Chapter 156

Lucette had come to breakfast after a restless, sleepless night, determined to talk to Ariston and, more than that, to come to an agreement. An arrangement even though the details remained vague in her head. She didn’t want to be businesslike any more—didn’t want this polite stepping around each other.

Yet, what was the alternative? How did you engage your heart and mind, and maybe even your soul, without risking everything?

And she knew she wasn’t ready to do that. She hadn’t even been able to tell Ariston that the real reason she’d refused his marriage proposal was that she’d been so very afraid. Annelise... Her mother... The foster parents who had decided she wasn’t what they wanted... So many had turned away, and she knew she couldn’t take it if Ariston did. Not if she’d given him her heart—fragile, trampled-on thing that it was.

But her silence had led to this terrible strain, with Ariston having turned back to his newspaper, his expression remote and shuttered.

"What are yo