“I’m afraid I’m not following you.” He eyed her, and that light in her gaze. “Surely you are not complaining that I was mean to you? I know you were a sensitive girl back then, Molly. But really. There is a vast difference between meanness and a person simply not catering to you in the way you would like.”
“Sensitive,” she repeated, as if tasting the word and not finding she liked it overmuch. “Isn’t it funny how that word is used as an insult? Think about what it means. Yes, I was very sensitive to your manipulations. And your father’s. And—”
“Are you comparing me to my father?” His tone was light, but he doubted his gaze matched. “Do you dare?”
If he expected Molly to back down, he was in for a disappointment. She only gazed back at him, her expression neutral enough, save the arch of her brows.
“My mistake,” she said in a cool tone designed, he knew, to rub him the wrong way. It worked. He hated that it worked. “There are no similarities. Your father isolated a woman here, constantly veering back and forth between treating her as a lover or treating her like the help. Either way, she was an object entirely at his whim. There is, naturally, no overlap whatsoever between the two scenarios.”
“Is this an example of the sensitivity you claimed not to have?” he asked darkly.
“Am I the sensitive one, Constantine? It seems you’re the one having a reaction.”
He was having any number of reactions, and he doubted very much that she would like it if he shared them with her. He did not care how long it took him to get himself back under control, so long as he managed it. He did not like how close he’d come to losing control altogether. He did not care, at all, for how this woman affected him.
But he didn’t walk away from her or this situation he’d created, either.
“I believe you were going to tell me how it was that I hurt your precious teenage feelings, making me somehow responsible for your lack of self-confidence at the time.” His shrug, it turned out, was no less a weapon than hers. “Though I think you will find that many a teenage girl is in the same predicament. It is the teenage girl that does it, not me.”
“How many teenage girls do you know who had their confidences funneled directly to the gossip rags?”
He eyed her. “Do you imagine that I will apologize for this?”
Her lips curved, but there was only frigid cold in her gaze. “A Skalas? Apologize? The very earth would tremble.”
“If you resent finding yourself in these crosshairs, Molly, I would suggest that you address yourself to your mother. As she is the one who put you there.”
Molly scowled at him. “I get it, Constantine. You didn’t want a stepmother. Boo-hoo. It may shock you to discover that I didn’t particularly want a stepfather, either. Particularly not one like your father, who was, at best, sadistic. And that’s about the nicest thing I can think to say about him.”
He made a scoffing sound, but she didn’t subside. Instead, she leaned over the table, still aiming that scowl right at him. “It amazes me that you seem to think my mother, a housekeeper with no formal education whatsoever, managed the astonishing feat of trapping Demetrius Skalas, who was at that time the richest man on earth. Trapping him. What a joke. If she had that kind of power, why would she have stopped with a simple trap? Why wouldn’t she have used her power to either make him a better husband, or, failing that, kill him off so she could live out her days as a very wealthy Skalas widow?”
Constantine couldn’t say he liked either one of those questions very much. “You are naive in the extreme if you don’t know precisely how your mother ensnared my father.”
“Because... What? Demetrius Skalas, once again the richest man in the world—and also well renowned for the parade of women on his arm all throughout his marriage—suddenly tripped over one particular woman and could no longer function? My mother worked some kind of spell, is that it? And he was susceptible for only as long as it took to race off and marry her. Then, in another bit of magic, he became completely impervious to her in every way.” She rolled her eyes. “Come on, Constantine. You can’t really believe any of that.”
He found his ribs were too tight, suddenly. He was too aware of his pulse, and the way it racketed around inside him. He glared at her, wishing the lantern light didn’t make her look even more beautiful than she already was. Because the beauty was distracting, and somehow made the charges she was levying against his father—and against him—seem that much starker.
And something he almost wanted to call painful.
“Nothing you can possibly say to me is going to make me change my opinion of your mother, Molly,” he said.
When he could speak with the voice that was only dark with warning, not bright with his temper.
“Of course not,” she said quietly, her arctic blue gaze pinning him where he sat. “Because if you did that, you would have so many other unfortunate questions to ask yourself, wouldn’t you? If you’re wrong about my mother, then all the years you spent sandbagging her every move would seem...vicious, wouldn’t they? If you’re wrong about my mother, this price you intend to extract from me by naked days and romantic nights really does make you a monster, doesn’t it? And that’s not even getting into what you did to a lost teenage girl who could have used a friend. The less said about that the better, I think you’ll agree.”
“I think that’s enough,” he managed to growl.
“I’m sure it is,” Molly said with a rueful little laugh
