Chapter Four
Violet didn’t know which one of them felt the most awkward during the hour of dining that followed.
She had stolen Belle from Stella, who had been about to feed her daughter in the kitchen and had insisted on feeding her in the dining room instead.
With Belle in her high chair, wanting to feed herself but not yet capable of getting a spoon to her mouth, there was no room for conversation.
There was a lot of pretend airplane flying with the spoon, even more silly noises and several angry tussles with Belle.
In between times, Violet swallowed the occasional sip of wine and a mouthful of the delicious savoury tart provided for her own meal.
‘If you don’t want to talk about something, just tell me,’ Tore informed her as he set down his coffee cup to leave the table and rose to his full intimidating height. ‘You don’t need to hide behind a baby.’
Face aflame, Violet watched Belle trying to crawl across the polished floorboards in fast mode to follow Tore from the room. He didn’t miss much, did he? He had seen right through her foolish pretence. And what had he taken from that avoidance tactic of hers? That she didn’t want another kiss?
Pale now, Violet scooped up her disappointed daughter, who had not been able to catch up to Tore.
It’s against the rules, he had told her.
His rules? Her rules? Whose rules? What on earth had he been saying?
My goodness, for all she knew he already had a girlfriend somewhere.
Their marriage was fake, she reminded herself with a faint pang of rejection, which was even more stupid.
Feelings weren’t involved in their relationship.
And if Tore was involved, the rules were probably forged in steel.
So no more feelings, no more kisses. He was a breathtakingly beautiful guy and totally her fantasy male, but that didn’t mean she had to make a fool of herself and expose her reckless fascination.
A guy with looks of that ilk had to receive many promising offers from women, and he didn’t need to settle for a small, curvy baker with little experience with men.
She was in bed before she saw Tore again.
She had had a busy afternoon. Stella had accompanied her down to the beach and through the little town.
On the street she was disconcerted by how many people acknowledged her and paused to be introduced to her by Stella.
Locally, the name of Renzetti was much respected, and Stella told her how much the interest of Tore’s grandparents in the town had accomplished there.
She did wonder if Tore, a workaholic running a multibillion-dollar earning industry, would ever emulate the older generation.
That evening, she climbed into the big bed, clad in unremarkable pyjamas, and put out the light. When Tore arrived, he crept about in darkness until she gritted her teeth and sat up to put on a lamp. ‘It’s all right. I’m not asleep yet.’
‘I thought you could be faking it to avoid me again. Although I do owe you an apology for kissing you.’
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous,’ Violet muttered before she could think better of it. ‘It was a kiss. We’re both adults.’
‘Well, be an adult and tell me how you felt about it.’
‘I thought that was obvious… I liked it,’ Violet replied uncomfortably.
And Tore was stunned by that very honest response.
I liked it. She had said so in spite of the marriage contract and hadn’t denied enjoying it to make a point.
He didn’t think he had ever been with a woman who was that open and straightforward.
It was an amazingly attractive quality. There was no faking a front, no flirtation in such an answer.
She was putting herself out there…the way you wouldn’t, he acknowledged, a touch uncomfortable with that truth.
‘But it goes against what you—or should I say your sister—agreed to in the marriage contract, which we both signed.’
‘I’m only marginally aware that there was an actual contract signed,’ Violet admitted, slumping down on the pillows, wishing Tabitha had shared more with her.
But then Tabitha always focused on the big picture, not the little details.
She suspected that Tore might well have ended up strangling Tabitha had he married her.
He might prefer rules, but rules and unnecessary detail inflamed her twin.
Tabitha had been a total rebel at school and anywhere else where people tried to tell her what she could and couldn’t do.
‘There was a clause within the contract specifying that there would be no physical intimacy.’
‘Tabitha couldn’t have read it properly,’ Violet told him with confidence, recalling how her sister had been concerned that her bridegroom might be expecting sex from her.
‘She didn’t read it but she signed the document?’ Tore queried in apparent disbelief.
It was incomprehensible to Tore that anyone could sign a legal agreement that they hadn’t fully read, Violet recognised.
However, he had not had the specific stress of knowing, as Tabitha had, that she had to sign regardless of what was in that document.
It was for their mother’s sake and the sole hope of obtaining the money they needed for her treatment.
Tabitha had known that she had no choice.
‘My sister gets irritated with stuff like that. She’s very impatient.’
‘You’re not,’ he remarked.
‘No. We’re non-identical twins. We don’t look like each other and we’re also quite different people but we love each other to bits anyway,’ she completed, her breath feathering in her throat as he dragged off his shirt.
An acre of naked male flesh swam into view, spanning toned biceps, prominent pecs and the sort of taut abdominal muscles, flat stomach and lean waist that belonged on a giant movie screen.
Violet endeavoured not to stare. She wasn’t a teenager, for goodness’ sake!
Her response to the thrilling expanse of Tore’s bronzed magnificence embarrassed her.
Out of the corner of her eye she caught the removal of the sleek suit pants below and she shut her eyes fast, listening to him trek into the en-suite bathroom.
‘Will it keep you awake if I go for a shower?’
My goodness, he was so polite. ‘Not at all. Go ahead.’
Now she had to think of him stark naked in the shower!
Did he have no sensitivity? Or was she the only one of them starved of such thoughts and promptings for far longer than she cared to admit?
She rolled back and forth in the bed, striving to get comfortable with the situation while adhering strictly to her side of the mattress.
‘So, I’ve been thinking…’ Tore mused as he sank down into the bed mere inches away.
Violet was busy wondering what he was wearing and telling herself that it was none of her business. ‘What about?’
‘I don’t know why I was thinking about that marriage contract—’
Well, if he didn’t, Violet did and she said, ‘You were thinking about it because you like rules, legal rules, whatever…so, what about that contract?’
‘It doesn’t apply to us because you didn’t actually sign it.
I’m married to you, not your sister. We won’t make new rules.
We’ll let everything progress naturally.
I will try to loosen up a little on the rule front,’ Tore conceded because he was still hearing I liked it somewhere in the back of his brain and just then it sounded like a remarkably soothing refrain.
It was strange how he no longer felt quite so trapped in the marriage, he acknowledged in surprise.
The anger had gone. Violet was so grounded that she calmed him.
She wasn’t creating a fuss about anything…
Why should he? After all, if she could make him feel what she had made him feel when she was in his arms, she was more of an ally than an enemy.
As for that demand for up-front cash that had once enraged him?
Possibly, he was more than a little spoiled by the fact that large sums of money had always been available to him.
He had never known poverty. And the way his bride dressed herself and the baby, she was pretty poor.
He had already made arrangements to deal with that problem.
Progress naturally? What did he mean by that? No more rules?
‘I don’t really understand what you mean by—’ she admitted ruefully ‘—progress naturally?’
‘If we want to kiss, we kiss. If we don’t, we don’t,’ Tore framed crisply, his dark, deep drawl curling up her spine like a caress.
Violet curled up sleepily. ‘So, no rules, then,’ she mumbled in relief.
And she fell asleep right there and then.
Tore was rather disconcerted by that discovery.
He remembered suspecting that his ambitious-to-keep-him bride might try to use sex to manipulate him and a quiet laugh escaped him.
No, he didn’t think Violet in her alphabet pyjamas was likely to be involved in that power play.
But over the years he had had more than one sexual partner who sought to manipulate him.
A week later, Violet traced her fingertips across the neat piles of silk, lace and the finest cashmere in her walk-in dressing room.
An array of summer garments hung in the closets for her: pretty dresses, formal evening wear, beachwear and more luxury lingerie than she had ever seen outside a shop.
There were even rows of footwear of all descriptions and handbags galore.
It was time to have a word with Tore in private.