22. Chapter 22
Chapter 22
Duncan
W e were being driven home in the same sleek black Mercedes that had brought us to the reception, the car a quiet bubble of tension as the city lights flickered by outside.
Thankfully, Thierry and Angelique had decided to continue to party so I was alone with my wife.
I sat next to Elsa, feeling the anger radiating off her. I couldn’t shake the jealousy that hit me when I saw her talking to Vincent. It caught me off guard—raw and unfamiliar. And then he kissed her on the forehead. Fucking asshole!
"How the fuck do you even know, Arsenault?" I bit out.
"I've known Vincent for years," she replied unhelpfully.
"Elsa," I warned.
"What?" she asked, her eyes flashing something I'd never seen before: anger. Real, honest-to-God, bones-deep rage. It surprised me to see it. This was the sweetest woman I knew, but something had set her off.
"Explain how you know that fucker."
She chuckled. "I'm not one of your minions, Duncan. I don't dance when you say when."
She didn't even bother to look at me. Her focus was outside the window. A part of me wanted to shake her; another wanted to hold her. She was upset. I wanted to know why so I could make it better. I also wanted to drown her in my jealous rage.
"Vincent Arsenault is a bad man, Els."
"I'm surrounded by bad men. My father. Apparently, you," she mocked. She turned suddenly and looked me in the eye, "Did you know your friend Jett Percival is an American spy?"
All color drained out of me. How the fuck did Elsa know this?
"Who told you that?" Because that person needed to be taken care of, immediately .
"Vincent," she smiled without humor. "And according to him, you can take care of yourself. So, you're probably one of those bad men you just warned me about."
"I don't understand why you're so upset," I said, trying to keep my voice even.
Elsa turned to me, her eyes flashing with fury. "You don't understand? Really? While you were busy hobnobbing, Vincent had to step in to get rid of Pascal, who threatened me and you. And where were you? Networking with Giselle ?"
Giselle ?
"What the fuck are you talking about?" I demanded.
"The woman, the model, the escort…whatever." She looked away again.
I felt the band around my chest loosen. She was jealous. Just as I was. We made one hell of a pair.
I caught her arm and gently coaxed her to look at me. "I'm sorry, I left you to deal with Fournier. It won't happen again."
She swallowed.
"I thought Dean would be with you," I continued softly, "I never meant for you to be on your own."
"Dean was also networking," she threw back at me.
I nodded. "The Archer family business is vast, Elsa. We know everyone, and we have to maintain the societal niceties with the people who—"
"Why couldn't I be with you when you were making nice with society?" She cut in with such force that I was shocked. I hadn't seen this version of Elsa. It should have annoyed me, but instead, it aroused me. She wasn't backing down. She was standing up to me, and that was erotic as hell.
"You would've been bored," I lied. I didn't want her to know any details of my discussions with some of the guests. I wasn't sure where her loyalties lay. If she told her father everything she heard, he'd be able to put two and two together and I didn't need that man anywhere near Archer Arts be part of a couple that bickered. Fuck no!
"You're lucky to get an apology, ma douce ," I told her calmly, and her eyes filled with confusion. "I do what I want to do and when I want to do it. If you don't like it, that's your problem, not mine."
"You're seriously saying this to me?" she whispered.
"Yes. I'm not in the market for a nagging wife," I retorted coolly. "That's not the kind of marriage I want."
She raised both her eyebrows in shock. " Alors, quel genre de mariage tu veux, bon sang ?" Then what the hell kind of marriage do you want?
She was shifting to French as she did when she was stressed.
"A peaceful one, Elsa. Not one where you're needy and clingy. You live your life, and I live mine."
I had not done a good job telling her about my boundaries, and I should have. I'd just been mesmerized by the honeymoon period, that's all. Now that was over, and the real marriage where my wife yelled at me and made me lose my temper had begun. I wasn't going to allow that.
" Peaceful ?" she shook her head in disbelief.
"Yes."
"By that you mean that I shut up when I have a problem with you, don't you?"
"Yes," I said sternly. "That would be much appreciated. You have a problem with me. I can't solve that for you."
She slumped into her seat, and I saw her shoulders droop as if all the joy and life had been sucked out of her.
"That's not a marriage; that's an arrangement," she breathed.
"We have an arrangement, ma douce , or did you forget that?"
She closed her eyes, and I sighed. What was I doing? I didn't want to hurt my wife. I wanted her happy and smiling like she always was. She was in love with me, and I wanted us to have a good marriage where we lived like friends and lovers. Was that too much to ask?
"I did forget, Duncan." She smiled wanly at me. It was pathetic, and I despised the empty look in her eyes that followed. "Thanks for reminding me."
We fell silent, her words hanging heavily between us. I didn't know what to say, and I was deathly afraid that I'd continue to say the wrong thing. I'd reduced our marriage to an arrangement, and now my beautiful wife looked like she'd eaten something that didn't sit well with her.
She had both her hands on her stomach, stroking as if she were comforting herself and our baby.
I rubbed a hand over my face. I didn't know how to fix this. I didn't want to keep fixing things in our marriage. It needed to just work, and for that to happen, Elsa needed to know the man she was married to.
By the time we reached her apartment in the Marais, the tension between us had reached a boiling point.
She unlocked the door and turned to face me, her expression a blend of hurt and dejection. "I think you should move back to your place. If you stay here with me, I'm going to keep forgetting that what we have is not real."
Fucking hell! How many times could a man apologize before it stopped meaning anything? Because I was already there.
"I may have misspoken." I ushered her into the apartment and locked the door behind me. She just stood there, frozen, staring into space. I put a hand on her cheek. "Elsa, I'm not leaving."
"Why not?" she asked as if coming back to reality.
"You're having our baby. We are married."
She took a deep breath. "I can't sleep with you in my bed tonight. I'm just not—"
"I'll sleep on the couch," I quickly said, trying to steady my emotions.
"It's not the best spot to sleep," she stated as she walked toward the bedroom, which I'd started to think was ours.
"I'll be fine."
She didn’t respond to my pithy statement and instead closed the bedroom door behind her.
I made my way to the small, lumpy couch. It was nowhere near as comfortable as my bed—or hers—but that didn’t matter. I needed to be here to prove I wasn’t going anywhere. I undressed and stretched out on the couch in my underwear. The night had been a fucking disaster, just as Elsa had worried it would be. I should've behaved better; I knew that now. I should've been there to ward off men like Pascal Fournier and Vicent Arsenault.
I wasn't used to having a wife, having someone I had to take care of when I was out and about. I had stupidly put her safety at risk by setting her aside while I mingled for the sake of business.
I had to make up for this, I thought. I also had to make up for calling our marriage an arrangement when she'd done everything she could to make this a real relationship, one that soothed me.
If that meant we'd fight once in a while, maybe I needed to learn to suck it up. Hell, I was married, and now it was time to pay the piper.