Til Debt Do Us Part (Married At Midnight #4)

Chapter 6

Six

Dare

A fter another fitful night of sleep, I steer my yacht another hundred miles north up the coast. By the time I anchor in a sheltered bay, I’m as broody as a teenage boy. Things between Talia and I have been frosty since last night, to say the least. But I left the little town of Harwicke with such haste that returning without getting on the same page will be extremely difficult.

After dropping the anchor and making sure that the boat won’t go anywhere, I head down to find Talia. To my surprise, I spot her on the back of the boat, leaning against the railing and staring off into the distance. She has borrowed one of my oversized coats and she looks tiny in it, her copper mass of hair looking brilliant amongst the bleak colors of the black sea and the white rocky shore beyond.

She turns around and spots me looking at her. Her cheeks flame bright pink and she turns away again. Something inside of me tightens, excited that she noticed me. I don’t fully understand that feeling but I head to the back of the boat, leaning against the railing beside her. Talia pushes her hair out of her face and looks at me, her eyes stunningly blue.

“Have you come to yell at me more?” She asks coolly.

I rub my jaw and then shove my hand through my short, dark hair. “That’s not my intention.”

She rolls her eyes and turns back to the ocean, leaning over the railing. “No? Then what is? What do you want from me?”

“You already asked me that question. And I’ve answered it. I want exactly what you promised me when you let me slide that ring onto your finger.”

She lifts her left hand and looks at her ring dispassionately. It’s huge and glittering, gorgeous by any standards. But I have the feeling that she is currently thinking about pulling the ring off and chucking it into the ocean.

I feel like I’m at a loss for words. I don’t want to comfort her, exactly. But I do wish that I could find something to say that would appease her. Make her more malleable and less resistant to the changes in her lifestyle that I have forced on her.

It’s frustrating because we only seem to communicate well through fucking each other’s brains out. When I’m not balls deep inside her, the odds of her wanting to scratch my eyes out are pretty good.

“You wanted to talk about those text messages,” I say. I’m a little surprised that the words escaped my mouth but the way that she looks at me, her head turning suddenly and her eyes filling with question marks… I like the way that she regards me.

Talia turns, her mouth twisting. She leans away from the railing, using her hand to hold herself up. “I’m listening,” she says, finally.

I purse my lips and choose my words carefully. “I only did what I had to do to convince you that marrying me was your only alternative. I could tell that you had too many options. So I just peered down the field. Maybe the guys I hired went a little farther when they busted up your aunt’s bookstore. But I wouldn’t take it back. It got me the results I was looking for. It made you accept my proposal.”

Her face tightens as I speak. Her lips thin.

“I feel like you deceived me. I feel like I was led down the garden path. I would have liked to have made that decision of whether or not to accept your proposal on its own merits. But you didn’t have any faith in me or in the value of your plans. Even now, you can’t say that you’re sorry.”

I glance away over my shoulder out toward the sea. I squint at the bright light and exhale a long breath.

“I could’ve made a different choice. I did what I felt I had to do. I can’t apologize for something I am not sorry for.”

With an exasperated noise she pushes away from the railing, starting toward the front of the boat. But I reach out a hand and grab her wrist, pulling her to a stop. She looks back at me and there is hurt echoing in her eyes.

Seeing that written all over her face makes me want to wipe it all away. For some reason, when Talia is vulnerable and I know that she is just letting me see it, something in my chest wrenches.

“Listen. I don’t know who sent you this text. It could have been my brother, my uncle, my dad. My life is full of people that could betray me at any moment. But I think it is important that we don’t let them get between us.”

She tugs at her arm, her expression disdainful. “They aren’t doing anything to us. It’s your actions that threaten to come between us. You are the one who lies and schemes and throws up walls. That’s not my doing. You have to see that for what it is.”

Ever so slowly, I draw her closer, her strength nothing compared to mine. When she is pressed against me, I flip our positions, putting her back against the railing and leaning down to rub my thumb along her jawline, her throat, her collar bone. She looks up at me wordlessly. I look deep into her eyes and bend to kiss her, the slightest brush of my lips over hers.

It’s a confession, as close to an apology as I ever get. When I am finished making my case, she looks at me with an unfathomable expression. “You’re mine now, Talia. Mine forever.” I bring my hand up to run it through her hair but she catches it, grabbing it down until it lays directly over her heart. She puts her hand over mine, searching my gaze intently.

When she whispers the next words, my heart beat speeds up. “I’m a person. A whole separate person. I know that you have become accustomed to a certain lifestyle where you look out for yourself first all the time. But I don’t want to live that way. I won’t. So I’m asking you to stop and consider what I might be thinking and feeling about you right now. Do you think it would be something that would make you proud?”

I open my mouth to answer and feel as though she has just slapped me. Talia’s face doesn’t change but she doesn’t look away either.

What she thinks about me, how she feels? The idea is foreign to me.

When I look at Talia, I see a woman who is scared shitless and trying to act as though she isn’t afraid. I tilt my head and scrunch up one side of my face. I guess if I were in her position, a total outsider that is only in my world because she got knocked up, I would probably be just as scared as she is. She’s just one tiny person against the world. Talia starts to pull her hand out of mine, her mouth turning down into a slight frown. But I hold her there for just a moment longer, my eyes meeting hers.

At last, she touches my face with her free hand, cupping my jaw gently. She gives me a small smile and says, “Something to think about.”

Talia pushes me back and I go willingly this time. She goes into the kitchen and closes the door, leaving me to stare out into a darkening sky and a chill comes across the water that forebodes the coming storm. Much later, when I’ve locked down the command center of the boat and bolted down everything on the upper deck, I head downstairs and find Talia curled up on one corner of the couch in the living room.

Her eyes are fixed on the windows, two oblong cutouts that show the surface of the ocean around us. The wind is picking up outside and waves are battering the hull of the ship. Although I can only see a little glimpse of the sky above, I imagine that it is full of storm clouds and at any moment they will begin to pour rain down on us.

I enter the living room, if it can be called that. It’s only ten feet wide by twenty feet. One side is taken up by the long couch that Talia sits on and an extensive set of bookcases. On the other side, there are leather lounge chairs and a lightweight table. In the corner, there is a small bookshelf full of board games. I grab a heavy wooden box from the shelf of board games and bring it over to the table, where I open it to reveal a simple wooden chess board.

Talia notices me and watches me with some interest, but her eyes keep going back to the window. She monitors the weather outside and her brow furrows with concern.

“It’s going to storm,” I say. I take a seat in the leather chair beside the table, concentrating on setting up the chess pieces.

She gives me a funny look. “You think?”

I scowl down at the pawns that I line up but I don’t respond directly to her jibe. “You seem to be worried about it. But all the hatches are battened down. We are anchored in a sheltering bay. We have nothing to worry about.”

She quirks an eyebrow at me but she just presses her lips into a thin line. After a moment, she turns her head back to the board game that I’m setting up.

I glance up at her, keeping my face smooth and expressionless. “You play?”

She scoffs at me. “Of course I play. I went to school for liberal arts. I work in a bookstore. In what world would I not be able to defend myself on a chessboard?”

I nod to the chair on the other side of the table. “All right. Show me.”

She gets up, unsteady on her feet. As she wobbles, I notice her hand go to her belly. It’s funny, but I think I notice a vague swelling there. Not enough to remark upon but it is there nonetheless.

I don’t want to get my head bitten off for commenting on her shape at just this moment, so I bite my tongue.

Talia sits on the chair, pulling one of her legs up underneath her. She looks up at me, licking her lips. “Am I white, then?”

She gestures to the board, where I have set up the white pieces on her side and the dark pieces on mine. I shrug my shoulders. “I thought I should give you the advantage of the first move.”

Her lips twitch. She raises a hand and moves a pawn forward, seamlessly segueing into the first game.

I move several pawns. She moves a couple and then her knight comes out. It’s a bold move and the game progresses quickly. Talia is a very good chess player, quite aggressive and quick. It’s been so long since I have played that she knocks half of my pieces off the board before she corners my queen. She’s two moves away from a checkmate, looking quite smug as she moves her pieces around the board and slays my queen. At length, she puts my king into check several times and eventually I knock the piece over, conceding the game.

Talia sits back, putting her hands on the armrest and giving me a defiant smile. “That was easy,” she announces.

I haven’t ever seen this side of Talia before. Smug, superior, self assured. It’s annoying but also vaguely attractive. It reminds me of Daisy, truth be told.

“I think we should play again. And this time, we should make it more interesting. A wager.”

This seems to pique her interest. “What will we win or lose? And before you say it, I have no interest in playing strip chess so don’t even bring that up.”

I flash a smirk. “I was thinking that we would play for something more simple. I need us to come to an understanding before we head back to Harwicke. So perhaps we could play for one answer for each piece we capture.”

Her eyebrows fly up in surprise.

“One answer? To any question we ask?”

I nod. “That’s the idea.”

She purses her lips. “I don’t know. It’s hard to believe that you will be honest with me now. How do I know that you won’t just lie if I ask you anything that pushes your boundaries a little bit?”

I suck in a deep breath and release it slowly. “I promise to be honest. For this game, at least.”

Talia studies my face, her mouth bawling up tightly. She keeps looking at me for half a minute, making me fidget.

“Look. I need to know that I can leave you unattended and turn my back for more than a minute without you running away again. I feel like one of the reasons that you can’t trust me is because you don’t know anything about me, not really. So I am offering you a free pass to ask any question that you want.”

She toys with a pawn and nods slowly.

“Okay. Let’s set up the game again. You can be white this time.”

As we reset the board and swap sides, Talia appears pensive. I start to worry that she is going to pry into my past and try to figure out what makes me tick. Having someone else poke around inside my brain makes me fidgety and shifty. But Talia is looking at me expectantly.

“What?” I ask her.

“You’re white,” she says, gesturing to the board. “You go first.”

The back of my neck heats and I grimace. I think about the moves available to me and then select a pawn to move forward. She is quick to make her first move, glancing at me with a tiny smirk. I won’t give her the satisfaction of getting under my skin so I just move another pawn. The game progresses fairly quickly until she captures the first pawn.

Talia sits back, holding the pawn between her thumb and forefinger and giving me a considering look. She leans forward and places the pawn on the side of the board and then gives me a cool little smile.

“I think you know exactly what I think of your deception and what you did to force my hand when it comes to this marriage. So I will just let that lie. But I want to know… What happened to the agreement we made to be completely honest with each other? No, wait. I have a better question. What was going through your mind when you looked me in the eye and swore you’d tell me the truth?”

Ouch. She went right for my throat with that question. I wave my hand over my chin and give her a long look.

“I guess I was thinking that you would never find out that I guided your hand in accepting my proposal.”

Talia bleats out a laugh. “Guided my hand? That’s rich. If you can’t even admit that you lied, I’m not sure that a game of chess will solve anything at all.” She begins to stand up, pushing up from the armrests of the chair. I grit my teeth and glare at her.

“Wait!” I say. “Just sit back down.”

Talia freezes where she is, arching a brow. My lips thin but I manage to force the words to leave my mouth. “I lied. Okay? Now will you sit back down?”

She collapses back into the chair and flips her hair out of her face. Before she can say anything, I reach out and move my rook several places… Her eyes tighten on my face but she leans forward, putting her elbow on the table and concentrating on the game. After a moment, she moves her bishop a few spaces. I immediately capture it with my rook.

I steeple my fingers and consider my question for half a minute. “What will it take for you to move on from this?”

“From what?”

“My… deception. What will it take for you to let it be in the past in the rearview mirror?”

She toys with her queen, watching my face carefully. “I don’t know. I feel like I’ve been foolish when it comes to you. I’m embarrassed, actually. And frankly, I don’t trust you not to hurt me if the choice is between doing something that hurts me and doing something that benefits you.”

She is staring at me, putting the feelings out there on the table between us, plain as can be. I’m completely taken aback by her sentiment.

“I thought that I had made my priorities perfectly clear when I married you and gave you my name. Something that hurts you hurts me, too, I suppose.”

She bangs her fist on the table. “That’s not enough, Dare! How can I ever trust you when I wonder if I’m just a pawn to be sacrificed in your chess game?”

I lean back, realizing only then that the rift between us has become something larger. It’s gone from being a gully to a gulf.

“As far as I’m concerned, you are Mrs. Morgan. I made vows and I take the ‘till death do we part’ bit quite seriously. I never wanted a wife, but now that I have one, I intend to keep you.”

Talia stands up, her gaze direct and intense. “You made promises in the past that you didn’t keep. I can let that go, but the only way you can make up for it is by showing me that you want to change.”

She starts to move past me, but I grab her arm and pull her onto my lap. She struggles but I lock my arm around her waist and grab her chin between my thumb and forefinger, forcing her to look at me.

“If it will keep you from running away, I’ll do better. Okay?”

Her blue eyes are wide and they study my face. She frowns for a moment and I think she’s about to push me away. But then her eyes drop to my mouth and she wets her lips.

I haul her closer and kiss her hard, stealing the breath out of both of her lungs. Then I turn her loose. She stays on my lap for a few fleeting seconds, the corner of her mouth tugging down in a frown.

“Okay, Dare. I don’t forgive you for lying. But I won’t run away again. That’s as much as I can give you.”

God, her weight on my lap and her soft curves against my body are almost too much for me to handle. I start moving my head, angling for another taste of her luscious mouth. But she waves me off and clamors off my lap, standing.

“I need to eat again,” Talia says. “I feel a little faint.”

Repressing a sigh, I stand up and shoo her from the room. “Let’s get some food for you.”

She vanishes out of the doorway in a flash, eager to leave our conversation behind. I follow her, my steps heavy, wondering how long this peace between us will last.