CHAPTER SEVEN
FRANCESCA’SHEARTBEAT loudly in her ears. She was on shaky ground. Touched at the way he’d handled her father, confused by the seemingly disparate reactions he had to her. No one ever in her life had acted the role of protector. She’d never asked anyone to.
Yet he’d stepped in like it was his sworn duty—when she would have...crumbled. Not forever, but briefly. Apparently, freedom didn’t cure the scars left behind.
And that was part of the shaky ground—that she wasn’t as cured as she might have liked to be. That someone had seen that in her. But then that someone had stepped in to...help.
As she had told Aristide, she was not weak. She hadn’t allowed herself to be for some time. She had come to a determined conclusion as a teenager, sporting a painful bruise that had swollen her eye so badly she hadn’t even been able to hide it with makeup, that the only way she escaped abuse altogether was to make that escape happen herself. No one was coming to save her.
And so she had saved herself. Carefully and methodically over years.
She figured this was the key to success in all things.
But Aristide seemed to want to...protect her in some way, and it felt like perhaps in this phase of her life weakness wasn’t so bad. Because in her moment of weakness, there could be someone who stepped in and took care of it.
Just as she would take care of his. His reputation.
She did suggest the kiss because she’d seen the photographer, because she was determined to succeed for him, even more so after this evening, but even in this moment she knew she’d also suggested it because she wanted to feel his mouth on hers.
She did not understand him or her reaction to him, but she wanted to.
In a world of things beyond her control, figuring people out was the one thing she’d learned how to hone. How to use. She would figure out a way to use it on him, so everything worked out.
Everything.
He inclined his head down toward her. His dark eyes were inscrutable. Something...something glittered behind that careful mask, but she could not read it or reach it, even as he brought his mouth to hers.
She held his gaze, though her eyes wanted to flutter closed. Because watching him as he kissed her was a revelation. When she’d closed her eyes in the chapel, she’d gotten lost in the sensation, let it overtake her. There had been a humming wonder in that, but it had also sort of...happened to her.
Now she wasn’t just aware of his mouth on hers, but of where they were. That there were eyes on them, that a camera was likely taking their picture. She could feel the points of heat that were his palms on her lower back, the soft swipe of his lip against hers—a friction that frazzled through her even as his dark, dark gaze kept her pinned to the spot. She could feel the strength of his muscles under her own palm, watch his eyes darken there before her, feel his heart beat against hers.
It lasted no more than a few moments. Brief and full of yearning—at least from her. When he pulled back—not just his mouth, but his entire body—she could not call what she’d felt in him a tremor exactly, but it had been some sort of reaction. Elemental, maybe.
They affected each other, and this was like a hit of some kind of drug. She wanted to keep finding the more expansive high.
He did not release her, but the remainder of the dance was kept at enough distance their bodies barely brushed. The entire time, she studied him, trying to understand how her body could simply...alight, when that kiss had been nothing special, and for a photo op only.
She did not believe in love, at least not for someone like her. But she knew passion existed. She’d seen it starkly in the difference between the way Vale had looked at her and at the Princess everyone was so sure he really loved.
Maybe he’d never acted on that passion in his gaze, maybe he had. She’d never considered it much of her business. But she knew it was there. And as she hadn’t felt it for him, she’d never been particularly jealous of it. It was more an obstacle to overcome so their union worked in her favor.
Now it was somehow the swirling center of her and Aristide—the man who was supposed to give in to any passion that came his way. But he kept her at this strange, irritable distance any time that passion seemed possible.
Once the song ended, he ushered her off the dance floor and spent the rest of the night whisking them from one conversation to the other. He laughed, he chatted. He introduced her to people, and she introduced him to some. On the outside, they appeared a perfectly happy newlywed couple, she knew.
But she also sensed something simmering beneath the surface. One of those moods she was going to have to get to the bottom of so she could navigate. So she could work things out.
The moment they were alone in the back of his car together, his mask fell. That lazy smile, that sparkle in his eyes, all gone. He made sure there was a distance between them in the car—not just physical, but as though his internal life was as far away from her as possible.
Francesca knew how to read a Do Not Disturb sign someone put out. She had always heeded those. Poking into people’s dark spaces was risky. Francesca was not one to take a risk, because you needed a bedrock of safety from which to take risks from, and she’d never had that.
After tonight, Aristide felt like that safety. Because she’d seen him angry, and he hadn’t hurt anyone. Because he seemed so viciously and vehemently against the idea of a father raising a hand to his daughter.
He could scoff at the idea of kindness, but he’d shown her his ability for it, over and over again. So, she risked. She scooted closer to him. “Is something amiss?”
He looked over at her, not outright scowling but with something accusatory in that expression of his. “What would be amiss?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”
“All in all, I think tonight was a grand success. A good kicking-off point.” He smiled. Thinly. “And many more events to go yet to reach that end goal.”
She supposed if he wanted to talk business, she could oblige. She had some thoughts on the events he’d planned thus far. “We will need to add some charitable outings, I think. To lend credence to your change. It should be something personal to you. So when people see the photo op, it feels personal and not like an image cleansing.”
“I don’t particularly like using charity to help my personal gain.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She waved this strange bit of morality away. “Everyone does it, and it’s not just personal gain. Whatever face time you give a charity helps that charity with publicity, which often translates into more donations. It’s only...slimy if you treat money like a cure, I think.”
“I have been the charity, Francesca. No recipient of it wants the spotlight on them. I will not be party to it.”
He said that the same way he’d said he would not abide bullies. All cold, determined certainty.
She studied him. This was not the image he’d presented everyone for years. These strange pillars of nobility that had suddenly come out tonight. “It amazes me that someone who has clearly spent years crafting an image pretends he doesn’t know how to do it. You are nothing like the reputation you’ve made for yourself.”
“Ah, that is where you’re wrong.” He flashed that playboy’s grin that was meant to make any woman blush. She was not any woman, but she certainly felt a heat creep up her cheeks, a warmth spiral out from deep inside of her.
She thought of the way his hands had felt on her when they’d danced, their bodies brushing, his mouth barely touching hers for the cameras. If all that felt as good as it did, what might more feel like?
She scooted closer once more and that grin of his fell. His expression clearly read stay back. She frowned herself, because...he made no sense.
But the car stopped before she could try to puzzle it out, the door opened and Aristide slid out of the car like it was an escape. Francesca had never thought she might throw herself at someone quite so unmistakably and be rejected—obviously she’d never do it if all the signs weren’t there.
But Aristide continued to be some strange mixed signal she couldn’t sort through. It was frustrating. She always figured people out. She always got to the bottom of them and dealt accordingly.
She hurried after him. “Aristide,” she said. She didn’t have to tell him why her voice was all admonishment. He straightened, turned, offered his arm.
Because they were still in public, naturally. She took it and smiled up at him in the warm but dim light of the hotel’s courtyard. He did not smile back. He walked with her though, if stiffly, her arm tucked into his.
In the lobby she leaned against him a little, enjoying leaning on someone bigger and stronger than she was. Besides, people were watching. She felt their eyes, saw the way they huddled with each other and whispered.
Once they got to their rooms, the door closed behind them, Aristide extricated himself from her grip. “Good night, Francesca.”
“Let’s have a nightcap.”
“No, thank you.”
She wanted to stomp her foot in frustration, but she kept her voice mild and her smile in place. “While tonight was mostly a success, I do think we need to work a little on our body language when we’re mingling. You seemed to always keep me at arm’s length when we were talking to people after we danced.”
She moved over to him, took his arm and looped it around her shoulders. She looked up at him with a smile, angled her body so it brushed his as provocatively as she knew how. “We should stand more like this, I should think. Though not quite so...buddy. Perhaps you should put your hand—”
He abruptly removed his arm from her shoulders before she could guide his hand exactly where she wanted it. “I do not think I need instruction on where to put my hands.”
She looked up at him, studying that angry look in his face that made no sense. Then she shrugged as if it mattered not at all to her. “It’s only practice.”
“I think we’ve had enough practice,” he said gruffly. But she saw the way his eyes tracked over her. Anger and frustration, sure, but he wasn’t unaffected by her. He wasn’t uninterested in her. He was just holding himself back.
The only reason that made sense to her was if the fact she was inexperienced made him uncomfortable for some reason, but that was foolish. So she did not back off. “Then let us do more than practice.”
He stepped away from her completely, scowling. “That’s enough, Francesca.” The kind of fatherly scold she’d usually expect to be paired with a slap.
But Aristide was not her father, so there was that. But the fact he could remind her of those nights made her angry enough to forget her usual carefulness. She never came out and said anything that might offend, never asked anything of people that she didn’t think they’d go along with. She figured it out herself. Always.
But he was making that incredibly difficult, so she wanted to yell at him, and her only defense against that feeling was to demand the truth.
“I do not understand this. You act as though you’re attracted to me, but you seem to be...angry about it. Everything I know about you tells me you’re not someone who gets angry about partaking in some chemistry. So explain to me why... Why I am so...repugnant?” She never would have imagined demanding an answer to such a ridiculous question. She didn’t know why Aristide brought it out in her, but she could hardly take it back now.
Especially when he just stood there, so still and detached she couldn’t help but think of his brother. They presented themselves as opposites, but she saw threads of men who were the same, even if she didn’t understand how or why. Probably that father of theirs. If Milo poked at Aristide the same way she’d watched him poke at Vale, then no doubt they’d both built some of the same defenses.
“I apologize if you were somehow misguided about what this was, Francesca,” he said firmly. Stiffly. “I will not, under any circumstances, mix business with pleasure.”
And she understood it then. The line he had to draw. Not about her.
A line between himself and his father. Her heart ached for what he must have seen, knowing his mother worked for a man like that. Loved a man like that. Who would treat them both so poorly.
Maybe not with his fists, but Francesca knew full well that abuse took many shapes and sizes. She crossed to Aristide, even as he stared at her approach icily. Because she could understand this new strange pillar of nobility inside of him, but it was out of place here.
“I don’t see this as business, Aristide. No money is being exchanged between us. You have no more power over me than I have over you.” She held out her hands as if to demonstrate a balanced scale. “We are simply two people helping each other out. I do not know why it would be a mix of anything.” She moved her hands to press against his chest, because surely he would have to see this line he drew just wasn’t necessary.
She wondered how a man could look that cold and feel that warm. Carefully, he put his hands over hers—but pulled them off him and released them so they fell at her sides.
“That is because you do not know. Playing the virginal temptress doesn’t suit you, Francesca.”
The barb landed as he’d meant, and maybe she should have left it at that. She would have, not all that long ago, but freedom had changed her. His protection had changed her perception of safety.
“You can throw my innocence in my face all you like, but it is only there because I have not had the opportunity to shed myself of it. I would think marriage would be the place one could do so, regardless of the feelings, or lack thereof, involved in the marriage.”
His expression was cool, but his eyes were not. “Were you planning on shedding yourself for my brother when you were going to marry him?”
She supposed it was a fair enough question, though it really had nothing to do with anything at all. Because her marriage—to whomever the groom ended up being—was only about securing her freedom. Not about love or chemistry or futures.
But she had always assumed at some point she would share a bed with her husband—passion or not. She wanted children, and that was how they were made. So, yes, she supposed in some distant future she’d had the vague idea she might have to share a bed with Vale.
She had never spent any time fantasizing about it. It had been a to-do item on the checklist of her life, at most. Shoved to the bottom so she did not have to really think about it.
With Aristide, it all felt different, but she supposed feelings didn’t matter. The truth was simple enough. “Do you want an honest answer to that question, Aristide?”
“I think you should examine why you would be willing to fling yourself at either brother as though we’re interchangeable parts and what right you have to be miffed you might not get your way in the matter.”
“You act as if intimating that I’m mercenary is an insult. I was not marrying your brother for love, any more than I married you for chemistry. We know what we are, Aristide. And I don’t think I should have to say it, have to explain myself, but if you need to hear it, so be it. I did not feel attraction like this for your brother. I did not get lost in his mouth on mine, or dream about what it might be like to feel his hands on me. That is all you. All us.”
His eyes had flared, and his breath seemed to be just a tad more labored. His gaze was hot, and for a moment she thought he might relent. Might step for her, put that angry mouth on hers. There was the faintest movement, like he was going to step toward her.
Then he gave his head a shake and turned on a heel. “Go to bed, Francesca,” he said, low and serious. “There will be another party tomorrow.”
And left her there, throbbing and frustrated, and more sad than she wanted to be.
But this was not something to be...sad over. He was wrong. She would simply have to prove to him that he was wrong, and then... Then they could figure out the rest.
Aristide’s body throbbed. It was painful, this want she stirred up inside of him.
He had never had cause to refuse an advance before, and the strangest part was he could not recall ever wanting so badly to take a woman up on one. He tended to prefer to do the advancing because he didn’t like games. He liked to be forthright. He liked everything to be clear, so there was no confusion, no hurt.
Francesca was no angel, because she did not seem to understand subtle for the life of her, and it burned through him like some brand-new desire he’d never tasted.
That and the fact she had clearly stated something he shouldn’t care about, but did nonetheless. That she did not feel the same desire for his brother that she did for him. When it didn’t matter in the least what she felt for Vale one way or another. Because he wouldn’t be acting on it.
But he liked what she said about wanting his hands on her all the same.
Still, this arrangement between them was too...complicated and confusing. And he knew that was the start of all hurt, all manipulation, all betrayal. The mixing of external goals and internal wants.
People thought him a libertine, but he had rules for everything. They just weren’t rules like Valentino had for himself. They weren’t about being perfect, about controlling everything within an inch of its life, or about how others saw him. Aristide knew how to bend. You did not have your entire life upended at thirteen and not know.
But there were lines he didn’t cross so there were no victims left in his wake. There were chances he didn’t take, knowing where anything with his heart, his expectations, his hopes led. This he took more seriously than anything.
He would protect Francesca. Give her whatever freedoms she wanted. He would even let her take charge of rehabilitating his image—because she seemed to enjoy the planning of it, and because she was good at it.
But he would not cross the line that would ever make her his victim. Or him the victim of what he felt for her.
No matter how much he wanted her.