Javiero turned his head and saw Regina comprehend she’d been overheard. She didn’t waste time looking remorseful. She slapped a wide smile over her gaffe and braved it out.
“Querido, it’s so good to see you again.” She wove toward them through the pockets of people who fell into a watchful silence.
The music rose again, sounding overloud now that everyone had closed their mouths to blatantly eavesdrop.
“Introduce me to your frien—”
“Fiancée,” he corrected sharply. “We won’t keep you. I’m sure you’re on your way to the door.” He was not the host of this gala, but it was a banishment.
Regina paled as she realized she had lost social cache that would never be recovered.
“You must be Regina? I’m Scarlett.” She shot out her free hand. “Javiero and I were about to dance, but I’d love to chat properly after. I hope you’ll stay a little longer?”
“I would love to,” Regina said with a wary glance at him and a weak shake of Scarlett’s hand.
“Excellent. Querido?” Only he heard the facetiousness in Scarlett’s use of the endearment Regina had used. She squeezed his arm and brushed against his stiff body, trying to draw him onto the dance floor.
He resisted, watching Regina until she swallowed and looked down. Then he followed Scarlett and whirled her into his hard arms.
“Why did you do that?” He demanded through his teeth. He wanted to crush Regina.
“Oh, I wanted to spit in her face, believe me.” She didn’t look it. She wore an unbothered smile. “But I won’t start the sort of grudge match with your old flame that your mother and Evelina still cling to. Who has the time or energy?”
He did. Animosity and resentment drove him pell-mell through this endurance event called life. He had axes aplenty to grind and regarded setting them aside as quitting.
Recognizing that vengeful side of himself was a disturbing moment of self-reflection, one that made him glance down at the glimmer of despondency beneath Scarlett’s outwardly serene expression.
Concern rushed through him. “Are you tired? Do you want to go home?”
“No,” she said after the briefest hesitation. She found a fresh smile. “People would say she put me on the run, and they’re gossiping enough about me as it is.”
“Are they? I never even notice anymore.” Of course he and Scarlett would be the subject of askance looks and talking behind hands. It was inevitable. But between Niko’s perfidy and the money troubles Javiero had inherited from his grandfather, his family had always been a bottomless well for chinwags. Scarlett—his estranged father’s PA, who had birthed his son—provided a fresh buffet of speculation, but he hadn’t given it any notice.
He had assumed she was impervious as well, handling their notoriety like the stalwart soldier she’d always been.
He could feel tension in her, however, even as she kept it from her face. The silver gown she wore was stunning and draped her figure lovingly, but he suddenly saw it as the armor it was. Delicate chain mail with a protective ruffle at her neck.
Was she feeling attacked? Had she been struggling with these appearances all along?
A wave of protectiveness had him closing his arm across her back and drawing her closer. “I don’t care what people think. If you’re tired, we’ll go home.”
“I’m fine,” she insisted, fingers cool in his as she smiled a deflection. “Did you hear someone ask her if you had called me your fiancée? She gets to be the source of that fresh gossip and will be forced to admit that, yes, she had the chance to marry you and blew it. You couldn’t have devised a more diabolical revenge if you had tried.”
Another time he might have appreciated the irony, but he was infuriated that she hadn’t been forthright with him about her troubles. She would share her body, but not the bruises his world was leaving under her skin?
“If you’re struggling with something, I expect you to tell me,” he said. Demanded.
“I fight my own battles.” Her chin came up in the unbothered way it always had when she had crossed swords with him. Exactly the way it had all those times she had driven him crazy, acting tough and unwavering against any pressure he had put on her. “This isn’t even a skirmish. Don’t worry about it.”
He didn’t want to worry. Deep in the back of his head, he was still thinking of her as his enemy. It was a slippery label to hang on to, though. She was also his son’s mother. His lover. Soon he would make her his wife.
As he whirled her on the dance floor, he tracked his one eye around the room, letting the feral beast inside him signal a deadly warning to any coyotes and wolves who thought they could nip at his woman and get away with it.
Beauty and the Beast. Which one is which?
That remark continued to grind against Scarlett’s self-worth because, beneath the anger was hurt and—she winced as she acknowledged it—shame. She was the beast. That’s what she kept thinking. She wasn’t a good person. She had left her mother and siblings to their father’s anger, first escaping to university and later to Greece.
She could rationalize all she wanted that by working for Niko she had “saved” them, but Niko hadn’t been a pillar of the community. He’d been horrible to Javiero. Selfish and demanding and cutthroat. Entitled. No wonder Javiero hated her for working for him.
Now she was a terrible mother who couldn’t seem to comfort their child. The doctor assured her Locke was healthy, that it was “just colic,” but she had tried every tip she could find online and nothing seemed to help.
Javiero knew on some level. He must. He began curtailing their socializing, something that should have been a relief and, instead, made her feel as though he didn’t want to be seen with her.
At least
