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“We need to talk about this.”

“About what?”

“Our marriage.”

“I don’t remember agreeing.” Her scrubbing became a touch more aggressive. “I don’t even know you.”

“What do you want to know?”

“When’s your birthday?”

“Summer solstice. Yours?”

“Fall equinox. See, opposites.”

He puffed a laugh. “Actually, opposite would be the winter solstice.”

She rolled her eyes.

“What’s your favorite color?”

“The color of the woods on a summer day. Yours?” She looked at him.

Lachlan took the opportunity to dive into her eyes. “In Jast, just before a thunderstorm, the sky turns this beautiful color of violet. That color.” Her eyes held that color in bursts.

She looked away, but not before Lachlan noticed her blush.

“Maybe we should talk about what happened in your room,” he said.

“No.”

“What are you afraid of?”

Tarley’s eyes jumped to his. “I’m not afraid.”

“I think you are. I think that’s why you’re avoiding me.”

She scoffed. “And what, pray tell, is it that I’m afraid of.”

“That you might actually like me. That I might actually change your stubborn mind.” He grinned. “That you might actually think marrying me isn’t such a bad idea.”

Tarley straightened and schooled any expression that might have been on her face to look bored and indifferent. But Lachlan noticed her jaw protrude as she pressed her teeth together.

“What I actually think,” she said, laying her rag over the lip of the barrel, “is you can finish these up.” And she walked away without a backward glance.

Had Lachlan been a less arrogant man, he might have felt downtrodden by her response. But he was a prince, for godssakes. So rather than feel upset by her response, he found himself grinning from ear to ear. She’d blushed, which told him she felt something. “I’m beginning to think it’s an excellent idea,” he told the pot he was cleaning.

One point Lachlan.

21

Tarley stomped up the stairs and pushed into her room, slamming the door and leaning against it. She huffed, fanning her shirt to cool her fevered skin, and stomped a foot against the floor, then winced at her immaturity.

Lachlan was infuriating. That arrogant grin like he knew her. That cocksure way he did everything even though he was doing it wrong. That way he would look at her with a smirk on his face telling her he was thinking of the last time they’d been alone.

She did. All the time. Dreamed about it, in fact, and hated it was so. Her dreams had them consummating the act and delighting in the different variations.

And now she was dreaming about it with her eyes open. Seeing him only made it worse.