“Please put me down.” She had to stop this before she did something she’d regret. Tina turned and kicked out. Her movements grew wild until Dev halted and carefully set her down. She looked away as her curves grazed his hard body until her feet touched the ground. Tina immediately took a step away.
His eyes narrowed as he watched her create more distance with another cautious step. “I didn’t think I would see you again,” Dev admitted.
“I know,” she whispered. That had been her plan.
“Where have you been?” he asked rawly.
Oh, she wasn’t revealing that. That would give him far too much ammunition. “Apparently I’ve been on vacation for months.”
Dev frowned. “What could I say?” He raked his hand through his short black hair. “I didn’t know where you were or if you were coming back.”
If? “I walked out. I left you. I don’t know how I could have made it clearer.”
He placed his hands on his hips and glared at her. She knew her words were too abrupt. Too antagonistic, but it was necessary. This wasn’t a ploy or a maneuver. She had walked out of her marriage.
“Where did you go?” he said in a low voice that belied his anger.
Tina jutted her chin out with defiance. “That’s none of your concern.”
“How can you say that?” Dev stared at her with a dark intensity that made her shiver. “You are my wife. I’ve been looking for you.”
That didn’t make any sense. He had abandoned the marriage long before she’d had the courage to leave. “Why?”
“Why?” His voice cracked like a whip as the tension vibrated in the shadowy garden.
Her heart pounded in her ears but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her nervous. Tina gave a careless shrug. “Yes, why? You got what you wanted all along. Or were you concerned that I would pop up at the most inconvenient moment?”
Dev’s jaw clenched. “You have no idea what I want.”
“You don’t want a wife,” Tina said as she held her purse tightly against her chest as if it were a shield.
Black fury darkened his eyes. “Tina—”
“And tonight,” Tina said, “I’m going to grant you that wish.”
CHAPTER TWO
TINA COULDN’T DRAG her gaze away from Dev. She saw the storm in his eyes but he didn’t move. The air between them crackled. A tremor swept through Dev’s body as he forcibly restrained his anger. “You’re not thinking straight,” he said hoarsely.
How many times had she heard him say that? “So you’re going to do it for me? No thanks.” He had tried to take over her life. And for a while he had succeeded. She had been too grief-stricken, in too much in pain, to care.
Dev closed his eyes. “I never should have taken you to Los Angeles.”
“Why did you?” She refused to respond to the agony in his voice. Although she had felt too weak to travel, Dev had insisted she accompany him to the United States while he filmed several scenes for his blockbuster movie. She’d like to think Dev had been so in love with her that he couldn’t imagine spending a night apart. Instead, she’d barely seen him. She had been alone and isolated. At times she’d felt like she was being punished for some unknown reason.
Dev slowly opened his eyes and glared at her. “You needed someone to look after you. You were not yourself after the miscarriage.”
His gaze clashed with hers and Tina’s skin went cold. Miscarriage. He said the word with no problems but it had the power to send her into a tailspin. It still dragged her to those tense moments when the fear choked her. When she was alone, making wishes and prayers that went unanswered. When the doctors told her that she had lost her baby son.
“Not myself? How would you know?” she asked. “You weren’t there. You made it very clear that you didn’t want to be married anymore. That there was no longer a reason.”
His breath hitched audibly in his throat. “Is that how you see it?”
Tina looked away. She didn’t want to think about how Dev had no interest in her, especially after she’d lost the baby. Not now, not when the dark and confusing emotions were rolling through her. “You were the first to walk away. What else am I supposed to think?”
Dev sighed heavily and speared both hands through his hair. “I didn’t walk away—you pushed me away. You wouldn’t talk to me or look at me. You moved out of the bedroom and—”
Tina’s head snapped back. “Excuse me for grieving!” she hissed. She wasn’t going to allow Dev to treat her emotions as weakness. “We all can’t shake it off and return to our normal life the day after the loss of our son.”