Page 79 of The Rancher's Wedding Deception

He noticed her fingers shaking as she did as asked. She returned his phone, he forwarded the message to his secretary with a curt set of instructions. A moment later, Andromeda’s phone buzzed, and her sharp intake of breath was confirmation enough.

“Anything else?”

She started gnawing on her lip, and just staring at her like this tore him apart, with his heart still at war with his mind.

Part of him wanted to chain her to him forever. The other part of him wanted to get rid of her for good.

“I need you to answer something. Truthfully.”

“Go on.”

“Is this...is this something you do regularly?” Her words came out stilted. Like she was forcing herself to speak when she could barely breathe. “Do you...do you ask all the women you date to act like they—”

“No.” Paul’s tone was clipped. “You’re the first one. The only one.”

Chapter Five

WHAT AM I DOING, REALLY?

Memories of their conversation in the limo played in her mind over and over, and every time she remembered the way he had stared at her with intense gray eyes as he answered her question—

You’re the first one. The only one.

She grabbed the pillow from under her head to cover her face and muffle the sounds that came spiraling out of her throat. They were part-cry, part-groan, and part-something that consisted of 3% confusion, 17% desperation, and 80% of an emotion that had to remain unnamed at all costs.

I can’t believe this is happening!

How can this be happening?

Is this really happening?

Andie tossed. And turned. Then tossed and turned again and again and again. But the restlessness churning inside her refused to be quelled. She had asked Paul for a night to think things over, and he had been swift to say yes. She had thought she had won herself a little reprieve...only to find out after dinner that he had no plans of letting her out of her sight.

“You’ll sleep under my roof.”

“But—”

“It’s non-negotiable,koukla mou.So deal with it.”

Hence the reason she ended up occupying the suite closest to the master’s bedroom, struggling but failing to fall asleep in the past eighty minutes.

Argh.

The guest suite was roughly the size of her entire apartment back in Kansas.

Maybe bigger.

The bed alone could fit four of her comfortably, its mattress so soft she’d practically sunk into it when she first sat down. The sheets were some kind of fabric she couldn’t identify—not cotton, not silk, but something in between that felt like sleeping on a cloud made of whispers. Thread count probably in the thousands. The kind of sheets she’d only ever seen in magazines at the SaveMart checkout line, usually accompanied by headlines like“Live Your Best Life!”and price tags that made her laugh out loud.

She wasn’t laughing now.

The December wind rattled softly against the windows, though it was too dark to see much beyond the ghostly shapes of bare tree branches and the distant twinkle of Christmas lights strung along what might have been a gazebo. Or a pool house. Or a small cottage.

Maybe even all of the above, considering how astronomically wealthy Paul seemed to be.

She kicked at the sheets, suddenly too hot despite the perfectly calibrated temperature. Then she was too cold. Then too hotagain. Her skin felt electric, hypersensitive, like every nerve ending had been rewired during that limo ride and now refused to settle back into their normal patterns.

Every time she closed her eyes, she felt his hands on her.