She looked sad when it was done, another unexpected reaction. I was going to lean in and ask her if she was okay, but unprompted, she spoke first. Her voice was very soft. “I wish I got to go to the symphony more…” she said wistfully.
Her cover story was that money was tight and that any available funds were going to her sister’s treatment. After all, that was the reason she was supposed to be at Lori’s auction. Of course, with each passing moment, I believed that story less and less, but I let her stick with it. For now... “Are tickets too expensive?”
I expected her answer to be ‘yes.’ I’d more or less given her the perfect reply, one that didn’t require any effort to answer. Going to the symphony was not cheap in most cities.
She surprised me instead with an answer that felt very close to the truth. “I don’t know who I am, Alexander,” she said. Her eyes were bleak. “My life is stuck on ‘pause.’ I put all my dreams on hold a few years ago and now I’ve lost them. I don’t know what I like anymore. When you asked me what my favourite book was, I couldn’t tell you because I didn’t know. Favourite TV show? I haven’t watched TV in so many years.” She took a deep breath and seemed to be fighting back the urge to cry, and my hand tightened on hers in sympathy. She leaned against my shoulder, her head tucked in under my chin. I felt a stab of pure protectiveness. I wanted to take care of her. I wanted to make everything better.
“When you asked me today if I liked the symphony, I had no answer for you,” she continued, her voice a whisper against my chest. “And I don’t even know how to dance. I feel so empty.”
My bright star. I stroked her arm. “You know how to dance,” I contradicted. “You danced with Rachid in Bangkok. I was watching.” I kissed her hair. “You did great.”
“He taught me,” she responded. “A half-hour of lessons does not a dancer make.” Her voice was wry. “I thought you might beat him up. Or punish me.”
I was utterly confused. I could tell she didn’t mean to voice that thought, but we were sitting in my private box in the Palais Garnier, we were entirely alone and her shields were down. “Why?” I asked her, puzzled.
“Because I was dancing with another man.”
My lips thinned. I couldn’t abide the kind of possessiveness she was describing, the one that reduced her to an object. “Jealousy is an emotion for the insecure, Jenny. I don’t need to keep you in a cage. If you want to fly away, you are free to do so. If you stay, I want it to be because you want to be here.”
She wasn’t here for the million dollars. The reason she was staying with me was something else, and I needed to get to the bottom of it. Two years ago, she’d come home with me because she’d wanted to. I wanted that authenticity back. That honest desire.
“No,” she agreed. “I’m slowly coming to realize that.” She took a deep breath. “I bet you regret bidding on me.” Her voice was rueful. “The auction had so many other girls that weren’t carrying so much baggage. Susan, for example, had quite the crush on you. She would have made a great submissive.”
I didn’t have a choice on whether to bid on her and it wasn’t Lori’s request that had made the decision for me. The instant I had looked into her green eyes, my options had been stripped away. I had to seize the second chance. “Susan? Is that what you think?” I responded instead.
“I’m surprised you even know who Susan is.”
“There were fifteen women in that room. Susan’s attended three times.”
She stiffened slightly under me. “If you were interested enough to know that, why didn’t you bid on her?”
She was jealous? I couldn’t help a small grin at that thought. If I were being perfectly honest, my answer would have been - Because you were there, bright star. And everyone else just faded to the background.
I gave her a different answer but one that was just as true as the first one. “Because she had stars in her eyes when she looked at me. I don’t get involved and I don’t toy with people’s feelings. Susan is the kind of woman that would fall in love and that would be pointless and futile.”
She pulled away. Her eyes were lowered and her expression hidden from me. “You like playing the field then? Variety is the spice of life? Why have one woman when you can have many?”
There was a note of judgement in her voice and it stung. I shouldn’t have cared. If she wanted to believe the worst of me, perhaps I should have just let her. But two years ago, I hadn’t been able to lie to her about the way I felt, and it was the same now. I was lying through my teeth about facts, but the underlying emotions? There could be no subterfuge there. Not with her. Not from the first moment I met her.