closer to me. I’m not shouting down the table at you for our entire meal.”
She complied reluctantly, again, because she didn’t want to look like a coward, scooting toward him until there were only two chairs between them.
“Better?”
“Yes. Now tell me about this plan.”
In order to tell him, she would have to talk about Sunil, and she’d been avoiding that. Because it seemed wrong to talk about him to Alik, the man she’d just made her husband. It was too complicated. Too confused.
“I…This was my second wedding.”
“Was it?” His response wouldn’t have sounded out of place if her previous statement had been “it was nice and warm today.”
“Yes. I didn’t want this one to resemble my wedding. This wasn’t my wedding. Not in that way.”
He turned the wineglass in front of him in a slow circle. “And what happened to your first husband?”
Leave it to Alik to ask so bluntly. Social niceties were not something he gave deference to. Although, she found she almost liked it. At least he asked for what he wanted to know. At least he spoke, even when the words were unpleasant.
Now that thought, the comparison she was making to her husband, that was a betrayal. She shut it down as quickly as it started.
“Sunil had a lifelong heart defect. At least that’s what his doctor told me later. It had gone undetected until, one day his heart…stopped. He was at work. They took him to the hospital, kept him on life support for a while. But he never came back. He just slipped away.”
“How long has it been?” he asked.
“Three years.”
“You loved him?”
“I love him,” she said. “Very much. Not…not in the same way, obviously. But, he will always live in my heart.”
A knot of emotion formed in her chest, and she welcomed it. It was safer than the heat that had been blooming there only moments before. Much safer than any of the new, raw emotions she’d experienced in the past few weeks.
“I have never lost anyone I cared for like that. I can imagine it must be difficult for you.”
For you. As if it wouldn’t be for him. “You’ve never lost anyone you cared for?” She thought of her parents, of her husband. “You’re very fortunate.”
“I’ve never really loved anyone,” he said, his tone cold, frightening in its flatness. “One good thing about that is it keeps you from loss.”
“What about your parents?” she asked.
“I never knew them. My mother left me at an orphanage when I was two, probably nearly three. My date of birth is a best guess made by the woman working at the facility at the time I was brought in. My name was given to me in much the same way. I don’t share my surname with anyone I’m related to. From there, when it became overcrowded I was put out on the streets.”
“I…I’m sorry.”
“No need to be.”
Two servers came in and placed a tray in front of both her and Alik before leaving the room as quietly as they’d entered.
“It must have been hard,” she said.
“It was all I knew. And as I think you must know, it’s impossible to waste time feeling sorry for yourself when there is life