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than to row with him so close to a bed. She should remember that all her posturing, all her demands, rages and pouts, disappeared the moment he touched her. His hands itched to prove that to her.
    She pushed her curls back from her face and looked unutterably tired for a flashing moment. “I would ask you what you mean, and I am certain you would love to tell me, but I am tired of your games, Leo,” she said in that quiet yet matter-of-fact voice that he was growing to dislike intensely. “I will not go back to Italy. Ever.”
    He thought of the vulnerability he had sensed in her, that undercurrent of pain. He could see hints of it in theway she looked at him now, the careful way she held herself. Sex and temper, he understood; both could be solved in the same way. But this was something else.
    A game, he assured himself. This is just another game.
    “You make such grand proclamations, luce mio,” he said softly, never taking his eyes from hers. “How can you keep them all straight? Today you will not go to Italy. Three years ago you would not remain my wife. So many threats, Bethany, all of which end in nothing.”
    “Those are not threats,” she threw at him, her eyes dark in that way that made things shift uncomfortably in him, her soft mouth trembling. “They are the unvarnished truth. I’m sorry if you are not used to hearing such a thing, but then you surround yourself with sycophants, don’t you? You have only yourself to blame.”
    Leo moved toward her, his gaze tight on hers. “There were so many sweeping threats, as I recall,” he said softly, mockingly, as if she had not spoken. As if there were no shifts, no darkness, no depths he could not comprehend. “You would not speak to me again once you left Italy. You would not remain in this house even twenty-four hours after I left you here. They begin to run together, do they not?”
    She only stared at him, her blue eyes wide, furious and something else, something deeper. But her very presence before him, in the house she had vowed to leave, was all the answer that was needed.
    “And we cannot forget my favorite threat of all, can we?” He closed the space between them then, though he did not reach over and touch her as he longed to do. He was so close she was forced to tilt her face up toward his if she wanted to look at him. Her lips parted slightly, her eyes widening as heat bloomed on her cheeks.
    “Is this supposed to terrify me?” she asked, but it was hardly a whisper, barely a thread of sound. “Am I expected to cower away from you in fear and awe?”
    “You promised me you would never go near me again, that I disgusted you,” he said softly, looking down into her eyes, reading one emotion after another—none of them disgust. “Is that why you shake, Bethany? Is this disgust?”
    “It is nothing so deep as disgust,” she said, her voice a thread of sound, her eyes too bright. She cleared her throat. “It is simply acute boredom with this situation.”
    “You are a liar, then and now,” he said, reluctantly intrigued by the shadows that chased through her bright blue eyes. He was not surprised when she moved away from him, putting more space between their bodies as if that might dampen the heat they generated between them. As if anything ever could.
    “That is almost funny, Leo,” she said in a quiet voice, her gaze dark. “Coming from you.”
    “Tell me, Bethany, how have I deceived you?” he asked softly, watching her school her expressive face into the smooth blandness he hated. “What are my crimes?”
    “I refuse to discuss this with you, as if you do not already know,” she said, squaring her shoulders. “As if we have not gone over it again and again to the point of nausea.”
    “Very well, then,” he said, hearing that harsh edge in his voice, unable to control it. “Then let us discuss your crimes. We can start with your lover.”
    His words seemed to hang there, accusation and curse wrapping around her like a