He smiled and nodded, his gaze moving hungrily over her.
Rings and diamond sets, dresses and wardrobes, it seemed there was nothing Dmitri couldn’t wait to lavish upon her. But love... There was nothing of love in his words. That was it.
Because she loved him with all her heart, she thought in a daze. Somewhere between knifing him and kissing him, she had irrevocably fallen in love with him, had moved from a childhood obsession to feeling as though she would never have enough of him.
It had been that moment when he had told her about Andrew’s deception. Or maybe the moment when he had called her perfection. Or when he had held her so tenderly as she had sobbed her heart out.
Everything in her life was shifting and uncertain, but how she felt about Dmitri... There was no doubt about that.
Shaking at the realization, utterly terrified now, she looked at him.
He had removed his jacket, and the white shirt hugged the breadth of his shoulders, a perfect contrast to the olive skin. He looked so utterly gorgeous and he wanted to marry her.
He could have any woman in the world. Why did he want her?
Did he love her?
Did he know how she felt about him? She had never really tried to hide her feelings from him, had she?
Questions burned through her head in an endless loop, slowly but surely siphoning off the warmth from her.
But suddenly now she wanted to hide away from him, wished she could give herself time to let the truth sink in.
Why else would he want to marry you? the hopeful part of her, the part that had forever loved everything about him, said.
Her thoughts still scrambled, she turned to him and said the first thing she could think of. “You’ll give up your playboy status? You’ll give up all those women? Because marriage is nothing without fidelity and respect, Dmitri.”
He didn’t seem in the least bit offended by her questions. On the contrary, a smile cut grooves in his cheek as though he wanted nothing but to allay her fears. “I will be the most faithful husband in the world, pethi mou. I’ll give even Stavros a run for it, yes?”
Reaching her, he put his hands on her hips, kissed her temple. And standing in his arms, soaking in his words, Jasmine desperately wanted to say yes.
“I’ll do everything in my power to make you happy, Jas, to take care of you. You’ll want for nothing, you’ll see.”
Just like that, Jas felt her answer float away from her lips. Her happiness, her well-being, all Dmitri talked about was her. As though she was one of his possessions—a well-oiled bike, a smoothly run nightclub, a well-maintained portfolio that only kept on giving.
What about him?
What did he feel for her?
What had shifted that he wanted to marry her?
Still grappling with how deep her feelings ran, how much weight each word of his carried with her, Jas felt his words like a rope binding her to him. “What about love, Dmitri?” she said finally. Her chest was so tight, her fingers chillingly cold as if she had dunked them in ice.
He became absolutely still, but something uncoiled in those gray eyes. “What about love, Jas?”
So he was going to torture this out of her. “Do you love me, Dmitri?”
“No, but then I don’t believe I’m capable of it, Jas. I feel a certain affection for Leah, loyalty for Stavros, but that’s about the breadth of my emotional range. And you—” her breath hung in her throat “—you’ll have my fidelity and my friendship.”
Her hopes fell away, his words shattering her heart into a thousand pieces inside her chest. She slumped against the table, her limbs shaking uncontrollably.
He reached her instantly and caught her. “Theos, Jas, I thought you would be happy. I thought this was what you wanted.”
And there it was...the final proof in his own words.
Cradled against him, Jas felt herself tearing into two halves, one gleefully, treacherously ecstatic that this strong, powerful, honorable man would be hers, and the other, warning away from a fate that could leech away every ounce of joy from her life.
If she married him because he made her feel safe and because he was offering friendship and because of the wild heat between them, if she willingly went into this knowing that he would never even open himself to the possibility of love, knowing that his vows were born out of guilt and a protective instinct that was a mile wide while she, bound to him irrevocably, would wait for him to open his heart, while she crucified herself wondering if it was something within herself...
The fear that she had been holding at bay for so many days, years actually, twisted and swelled inside her...until she saw herself turning into her worst nightmare. Her mother had waited and wasted away her entire life for a man who had never looked back.