Princess From the Past Read Free Page B

the benefits of my name and protection with none of the attendant responsibilities.”
    “You will be pleased to learn that I no longer want them, then,” she said. She raised her brows at him in direct challenge, but he was caught by the flash of vulnerability he saw move across her face. Bethany—vulnerable? That was not a word he’d ever use to describe her. Wild. Uncontrollable. Rebellious. But never defenseless, wounded. Never.
    Impatiently, Leo shoved the odd turn of thought aside. The last thing in the world he needed now was to become intrigued anew by his wife. He had yet to recover from the initial disaster that had been his first, ruinous fascination with this woman. Look where it had led them both.
    “Do you not?” he asked, his voice harsh, directed as much at his errant thoughts as at her. “How can you be certain when you have treated both with such disrespect?”
    “I want a divorce,” she said again with a quiet strength. “This is the end, Leo. I’m moving on with my life.”
    “Are you?” he asked, his tone dangerous. She either did not hear it or did not care. “How so?”
    “I am moving out of that house,” she said at once, a wild fire he could not entirely comprehend raging in her sky-blue eyes. “I hate it. I never wanted to live there in the first place.”
    “You are my wife.” His voice cracked like a whip, though he knew the words had long held no meaning for her, no matter that they still moved through him like blood, like need. “Whether you choose to acknowledge it or not. Just because you have turned your back on the vows you made, does not mean that I have. I told you I would protect you and I meant it, even if it is from your own folly and stubborn recklessness.”
    “I’m sure you think that makes you some kind of hero,” she threw at him in a falsely polite tone that he knew was for the benefit of the crowd around them. Yet he could see the real Bethany burn bright in her eyes and the flush on her neck. “But I never thought anyone was likely to kidnap me in the first place.” She let out a short, hollow laugh. “Believe me, I do not advertise our connection.”
    “And yet it exists.” His voice brooked no argument; it could have melted steel. “And because of it, you are a target.”
    “I won’t be for much longer,” she said, her foolhardy determination showing in that stubborn set to her jaw and the fire in her eyes. He almost admired it. Almost. “And you’ll find that I’ve never touched any of the money in that account of yours, either. I’m going to walk out of this marriage exactly as I walked into it.”
    “And where do you intend to go?” he asked quietly, softly, not daring himself to move closer. He knew, somehow, that putting his hands on her would ruin them both and expose too much.
    “Not that it’s any of your business,” she said, her gaze direct and challenging, searing into him. “But I’ve met someone else.”

CHAPTER TWO
    T HE room seemed to drop away. All Bethany could see was the arrested look in his eyes that narrowed as he gazed at her. He did not move, yet she felt clenched in a kind of tight fist that held only the two of them, and that simmering tension that sparked and surged between them.
    Had she really said that? Had she truly dared to say something like that to this man? To her husband?
    How much worse would it be, she wondered in a panic, if it was actually true? She found she was holding her breath.
    For a long, impossible moment Leo only stared at her, but she could feel the beat of his fury—and her own heart—like a wild drum. He looked almost murderous for a moment—or perhaps she was succumbing to hysteria. Then he shifted, and Bethany could breathe again.
    “And who is the lucky man?” Leo asked in a lethally soft voice. When she only stared at him, afraid that her slightest movement might act as a red flag before a bull, his head tilted slightly to the left, though he did not lift his dark eyes from