The rejection she felt was shattering.
“I thought you cared about me. I knew it wasn’t love, but this thing between you and my father—it’s so demeaning. The knowledge that our marriage was the result of an arrangement between you and my father so you could get your company back…” Words failed her for several seconds as she struggled to keep the tears at bay.
Finally, she swallowed. “I never would have suspected anything like that, but it explains so much.”
He stepped toward her, his hand extended, “Tess, please, we can make this marriage of ours work.”
She reared back, almost falling off the sofa. “Don’t come near me. I don’t want you touching me.” When she remembered how he had blackmailed her into marriage, using his body as the bait, she shuddered.
His expression was that of a jaguar thwarted of its prey.
“I want some time to think. Alone.” She said.
He shook his head in sharp negative. “We have both spent enough time alone.”
“Whose fault is that?” She slapped the hand away that came within touching distance. “I missed you so much, but you treated me like little more than a whore on tap.”
“No!” he said.
“Yes! Since you got back from your trip, you’ve refused to talk to me, but you’ve been more than willing to use my body. I have to assume that was part of the revenge plan. Make me feel like a tramp and I would hurt even more, right?” she asked.
He looked horror-stricken by her words. “That is not the way it was.”
“From where I’m standing, it is. I don’t know if I can stay married to you,” she whispered painfully.
“I will not allow you to divorce me.”
“Contrary to the way both you and my father have been behaving, we are no longer in the Dark Ages. You can’t dictate my life’s terms to me.” She replied.
He ran his fingers through his hair in agitation. “I made a mistake, I admit it, but I will rectify it. I promise you this.”
“And you are so good at keeping your promises.” She couldn’t help the dig, but she felt no satisfaction when he winced.
“I did not have sex with Olivia.” He said.
“The jury is still out on that one.”
His revenge plot made sense, even down to only pretending to have an affair.
Breaking his word would not sit well with Dash, but she wasn’t ready to let him off the hook on that one. He’d set himself up, he could squirm. All that aside, how could he keep his latest promise without love? How could he make it better when his lack of love was what hurt the most?
“I need some time alone,” she said again. The tears she’d fought since first looking at him, washed into her eyes. “I want to call my father. I don’t understand how he could have done this to me.”
Dash’s hand lifted and fell, as if he wanted to touch her but knew she would reject him again. “We will talk again after this?” he asked.
She didn’t see how they could avoid it. “Yes.” She replied.
He nodded his head jerkily, his normal confidence for once shaken. “I will leave you to make your call.”
7
He turned to go and she had an insane urge to call him back, but she didn’t. She had meant what she said. She needed time to determine if their marriage could survive its conception.
Dash walked from the room feeling like a dead man inside. His beautiful wife hated him. It had been in her eyes: hatred, disgust, disappointment. Soft pansy eyes that had once looked on him in love now despised him. She would talk to her father, discuss the sordid events surrounding their marriage. And what would that accomplish? He hoped that time apart would calm her down enough to discuss their future, but an equally strong possibility was that in speaking to the old man, she would lose whatever vestiges of faith she maintained in their marriage.
He had screwed up so badly. He was not used to messing up and knew his apology had not gone off the way he wanted. He had left so much unsaid. Words he found it impossible to voice, words that expressed emotion he had a difficult time admitting he was even feeling. To admit his feelings made him vulnerable and that was the one thing he abhorred above all others.
Vulnerability.
But he would say anything, do anything to keep his wife. He could not even contemplate the empty black hole he would fall into if she left him.
Tess waited impatiently for her father to answer the phone. It was early in the morning, but he was already at work.
His voice came on the line. “Tess?”
“Yes, Dad, it’s me.” She replied.
“Did you find out what was going on with Dash and those dinners with that lady?” Neal asked.
“Yes. I know everything now. Everything,” she reemphasized.
“He told you about the deal?”
“You mean about your blackmailing him into marrying me? Yes, Dash told me.”
Tess swallowed tears while her father cursed.
“How could you do that to me?” she asked.
“I wasn’t doing anything to you, girl. I was doing it for you. Only one thing you really wanted. I realized that at my party. Dash Black. You have had a thing for him for years, but I didn’t notice until then.”
She didn’t deny her father’s words.
“Figured after the way he kissed you that he wanted you too, but he was going to marry some other girl and leave you in the cold.”
“He was engaged to someone else?” she asked, horrified.
“No, but it was only a matter of time. I baited the trap and he fell into. With the passion between the two of you, I figured propinquity would do the rest.” He said.
“But he doesn’t love me!”
“Bah! Men like Dash don’t admit to tender emotions.”
“Well, I wanted to marry a man who loved me and was capable of saying so.” She said.
“You wanted Dash.”
“Not trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey! Do you have any idea how humiliated I’m feeling right now? I hurt, dad, all the way to my toes.”
“What’s that boy done?” Neal asked.
Momentarily disconcerted at having her ultra-alpha husband referred to as a boy, she waited a second to answer. “It’s not what he’s done. It’s what you did.
You set me up.” She said.
“I set you up all right, I set you up with Dash.”
“You set me up to be rejected by a man whose pride had been stomped on by your ruthless arrangement. You can’t force a man like Dash to do something so personal as get married and expect it all to work out in the end.”
“Don’t see why not. He had to get married someday. Why not to you?” her father asked