“Here’s the difference: I don’t work because it would make my father happy. I work because I enjoy it—me—and because people are counting on me.”

Was he insulting her? She wasn’t sure. “I enjoy what I do.”

“Do you really? You enjoy hurting yourself? You enjoy giving yourself scars?”

She struggled for a breath. Her voice cracked. “You said you don’t mind them.”

“I don’t and you damn well know it. But you told me you use the lancet because it’s fast. You wouldn’t have to use it if you were spending an hour with one client, calling up one spirit, for the same amount of money you make calling up a dozen in front of an audience.”

“I can’t do that until I’ve saved enough money.”

“How many years will that take? Five? Ten?”

“I d-don’t know.”

“But you won’t accept a loan? What if it came from an outside source? People get loans from a bank every day. That would hurt your pride so much?”

Good grief, he was exasperating, trying to talk her into a trap. “This isn’t about my career,” she complained. “You want me to stay for us.”

“Hell yes, I do! Guilty.”

“But if I stay, then I lose my career momentum. And how long will we last, Winter? Ask yourself that. You’ve already tried marriage once, and you said yourself it wasn’t working, even if the accident never happened. You told me you weren’t interested in anything more than a fling because of your marriage.”

“Feelings change.”

“Yes, and quickly. Because we’ve only known each other a month. And what if your feelings change again in another month? Sam always told me that nothing lasts, and that relationships destroy the individual. And clearly that’s what you’ve experienced yourself with Paulina. Why would it be any different for the two of us?”

“Did you ever stop to think that Saint Sam might not know everything?”

Anger heated her cheeks as she pointed a shaking finger. “Don’t you dare talk about him.”

“Why not? You brought him up. I’m sure he was a fine fellow, but he’s dead, Aida. He’s been dead for more than ten years. When are you going to stop living your life to please him?”

“He’s none of your damn business!”

“Unfortunately he is my damn business, because he’s come between me and the woman I love.”

Love? She didn’t mean to gasp—if that’s what the noise coming out of her mouth could be called. It was so loud, it sounded as though she were choking. She felt like she was. A brutal weight struck her chest and strangled her heart. She stood in place, unnaturally glued to the tile floor as if under a spell.

“That’s what I thought,” Winter said. “No response. I suspect you’d let your martyrlike mission to preserve Sam’s idiotic ideas overshadow anything at all you might feel, so God only knows whether you care for me in return.”

I do. She wanted to say it out loud, but her throat wouldn’t work. Her fingers were going numb. She felt . . . she felt as though she were going into shock.

If she could articulate what she felt, she’d have told him she was overwhelmed with feelings for him. But it was something she’d never experienced before, and she was terrified. She’d have told him that she wanted more than anything to stay here and be with him.

But Winter didn’t give her time to manage it. “Sam was an eighteen-year-old boy who was trying to rationalize the meaning of life,” he said. “Did you ever stop to think that he may have changed his tune after a few years?”

“I’ll never know, because he didn’t get a few more years.”

“But you’ll spend the rest of yours molding your life around a memory?”

Tears came, fast and strong. She felt like a quaking rabbit cornered by a wolf, unable to think properly. Unable to do anything but position herself to cut and run. “W-why am I the only one forced to take a risk? You want me to stay, but only as your mistress. Did you ever stop to think how I will be perceived if I stay here permanently? Everyone knows you. Everyone will know me, too, and they will talk.”

“Who cares if they do?”

“I do! It will affect me and any kind of business endeavors I’d attempt to make.”

“Bullshit. No one cares about that anymore.”

“Your parents did, or your mother wouldn’t have pushed you into a marriage with someone you didn’t even like.” She swiped tears from her eyes. “If Sam’s memory taints my choices, then your horrible relationship with Paulina taints yours.”

Cold eyes stared at her from across the table. A muscle in his jaw jumped. He took a deep breath and looked at his hands. “Maybe Paulina just opened my eyes to what marriage really is.”

“And pray tell, what exactly did dearest Paulina teach you about marriage?”

“That it’s a piece of paper—a legal document that has nothing to do with feelings or trust or affection or friendship. It’s a goddamn business transaction, and I will not reduce what’s between us to a court filing whose only purpose is to bind people together for the sake of money!”

“And I will not keep repeating what you already know—if you think I want money from you, then you can damn well keep believing that while I’m on the train to New Orleans!”

Rage transformed Winter’s face into something demonic, the kitchen’s pendant lights casting harsh, craggy shadows down the planes of his face. He slammed his fist on the table, making both it and Aida jump. As his paperwork scattered, some of it fluttering to the floor, he stormed around and stalked her. She backed up, but he kept coming until he was towering over her like a fiend rising from the abyss. Steam from the simmering stockpot whirled around his dark head.