Free Love Me Again by Wendy M. Burge

Glancing up, she was astonished to see a small smile curl his sensuous lips. The cad actually looked relieved! Then a brilliant smile broke across his stern visage. When he reached up a finger to tap her nose, she jerked back, her mouth agape in amazement.
    “You lied. I believe I just won our little wager,” he drawled.
    “Why, you ... you...” she sputtered, thinking of all sorts of horrible things to call him but couldn't seem to find the nerve to say them out loud. Narrowing her eyes, she glared at him. “You just see what you want to see, and you know it!”
    “I know when I see a lie in your expressive eyes, lark. And that one was not the least bit credible. You were looking at my eyes, Christina, you were not looking in them.” His brow rose in a taunt. “You don't believe me? Very well. Do it again. Look into my eyes, and say it again.” With a finger, he tipped up her stubborn chin. “Into my eyes, lark.” She glared resentfully, deeply, into his mocking eyes. “Good. Now say it again.”
    She narrowed her eyes, and tried to focus beyond the penetrating blue of his eyes; his oh, so beautiful eyes!
    He shook her chin. “Into my eyes, damn you, not past them.”
    “All right, blast you!” She jerked her chin out of his fingers and stood toe-to-toe with him. This time she did look, and in the turbulent depths she saw all the years, all the memories, all the love they had shared. Her breathing turned erratic but still she held his piercing, demanding gaze, and she opened her mouth.
    “Say it, Christina,” he murmured, “If you can.”
    She took a deep breath, and held it suspended as she battled with herself. Then she expelled it with an enraged groan, her eyes closing against him in defeat. “Damn you, Varek, you win! I can't say it. Are you happy?” She spun away from him, furious; with herself, with him, and with the fates that had done this to them again. After a fretful moment, she muttered ungraciously, “You are a cad, your highness.”
    Trying to keep a straight face, and the smugness out of his voice, Varek bowed low. “I do beg your forgiveness, madam.”
    Stepping closer to him, she leaned forward and hissed. “It doesn't change anything, Varek. I am still married, and not to you!” Then turning with a regal swish of her skirts, she hurried down the walkway.
    “Not for long, my precious love. Not for long,” Varek murmured as he watched her disappear into the flow of pedestrians before he waved his hand. Out of the crowd materialized a great brute of a man, who immediately took out after Christina, his faithful bloodhound on her scent.
    Smiling, and contemplating the siege before him, Varek sauntered off in the opposite direction, in no hurry to get anywhere. It was a beautiful afternoon, so he was content to amble along and think of the little hawk his gentle lark had become.
* * * *
    Hours later, Christina was still castigating herself for her abysmal weakness in the park. To add insult to injury, she had been forced to sit through an interminable dinner under Varek's lazy smile; his heavy-lidded gaze raking every inch of her person that he could visually touch. Then fevered fantasies had taken over, and she imagined his elegant hands stoking every inch of her flesh that he couldn't see. It had been pure torture!
    So, in retaliation, she had turned her scattered wits on comparing her noble husband with the rogue lounging across the table from her. That fruitless endeavor soon had her on the verge of tearing her hair out by the roots, which put her in such an irritable mood she could scarcely make polite conversation with her dinner partners. For no matter how hard she tried, and she did honestly try, she wasn't able to make Robert come out the victor in any physical comparison to Varek.
    She had breathed a sigh of relief when Varek finally left the table with his cousin, the Austrian Emperor Francis. When the door closed on his broad back, she had relaxed for the first time since