She was sure that he almost smiled. That the corner of his mouth moved upward just slightly. Just slightly.
“Today?”
“A trial.”
“You don’t ever plan on getting married? Having children?” It was a perverse question to ask, but she wanted to try and imagine his life without her in it. Wanted to make a picture in her mind of how things would be after she took this husband, after she left her home and him.
Any ghost of a smile disappeared. “No. My line ends with me. I know my father would have wanted me to carry on this line. Survival was paramount to him, as was the carrying on of his…legacy. He didn’t succeed, except on one count. I feel sometimes that the sea was trying to take us all, but didn’t quite manage. I have a mission, and that is to repay the kindness that your family showed to me, that your country showed to me. But that is all.”
She frowned. “Why… What did your father do in Romania?”
He’d never said. Maybe she should have asked before, but she had a sense of Andrei, of certain closed doors in his soul, and she’d always felt like this was one of them. She’d assumed because of how traumatic the wreck and losing his parents had been.
But now she wondered how much more trauma there was in his past.
“There’s no purpose to talking about the past. Especially, I don’t wish to speak about my family right now.” He looked around, and out at the ocean all around them.
“Of course. I’m sorry.”
“No need to apologize. Though you are the reason I’m here.”
“I know I—”
“I was teasing,” he said, very nearly smiling. “I insisted on coming.”
“It’s a very dark thing to tease about.”
“My life has been very dark so far.”
She made a scoffing sound, and pushed herself up out of the lounger. “Will you join me for dinner, Andrei?”
He often refused to do that. He was very strange about his protocols. There were times when he would agree to take a meal with her and with Onyx in the palace, but there were other times when he was hard-line about staying with staff.
His eyes met hers, and her breath caught.
You are everything to me.
“Yes. I will take dinner with you tonight.”
Chapter Three
IT WAS Afoolish thing to agree to. He should’ve insisted on maintaining his distance from her.
What he should never have done was tell her how much she meant to him. He wasn’t entirely sure that she understood what he was saying.
That was for the best.
The cabin he’d been given for the journey was not going to work for him. He was never going to spend time in the lower decks of a yacht. Images of water pouring in from the top haunted him. He would much rather be on the top deck, where he could jump off into the ocean if he needed to escape. Of course, that presented the concern that if there actually was a problem he would have to find and save Emerald. And she had no issues with the ship whatsoever.
They were projected to have smooth sailing the entire way to Alabria, and additionally, the ship was sound and expensive, with many safety features that had been absent from the vessel that his family had stowed away on from Romania while on the run from very bad men.
His father had been a bad man, of course. And so it was the exact sort of justice you earned when you yourself were a monster.
Still, the events of that day haunted him.
Which was how he found himself standing still on the top deck, looking out at the vast, endless expanse of water. It was a kind of blue he hadn’t seen anywhere else. The surface rolled in a rhythmic motion, the surf so calm that the only whitecaps in the water came from the boat’s wake. It was beautiful. But treacherous.
“Are you ready to eat?”
