“There is no cauldron,” he retorted, and his fingers dug into her shoulders as he spoke, but she didn’t mind. She thought that here, now, she was finally seeing the real Pau. “I thought that this would be a victory, after all the plans I’d made. I thought that all of this would feel different once it happened. Once he knew. But we got here, and he was just the same tiny, little man he’s always been, and the only thing I care about is you.”
That made her heart stutter, but she shook her head. “I’ve seen no evidence to support that. In your books or anywhere else.”
“I married you,” he thundered at her. “I sought you out, allowed you to seduce me, and did everything in my power to get you with child, woman. What did you think was happening?”
“Iletyou seduce me,” she countered. “And Iwanteda baby. I needed a reason that you would have to marry me, and I knew you would if there was a child involved, because that’s the kind of man you are. I never expected to fall in love with you, but here we are.” She made a face. “Or hereIam, I suppose I should say.”
Pau made a low noise, like some kind of growl.
“How would I know if I was in love with you or not?” he gritted out at her, his grip intense but his gaze even more so. “How would I know what love is? There was my mother, who loved only my father, but he barely saw her and she left him. There was my father, who loved only the land, the vines, the Calixto legacy, and it as good as killed him. What am I to think love is?”
Leontina felt breathless. “You could start—”
But he shushed her by pulling her even closer to him.
“And then there’s you,” Pau said. “Sister to the only human being on this planet that I would tell you I actually do love. My only friend. The only man I trust. And I betrayed him, because I decided that you were the only revenge worth taking on a man I shouldn’t have cared about at all. Because what is Umberto Tavian to me? I own him. I ruined him. He’s nothing—and I am a man of figures and plans, Leontina. I do notfeel. I do notpine. I made myself into a human spreadsheet for a reason.”
But his hands moved, then. One to the swell of her belly, the other to carefully cup her cheek as he moved even closer. “So all I can think is that all of this time, all of these wild and impossiblefeelings—it’s all been about you.”
Leontina liked that. She more than liked it.
Still. “You would have tried to seduce me at that wedding no matter who I was, as long as I was his daughter,” she said, though she pressed her cheek deeper into his palm.
“I would have,” he agreed, his voice low. “But I wouldn’t be obsessed. I wouldn’t suffer from these sleepless nights, unable to think or rest or do anything at all butpineover you. I wouldn’t see you wherever I go. I wouldn’t dream of you when I’m lucky enough to actually fall asleep. I sweat you out. I bury myself in my work. I lament you. I curse you. And yet none of it is any good. You’re still here.” He moved his hand from her belly to his chest and thumped himself right where his heart beat. “You’reright here, Leontina, and I can’t get you out. I don’t know how.”
He sounded tortured. Leontina slid her hand over his, the one he held to her cheek, and that made his breath come out of him in a sigh.
“If that’s not love,” Pau said to her, his voice low and his eyes dark, “then it is some terrible disease that is killing me as I stand here. Either way, it’s your fault.”
And as declarations went, Leontina thought that this one was the finest she’d ever heard. All this from a man who hardly knewhowto feel? She felt as if he’d written her sonnets.
She found herself smiling, her cheeks were damp, and as she moved closer to him and slid her hands over that tight jaw of his, she kissed him.
Once, then again.
“I don’t think you’re dying,” she told him, not able to keep the laughter out of her voice. “These are your feelings, Pau. Welcome.”
“What Ifeelis more like cardiac arrest,” he said, frowning, but when she moved to place her hand over his heart, he covered it with his.
“I bet it’s not,” she said, unable to stop smiling at him. “Though I suppose there’s only one way to find out.”
“Is there a test for this?” he asked, sounding grumpy and ruined, wounded, and hers.
That was the part that mattered.Hers.
“There is,” Leontina said, and wound her arms around his neck. “It’s called happily ever after, Pau. It’s forever, at a minimum. I guess we’ll have to see how it goes.”
Then she took her husband by the hand, led him to her childhood bed where nothing of interest had ever happened, and properly seduced him, at last.
Fully aware that as she did it, he seduced her right back.
And what did it matter who seduced who, when in the end, they found themselves tangled up with each other and wound too tight to ever let go.
So they never did.
Chapter Twelve
Umberto did notdie that night, but he was severely diminished.
