Instead of annoying her, it made her laugh. "We could go back to my apartment and I could prove it to you."
He looked far from amused. His dark eyes glinted with a warning she had no intention of heeding. "Are you trying to shock me,pethi mou ?"
"Challenging you, I think." Recklessness filled her to bursting.
She didn't know if it came from the unexpected proposal that had mentioned not one word of love, from memories she'd prefer to forget, or from the renewed evidence that her mother wanted no emotional connection to her, but the strictures of a lifetime were falling like dominos around her.
No, she wasn't the type of woman to view sex casually, but she wasn't a virgin and she was darned if she would marry a man who could turn himself off from her so easily. She didn't want Nikos to be like her mother. She couldn't stand for their relationship to be as cold and distant.
"Why do you feel the need to challenge me?" he asked, sounding baffled.
It was almost cute, in an arrogant, macho reaction to what should have been a straight forward topic kind of way.
"Why don't you want me enough to have seduced me?" Or even accepted her sometimes not too subtle invitations?
"I told you."
"You believe I'm a virgin, so that puts me off-limits until the wedding night."
"Essentially…yes. Perhaps not until the wedding night, but definitely until the wedding is a date on the calendar."
"This is not the Dark Ages."
"Integrity has no time limit."
"Is that one of your grandfather's sayings?"
For a second his eyes burned with a pain that could not be mistaken. "As a matter of fact, yes."
"I don't understand why you want to marry me. You don't love me."
"And your friends have all married for the sake of some ephemeral emotion that cannot even be counted on to last past the cooling of the sheets in most cases?"
"No." She wouldn't pretend that all her acquaintances had married because they were in love. "But they aren't me and I happen to believe in that ephemeral emotion . I want more from marriage than a businesslike merging of two people's lives." She wanted more from life than that, period…but had no idea how to get it.
Other people found love so easily, but not her. But that didn't mean she had given up hoping to find it.
"And you will have more. We are compatible, in every way. We will have a family. You even enjoy my mother's company."
"She's easy to like, but you say that like it's a major consideration."
"Since I choose to have my mother live near me like a good Greek son, it is."
"I wouldn't mind living with your mother, but I'm not so sure about her son."
"So, you are considering my proposal?"
Was she? Her heart beat too fast, the pain of uncertainty squeezing her chest tight. She was. No matter what he believed about love, she was afraid she was already irrevocably in love with him—or headed there fast. What a hopelessly terrifying thought. "Yes, but I can't give you an answer right now."
"Surely you were expecting this."
"Funnily enough…I wasn't. I told you that."
He sighed. "Yes, but I would have thought you would have at least considered the possibility."
She just shrugged, not knowing what to say. They'd already been over the whole sex thing and their views were polar opposites. She'd been sure he wasn't ready for a deeper relationship because he hadn't pursued that angle and he'd assumed she'd realize he wouldn't pursue it until she was committed to him.
"And you cannot make the decision now, knowing what you know of me, of yourself?"
"No." Because if she did, it would have to be no. And her heart both demanded and rejected that answer.
"Is it my background?"
She stared at him. "I don't know enough of your background for it even to be a consideration and I hope you aren't implying I'm some sort of snob who would only marry someone born to the same world of privilege I was."