still in the beach house and still unmarried. That was the most important part, she reminded herself. She had to avoid marriage to Dharr. That would be the ultimate defeat of who she was.
She"d already lived under his author ity all her life. The body guards and lack of normalcy had been completely unfair and he"d never accept that she had been perfectly safe without the guards. Oh, Electra knew she might have done some stupid things, but that was part of growing up. One had to learn to walk and run, take a few scrapes in the knees, possibly a few broken bones, to know how to live and become an adult.
And now he wanted her to bind her life to him, be simply a part of his palace accessories. She"d be taken out when the need was appropriate and bear his children but that would be her role for the rest of her life.
She wanted more than that. She deserved more. She"d been denied so much all her life; first her mother, then her father, then her freedom, then a job where she could find self worth, identity and accomplishment. But she wouldn"t fall into a marriage with a man who didn"t love her.
No matter how much she loved him, she thought sadly. Pushing the blankets away, she walked stiffly to the bathroom. When she saw her reflection in the mirror, she gasped in horror. The dark circles under her eyes were just the beginning. Her skin was pale, her eyes were swollen and her lips were almost white with the stress of the past week.
Turning away from her image with a grimace, she turned on the hot shower, determined to start to turn her life around and decide what she was going to do. But instead of making decisions, she simply stood under the warm water and cried, terrified of never seeing Dharr again, terrified of him finding her and every scenario in between.
But how could he find her? She"d never spoken of her friends before and if he made the odd connection to the woman who had given her the job and the beach house, then she"d be surprised. Would someone at the school talk? Could someone possibly know about her friend"s beach house? It was small and Lori said she rarely rented it out because it was so isolated. Not many people wanted to holiday in this remote part of the beach. It was too far from the restaurants and bars, dance clubs and night life.
She bit her lip as she made a pot of coffee, wrapped in a fluffy white robe her friend had left in a closet. There were a few other clothes she"d borrow until she could get to the store but for right now, all she wanted to do was snuggle down into the terry cloth, drink coffee and try to feel alive again.
The day turned into a week and she found herself falling into a rhythm during the days. She"d wake up with the birds chirping outside her window, shower and make coffee. Then she"d take her coffee and a blanket out onto the wooden deck to slowly come alive. She bought several books to read, but by the end of the week, she hadn"t even read the first chapter of the first one. She"d simply stare out to sea, wondering what she was going to do with her life now.
By the early evening, when she realized that she"d accomplished nothing during the day, she"d angrily pull out the note paper from an old, worn desk and start making lists. They weren"t complicated lists, just things that occurred to her. One was a list of the things she"d like to learn, another was all the personality traits she hated in Dharr. They were harsh things like his arrogance, egotism, selfishness, high handed way he"d just dumped her into the assigned suite at the palace and ignored her. When that list was finished, she started another that listed all the character traits she wanted in her ideal man. This one was more comprehensive and started off with the ideal that the man she married would love her completely. He would also be kind, considerate, tolerant, treat her with respect and would never assume she"d become his mistress! The last one was underlined several times.
When the second list was finished, she realized it was just more of the first list but she stuck it up on the refrigerator anyway.
On the morning of