‘Instead he did everything he could to make me miserable. For as long as I was his ward. Yes, I am aware of this. But I came of age more than ten years ago. I dealt with my feelings then. Now all I care about is retaining the power that is my birthright and erasing his damage from my parents’ legacy.’
Her heart panged and it was impossible to miss the feeling, nor to misunderstand it.
She didn’t want that to be all he cared about.
She wanted him to care about her, too. Not just as the mother of his children, but as a woman. As the woman he’d married, the woman he wanted. She wanted him to more than care for her; she wanted him to love her. If Octavio loved her, would she trust herself to love him back? Would she be willing to risk getting hurt all over again, but so much worse than it had been with Christopher?
Was it even an option?
It wasn’t about trusting herself to love. Somewhere along the way, she’d fallen in love. Actual love—the all-consuming, heart-stopping, world-shaking love. She couldn’t pinpoint the moment it had happened, but when she looked back, she wondered if even that first night, in the hospital, when she’d stayed with him instead of doing the smart thing and leaving, if there hadn’t been a part of her that had somehow been destined to be with him. Tolove him and to help him accept that love was safe after all. At least, it was with the right person.
Her tongue darted out and licked her lower lip. She stared across at him, her heart in her throat, her whole body on tenterhooks.
‘Is that all you wanted to talk about?’
She stared at him, terrified. She loved him. She loved this man who’d told her again and again that their relationship would never be real. She loved a man who was so emotionally closed off because of what he’d endured that she had no idea if she’d ever get through to him, but she knew she had to try.
‘No.’ The word was almost a groan. She closed her eyes on a wave of nausea. ‘Octavio, in my dream, you were in the palace and I couldn’t get to you. You were there, staring straight ahead, but you couldn’t see me. I kept trying to knock on the glass but I couldn’t quite reach it. There was something invisible holding me back. And then you started to disappear in front of my eyes, fading away from me, and I couldn’t stop it. I lost you, and it was the worst feeling in the world.’
He frowned, as though he couldn’t comprehend what she was saying. ‘But I’m right here. It was just a dream.’
‘You’re missing the point. I thought it was a bad dream, and it was, but maybe it was actually the dream I needed to have to wake me up and make me see with my own eyes what my heart has been telling me all along.’
He was suddenly very still, his features locked in a mask of disciplined coldness. ‘And what’s that?’
She wanted to bury herself under the sheet; she wanted to run away. But she couldn’t. Not after starting this. ‘I love you.’ Three small words, so simple, but so life-changing, whether they were returned or not. ‘I love you,’ she repeated. ‘I love everything about you. I know what we both agreed this marriage would be, but it’s so much more than that. We’re going to be parents, afamily, and I want to start that with total honesty. Mostly, I want you to know that you are so loved. By me. I love you,’ she said, again, when he was silent.
He closed his eyes, his face paling before her eyes. As though it was the worst thing she could have said. As though he had hated hearing it. ‘I see.’
‘I don’t think you do,’ she contradicted fiercely. ‘Ilove you.All of you. I love who you are, who you’ve been, what you’ve done, what you’re working towards. I love that you’re going to be the father to my children. I love you.’
He stood then, dislodging the hand she’d placed on his thigh. ‘With respect, you do not.’
Her heart twisted but she stayed the course. ‘I think I know how I feel.’
‘You’re misinterpreting it. You’re seeing sex and reading love. They’re not the same thing. I warned you about that.’
‘They’re not the same thing, but nor are they mutually exclusive. I love you. I love having sex with you. Both things can be true at once.’
‘But they’re not. This is just about the sex. And maybe a bit about your pregnancy hormones making you feel things—or want things—that would turn this sham of a marriage into something more desirable. You want to believe we’re living some kind of fairy tale but that’s not what this is. We got trapped by a stupid one-night stand and we’ve made the best of it.’
She sucked in a sharp breath at his awful, hurtful words. How dare he say that?
‘I’m not saying I’m not pleased. I need an heir, and you being pregnant means I will have not one but two, and quickly. This is very good news for me. But I have been clear all along about what you mean to me, what our marriage is to me. This is a means to an end, nothing more.’ His nostrils flared. ‘Youdo notlove me.’
She swallowed hard but her mouth was dry and her tongue would hardly cooperate. He turned towards the wardrobe, disappearing inside of it and returning only moments later dressed in an impeccable suit, looking regal and untouchable. She shivered.
‘Don’t think about this any more. It’s a silly child’s fantasy, and you and I both know better than to hope for that.’
He began to walk towards the bedroom door, and she was so angry she would have pitched something after him if there were an object to hand.
‘You can say that a million times, it won’t change the way I feel, Octavio. I love you!’ She shouted the last words, as if by raising the volume of her voice they would permeate his stupid, stubborn head and find their way to his heart.
He slammed the door when he left the suite, and Phoebe fell back against the pillows, tears forming on her lashes.
He felt like a caged predator, a wild beast that had suddenly been locked away, as he went through the day’s meetings, scheduled back-to-back, just as he usually liked it. But today, he would have killed for an ounce of breathing room. Just a little freedom to think clearly about Phoebe and her dream, her words, particularly three little words she’d said again and again. Only the moment he allowed his mind to turn to her, to recollect her face as she’d said those words, everything in his body had come to a catastrophic stall. It was as if his blood ceased pumping, his heart ceased working, his lungs stopped inflating, his cells froze. Every part of him rejected every part of what she’d said. He couldn’t let her do this to him. He couldn’t let her make him think and feel…feel anything.
It just wasn’t what they were, and it sure as hell wasn’t what he wanted.
