Again, there was that almost-false tone to her speech.
“Blair, is there something you’re not telling me? You sound different. Please, let me pick you up tonight and take care of you.”
His body hardened as he remembered the first time he’d done just that. Could it only have been just over three weeks ago? It felt longer, just as the past five days and nights in Adelaide had felt longer too. He’d missed Blair on every level, and he had planned a reunion that would satisfy all her senses, not to mention tide them both over for when he had to return soon to Italy. It was disappointing that she wasn’t as keen to reunite as he was.
“Blair?” he prompted again in response to her silence.
He heard her draw in a deep breath and exhale heavily before she spoke.
“Look, it’s probably better this way anyway. The restaurant is taking all of my time right now and then some. Besides, you’ll be gone very soon, and we’d have to say good-bye all over again. I think we should cut our ties before things get too messy.”
“Messy?” he asked.
“You know, emotional and all that.”
So she thought the life, color and passion in their relationship lacked emotion? He bit against the growl that rose in his throat. More than anything, he wanted to refute her words, needed to coax from her the truth she wouldn’t admit to herself.
He’d loved and lost before. When Marcella had died he’d known grief, but it had been heavily laced with guilt. Guilt that he hadn’t loved her enough or understood her enough to realize that she would go so far as to risk her own life to give him what he wanted. A sharp pain lanced through him at the memory. It hadn’t been just one life, but two.
Marcella should never have gotten pregnant, but she’d hidden from him the details of her congenital heart defect that made pregnancy dangerous, and in her second trimester, she’d paid the awful price for loving him. At a time when most women glowed and blossomed, Marcella had become hypertensive and frail. When her beautiful, generous heart had failed, taking her life and that of their unborn child, Draco had sworn to honor her memory and had promised he wouldn’t pass on passion if it presented itself. He may not be ready to love but he certainly couldn’t deny the chemistry he and Blair shared.
He cleared his throat before speaking. “And are you telling me there is nothing emotional in our connection?”
“There can’t be. I won’t be that kind of person. It takes too much from me and what I want to do.”
“Can you deny that since we have been together your work, your creativity, has bloomed into something that people now stand in line to appreciate?”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“Is it ridiculous when you shake with pleasure in my arms? Is it ridiculous when we share an incredible bond at that moment I enter your beautiful body?” He pressed as hard as he dared without making her hang up in his ear.
“Draco, please. Stop.” Blair’s voice shook.
“Stop? Blair, that sounds suspiciously like emotion in your voice. Without emotion, cara mia, we don’t really live. Believe me, I know.”
“As do I, and I know what I don’t want. I’m sorry, Draco. This really has to be good-bye.”
The soft click in his ear severed their connection, and for an instant Draco felt that break through his body. He gripped the phone so tight in his hand the plastic squeaked in protest. Slowly, deliberately, he replaced the handset of his phone on its cradle.
Well, as his old professor was always fond of saying, there was more than one way to skin a cat.
Blair made her way out of the lobby of the post office where she’d just picked up her mail. Absently, she flicked through the envelopes as she walked back to her car. Bills, bills—there’d been a time when that fact would have worried her, but not now. The daily receipts were through the roof and the much-coveted and long-awaited five-star review had been posted on the Fine Dining Web site. Life had never been better.
Except for the issue of her pregnancy. It had been a week since her confirmation. Five days since she’d severed contact with Draco. She was still in turmoil about whether she should tell him or not. Her favorite option right now was not, even if it was horribly wrong. He deserved to know, but she didn’t want to tell him. She had no doubt he’d want to take control of her life at that point, and that was not going to happen. Not now, when she had everything else running exactly as she’d imagined when she took Carson’s over from her dad.
Blair stopped in her tracks as she came across a high-quality envelope that had been hand-addressed to her. She flipped it over to see who the sender was and frowned as she identified the name as her landlord’s lawyers. She’d dealt with them over the lease for Carson’s when her name had been substituted for her father’s as the lessee. What on earth could they want from her now?