Page 43 of Untamed Billionaire's Innocent Bride
“I’ve read about her.” And he had, though he had found it impossible to see anything of him in the impossibly glamorous creature who’d laughed and pouted for the cameras, and inspired so many articles about her style,which Dominik suspected was a way to talk about a high-class woman’s looks without causing offense. “She seemed entirely defined by her love affairs and scandals.”
“My abiding impression of her was that she had learned how to be pretty. And how to use that prettiness to live up to the promise of both the grand families she was a part of. But I don’t think it ever occurred to her that she could be happy.”
“Could she?” Dominik asked, sardonic straight through. “I didn’t realize that was on offer.”
“It should always be on offer,” Lauren replied with a certain quiet conviction that Dominik refused to admit got to him. Because it shouldn’t have. “Isn’t that the point?”
“The point of what, exactly?”
“Everything, Dominik.”
“You sound like an American advertisement,” Dominik said after a moment, from between his teeth. “No one is owed happiness. And certainly, precious few find it.”
He hadn’t meant to move from the windows, but he had. And he was suddenly standing in front of that sofa, looking down at Lauren.
Who gazed straight back at him, that same softness on her face. It connected directly to that knot inside him he’d been carrying for weeks now. That ache. That infernal clamoring on the inside of his ribs that demanded he leave, yet wouldn’t let him go.
“Maybe if we anticipated happiness we might find a little along the way.” Her voice was like honey, and he knew it boded ill. He knew it was bad for him. Because he had no defenses against that kind of sweetness. Caramel eyes and honey voice—and he was a goner. “Why not try?”
“I had no idea that our shabby little marriage of convenience would turn so swiftly into an encounter group,” he heard himself growl. When she didn’t blanch at that the way he’d expected she would, he pushed on. “So-called happiness is the last refuge and resort of the dim-witted. And those who don’t know any better, which I suppose is redundant. I think you’ll find the real world is a little too complicated for platitudes and whistling as you work.”
Lauren lifted one shoulder, then dropped it. “I don’t believe that.”
And it was the way she said it that seemed to punch holes straight through Dominik’s chest. There was no defiant tilt to her chin. There was no angry flash of temper in her lovely eyes. It was a simple statement, more powerful somehow for its softness than for any attempt at a show of strength.
And there was no reason he should feel it shake in him like a storm.
“You don’t believe that the world is a terrible place, as complicated as it is harsh, desperate people careening about from greed to self-interest and back again? Ignoring their children or abandoning them in orphanages as they see fit?”
“The fact that people can be awful and scared only means that when we happen upon it, we should cling to what happiness we can.”
“Let me guess. You think I should be more grateful that after all this time, the woman who clearly knew where I was all along told others where to find me. But only after her death, so they could tell me sad stories about how she might have given me away against her will. You want me to conclude that I ended up here all the same, so why dwell on what was lost in the interim? You will have to forgive me if I do not see all this as the gift you do.”
“The world won’t end if you allow the faintest little gleam of optimism into your life,” Lauren said with that same soft conviction that got to him in ways he couldn’t explain. And didn’t particularly want to analyze. “And who knows? You could even allow yourself to hope for something. Anything. It’s not dim-witted and it’s not because a person doesn’t see the world as it is.” Her gaze was locked to his. “Hope takes strength, Dominik. Happiness takes work. And I choose to believe it’s worth it.”
“What do you know of either?” he demanded. “You, who locked yourself away from the world and convinced yourself you disliked basic human needs. You are the poster child for happiness?”
“I know because of you.”
The words were so simple.
And they might as well have been a tornado, tearing him up.
“Me.” He shook his head as if he didn’t understand the word. As if she’d used it to bludgeon him. “If I bring you happiness, little red, I fear you’ve gone and lost yourself in a deep, dark woods from which you will never return.”
She stood up then, and he was seized with the need to stop her somehow. As if he knew what she was going to say when of course, he couldn’t know. He refused to know.
He should have left before this happened.
He should have left.
His gaze moved over her, and it struck him that while he’d certainly paid close attention to her, he hadn’t truly looked at her since they’d arrived here weeks ago. Not while she was dressed. She wasn’t wearing the same sharp, pointedly professional clothing any longer—and he couldn’t recall the last time she had. Today she wore a pair of trousers he knew were soft like butter, and as sweetly easy to remove. She wore a flowing sort of top that drooped down over one shoulder, which he liked primarily because it gave him access to the lushness beneath.
Both of those things were clues, but he ignored them.
It was the hair that was impossible to pretend hadn’t changed.
Gone was the sleek ponytail, all that blond silk ruthlessly tamed and controlled. She wore it loose now, tumbling around her shoulders, because he liked his hands in it.