Page 4 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul (Scandalous Sisters #3)

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Ian rubbed at his temples. She’d slammed the door behind her.

Of course she had slammed the door. But God, that last brazen gesture of her incandescent rage had resounded throughout the room and set his ears to ringing.

His hands were shaking. Trembling . He flexed his fingers in a futile effort to erase that wretched quiver, but it continued on, unabated.

Damn. He’d have to do something about that, somehow.

Find some way to hide it, to mask it. Because if she even remotely suspected he could be affected to this degree by something so simple as her presence, that pendulum would swing, sending every bit of his power straight into her hands.

Ten years since he’d last seen her from something other than at a distance.

Ten years since she had last turned toward him instead of away.

And it was entirely his fault. How many times had she tried to tell him what a hash he was making of things between them?

How many times had she pleaded for just a little of his time, his attention?

With every excuse he’d given, every promise he’d broken, he’d lost another piece of her heart, until there had been nothing left of it she cared to risk to his clumsy hands.

He hadn’t even realized it until that last terrible night, when he’d watched the last of her love die in her eyes.

Watched the tattered shreds of it turn to fury as he’d broken the most important promise he’d given her.

For a while after their rift, he’d held on to some sort of nebulous hope that her ire would fade with time.

That she would, eventually, unbend enough to hear his apologies.

To allow him to make things right between them.

She never had. Every letter had been sent back unopened.

Every gift returned. Felicity Cabot could hold a grudge until the end of time without surrendering a single ounce of her fury.

But they had loved each other once, before he’d turned hers to hate.

You are going to make something of yourself, Ian Carlisle , she had told him years ago.

Over and over, until, eventually, he had begun to believe it.

And he had made something of himself. He’d made a fortune, a reputation, a name.

But he had lost her. No; not only lost—he had sacrificed her.

He had cut that bond between them himself, a thread at a time, without realizing how far it had frayed until it had been too late to save.

And ten desolate years had followed, years in which he’d made more money than God and still had nothing he valued.

Years which had been steeped in loneliness, in misery.

And she would make him more miserable still, he knew.

He’d got her at last, but not honestly. Not honorably.

Tomorrow morning, she would put her hand in his and swear herself to him before a man of God.

Then, he had no doubt, she would make him suffer for his audacity, for the gall of it all.

And he would take it, every bit of that enmity that she still held for him, because that—that he had earned honestly.

Christ . He dropped his head into his hands and scrubbed at his face.

You always have to win , she had accused, and it had scored his heart to its core.

He’d won hundreds—thousands—of other battles.

But he’d been losing this war of silence between them for a decade.

Yes, he had to win; the rest of his life depended upon it.

But in the doing of it, he’d set himself up as her enemy, the bane of her existence, the lone target of every bit of her anger.

And he could only hope that when she had spent every last ounce of that well-deserved wrath, that she might finally find herself willing to listen.

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