Susan Fox - Contract Bride

Reece’s face went flinty. “Bobby stays on Waverly Ranch, under this roof where he belongs.”

It was a declaration of war. Leah knew it and went cold. Though she should have expected this too, it was chilling to hear Reece bluntly state it. Now they’d not only be emotionally and physically aloof from each other, they’d be adversaries, which made the precarious situation between them even more perilous and destined to end badly.

Leah lifted her napkin to the table and calmly eased back her chair to stand. She couldn’t keep her composure and stay in the room another moment, but she couldn’t allow Reece to get away with his declaration. He’d run over her from here on if she didn’t.

“I won’t take offense this time, Reece,” she managed shakily. She wouldn’t remind him of their legal agreement regarding custody of Bobby, but she’d use it if she had to. It was just more prudent to stand up to him without it. This time. “But if you mean to persuade me that this marriage has a chance, declarations like that aren’t very convincing.”

Leah maintained eye contact with him, though his dark gaze was fiery now. She eased to the side to push her chair closer to the table.

“You didn’t finish your food,” he growled, and she got the impression that he might have preferred to simply order her to sit down, but was wary of how she’d take that. It was a relief to have fresh proof that he wouldn’t bully or boss her, no matter how angry he was.

“I probably nibbled too much while I was cooking and spoiled my appetite,” she said quietly. The gleam of perception in his gaze told her he knew she’d stretched the truth to avoid officially pinning the blame for her sudden loss of appetite on him. “Could you look after Bobby while I take care of some laundry?”

Reece’s gruff, “Sure thing,” was a thin cover for his displeasure and frustration, and they both knew that too.

Leah calmly crossed the kitchen to the short hall to the laundry room though her knees were shaking. Had she just made things worse or better?

The truth was, she no longer knew what to think. She certainly didn’t know much about the Reece Waverly she’d actually married. Whatever she’d known about him before, mostly by observation then later from Rachel, didn’t seem to quite fit the man she had to deal with now.

At least she’d set some sort of limit and had drawn a line on the kind of verbal exchanges she wanted to avoid, and Reece had essentially backed down. But for a man as naturally dominant as he was, how long would that last?

Rachel had never thought twice about standing up to Reece, and she’d done it as confidently as she’d done everything else in her life. Rachel had tamed a lot of Reece’s bluster and his natural tendency to autocratically run everything. But he would have expected that from Rachel. It would have seemed odd to him if Rachel hadn’t stood up to him.

But Leah wasn’t the woman he’d been so fervently in love with—was still in love with—so she had to watch her step. She was very aware that she’d have to depend completely on Reece’s sense of fairness as well as her own ability to tactfully and consistently hold her own, because it was imperative that Reece respect her.

She couldn’t afford to go to war with him, not when Bobby would be the one who’d suffer most. And though Reece couldn’t love her, the last thing she wanted was to somehow make him loathe her. It was hard enough to weather his indifference.

And it was more crucial than ever that Reece never guessed what she felt for him. Until now her feelings had been easy enough to conceal, because a man who barely paid attention missed a lot of things.

Reece would be paying attention now. To everything. He’d be looking for ways to keep their marriage together, at least for a while, and it would be natural for him to exploit any advantage.

Since his greatest advantage would be to discover how much she loved him, she’d have to take special care to keep him from somehow figuring it out.

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