6. Ronan
Ronan
I fight to keep my expression even. I am a man who has negotiated with cartels and charmed senators, and I do not, as a rule, let my face give me away. But my mind is scrambling, rearranging itself around the shape of what she just said.
“What have I done to displease you that you will not share a marital bed with me?”
A fresh tear trails down her cheek that tears through me like a bullet through flesh.
“I—uh—you haven’t done anything wrong.” I take half a step toward her and stop when her shoulders hitch.
She shakes her head. The motion is small and tight.
“A husband will not share a bed with his wife if he finds her repulsive.” She recites it by rote, from a script that has been burned into her. “And unclean. A woman who is shunned from the marital bed has committed a grievance so deep that her own husband cannot bear her presence and—”
“Stop.” The word comes out sharper than I intend and she flinches. I curse inwardly and soften my voice. “Prudence, that’s not what this is. I’m not shunning you.”
“Then why?”
I rake a hand through my hair. I am thirty-two years old.
I run a portfolio that spans three legitimate companies and a dozen illegitimate ones.
I have a lawyer on retainer who once argued before the state supreme court.
I do not, as a rule, feel outmatched by a hundred-pound barefoot girl in a torn burlap sack.
I search for the right phrasing to explain to my wife why separate bedrooms aren’t a punishment.
“In the modern world,” I begin, and the phrase sounds condescending even as I hear myself say it, “married couples often have their own spaces. It’s not rejection. It’s respect. I wanted to give you time to adjust before—”
“Before what?”
Before I have to survive sharing a mattress with a nineteen-year-old woman whose skin still burns against my fingertips and has burrowed under my skin from the moment I first saw her in the dirt yard.
“Before we figure out what this marriage looks like,” I finish. The answer is diplomatic and measured and absolutely useless.
Her chin drops. More tears drip from her jaw, and each one lands with the force of a blow.
Autonomy, to her, does not translate. She hears rejection and shame.
I have to work inside the language she already knows until she has the vocabulary for another one.
I thought getting her out of that compound was the hard part. I was a fool. The compound was geography. What I’m facing now is architecture—nineteen years of load-bearing walls constructed by a sadist who taught this woman that her worth is measured by whether a man will accept her.
Every gentlemanly instinct I have is actively hurting her.
“Listen.” I cross to her. Her head stays down, but I can see her pulse hammering at her throat. “I was mistaken. I was wrong. We’re going to share a bedroom. And a bed. Tonight and every night. Okay?”
Her head lifts. The tears are still there, clinging to her lashes, but profound relief crosses her face and she exhales—a shuddering release that travels through her whole body.
“Come on.” I gesture down the hall. “Let me show you my—our—room.”
The size and decor of the main bedroom is not something I’ve ever paid much attention to, but tonight, I try to see it the way Prudence does.
The bed is enormous. The headboard is upholstered in dark gray linen.
The windows stretch the width of the far wall, and the city lays itself out beyond them.
There is a seating area in the corner with a reading chair I use twice a year.
A low dresser. A pair of lamps cast warm pools of light onto plush carpeting.
Prudence stops just inside the door. Her eyes have gone wide again.
I gesture for her to follow me to the bathroom door and push it open.
The bathroom has marble counters, a glass-walled shower, and heated floors. To me, it’s just a bathroom, but Prudence stands in the doorway and stares as if it’s the Cistine Chapel.
I cross to the shower and open the glass door. “This knob controls the temperature. Turn it left for hot, right for cold. Start in the middle and adjust from there.” I twist the handle and water cascades from the rainfall head, drumming against the tile.
She takes one step closer. Then another. Her hand reaches out, palm up, fingers spread, and catches the spray.
Her entire body transforms.
The wariness drops from her posture. Her shoulders unfurl. Her lips part, and a sound escapes her—not a word, not a gasp, more a soft “oh” before she breaks into a smile which in turn causes me to smile.
Damn, if I don’t get a huge ego stroke from her expressing pleasure over my showerhead.
I want to see more of that smile on her face.
I want to be the one who puts it there. I suddenly feel a primative masculine desire to lavish her with enjoyable experiences and show her more of the pleasures she’s been deprived of.
She cups the water in both palms and lifts it, letting it run down her wrists and forearms.
“It’s warm,” she whispers.
“It can be warmer.” I reach past her and twist the knob a quarter-turn left and wait a few seconds until steam rises. She presses both hands flat under the stream and makes that sound again, and a crack splits open inside me.
I’ve brokered deals worth hundreds of millions. I’ve sat across the table from men who could have me killed and smiled my way to a handshake. None of it—not one single achievement in my thirty-two years—has produced in me what this woman’s awe at hot water is producing right now.
I clear my throat and rein myself in.
“Towels are on that rack.” I point. “Shampoo, conditioner, and soap are on the shelf inside—use whatever you want.”
I step out for a minute to grab an O’Rourke’s Pub t-shirt and a bathrobe from my closet, and hang them both on a hook on the door. “You can wear these when you’re done. Nicholas will have a few articles of clothing here for you tomorrow morning.”
She’s still wearing an excited grin, and it’s contagious. I’ve done something right. Thank god. I’m not sure it makes up for the faux pas of trying to maintain separate bedrooms, but at least I got one thing right.
“Take your time,” I tell her, and leave.
I change in the bedroom with the bathroom door closed and the sound of running water filling the silence. I pull on sleep pants and skip the shirt, then pull back the duvet, sit on the edge of the mattress, and stare at the far wall.
How am I going to explain all this?
This morning I was a bachelor. Now I have a wife who doesn’t know what a pub is, who thinks separate bedrooms are divine punishment, and who looked at my phone as though I’d handed her a window to heaven.
Not to mention, I married her in a cult ceremony that has zero legal standing in the state of Illinois.
Ma is going to have a stroke.
I scrub both hands down my face, sigh, and flop down, stretching out on one side of the bed.
This bed has been mine and mine alone for seven years.
I bought the mattress during a bout of insomnia—top of the line, custom firmness, sheets imported from Portugal.
I am particular about who enters my space.
Meticulous about it. I’ve dated and enjoyed women’s company, but I’ve always been proprietorial about my space.
I’ve never spent the night with a woman, and I’ve never allowed a woman here in my bed.
Ever. My space has always been mine. No exceptions.
Now I’m waiting for my wife, whom I barely know, to finish showering so she can sleep beside me, and if I’m honest—brutally, uncomfortably honest—I like the idea.
I won’t touch her. Not that I’m not tempted, but I’ll keep my hands to myself.
I know in her mind we’re married, and I’m her husband, but I doubt she’ll be too keen on being pawed by a man a few hours after meeting him.
I’ll be sure to keep all my body parts on my side, even if it kills me—and it might.
The bathroom door opens.
Prudence pads into the bedroom on bare feet, her dark hair wet and falling past her shoulders. She’s wearing the bathrobe, cinched at the waist, the hem trailing past her ankles.
She crosses to the far side of the bed—her side now, I guess—and stops at the edge of the mattress.
Her fingers find the belt of the robe and, without hesitation, she pulls the sash loose, shrugs the robe off her shoulders, lets it fall to the floor, and…stands there stark naked.
Every curve, every inch of flushed pink skin is bare before me.
Oh shit. I’m dead.