She anxiously brought up the topic of Xander LaGrange again. Ian was adamant, however, that her behavior hadn’t been the primary issue with the business deal going sour.
“It was just the final straw,” Ian said. “I hated having to court him in order to get that software. I’ve always despised him, ever since I was seventeen years old. It grated, having to smarm up to him. I’ve been avoiding meeting with him in person for weeks now.” He blinked as if in memory. “Actually, I was supposed to meet with him that first night we met, the night of your cocktail party at Fusion. I asked Lin to cancel.”
Her heart jumped at that. “I thought you looked annoyed when Lin approached you at Fusion because you didn’t want to have to waste time with meeting me.”
He nudged her chin softly as she looked up at him. “Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know. I just imagined you had a lot better things to do than meet me.”
His low chuckle warmed her. He pressed gently on her head, and she contentedly rested it back on his chest.
“I don’t say things I don’t mean, Francesca. I had been looking forward to meeting you ever since I saw your entry painting and recognized you as the artist who painted Cat,” he said, shortening the name of the painting that hung in his library . . . the painting she’d inadvertently done of him. She pressed her mouth to his skin and kissed him, thrilled to the core by this little revealed truth. His fingers tightened in her hair.
“But what will you do about the software you need for your start-up company?” she asked after a moment.
“I’ll do what I should have done to begin with,” he said briskly, his fingertips massaging her scalp, making her shiver in delicious pleasure. “I’ll design my own. It’ll be an effort, and it’ll take extra time, but I should have gone that route to begin with instead of bothering with that ass. It’s never good business to deal with a man like LaGrange. I’d been kidding myself.”
Later, she told him about when she first began to understand she was an artist, during a camp for overweight children when she was eight years old.
“I didn’t lose a pound at that camp, much to my parents’ dismay, but I learned that I was an ace at sketching and painting,” she murmured, lying still with her head on his chest and feeling content and drowsy as Ian stroked her hair.
“Your parents seemed obsessed with your weight,” he commented, his deep voice vibrating up through his hard chest and tickling her ear. She stroked his biceps with curious fingertips, wondering at how dense and hard the muscle was.
“They were obsessed with controlling me. My weight was one of the few things they couldn’t manipulate.”
Did his muscles tense when she said that?
“Your body became a battleground,” Ian said.
“That’s what all those psychologists used to say.”
“I can just imagine what those same psychologists would say about your becoming involved with me.”
She lifted her head from his chest and met his stare. The lighting was at a dim setting in his bedroom suite. She couldn’t quite make out his expression.
“You mean because you’re so controlling?” she asked.
He nodded once. “I told you that I practically drove my former wife over the edge.”
Francesca’s pulse began to throb as she stared at his stark male beauty. She knew how rare it was for him to speak of his past. “Did you . . . did you care about her so much that you were always worried about her well-being?”
“No.”
She blinked at his rapid, absolute response. He winced slightly and glanced away. “I wasn’t in love with her or anything, if that’s what you’re asking. I was twenty-one years old, still in college, and a fool for having gotten involved with her. I’d had an argument with my grandparents at around that time. A big one. We hadn’t spoken for months. I suppose I was a little vulnerable for the possibility of being blinded by a woman like Elizabeth. I met her at a fund-raiser at the University of Chicago—one that my grandmother happened to attend while trying to mend fences with me. Elizabeth was a gifted ballet dancer who came from an affluent American family. She was taught to crave the type of status my grandmother represents.”
“And you,” Francesca said softly.
“That’s what Elizabeth thought at first—before we married and she actually got to know me, and she came to realize what a mistake she’d made. She wanted a Prince Charming and got stuck with a bastard devil,” he said, a small, mirthless smile twisting his mouth. “Elizabeth may have been a virgin, but she was far from innocent in the art of getting what she wanted. She designed to snare me in her trap, and I was stupid enough to let her.”
“She . . . she got pregnant on purpose?”
Ian nodded, his gaze flickering over her face. “I know a lot of men say that, but in our case, it was a proven truth. After she became pregnant and we married, I discovered her old pill packs in the bathroom. She appeared to be taking them very irregularly. When I confronted her about it, she admitted that she’d stopped taking the pill once we began seeing each other. She claimed it was because she wanted to have my child, but I didn’t believe her. Or I should say, she did want to become pregnant in order to marry, but I don’t believe she truly wanted the experience of motherhood.”
She experienced a sinking feeling. “Aren’t you worried about the possibility of my doing the same thing? With the birth control, I mean?”