“You’ve been married three years, and still a virgin!” Margaret said, her scorn cutting the atmosphere in the high-ceilinged drawing room. “Three years, and your excuse is that my son still hasn’t touched you?”

With her head lowered, Rebecca Perry sat stiffly on the edge of the sofa, focusing on her hands folded tightly in her lap.

This was not the first time Margaret had asked why she had still not been able to produce an heir for the family.

She had learned, long ago, that keeping silent was wiser than trying to defend herself. The Bradford family appreciated subservience much more than any attempt at a valid explanation.

Margaret was glaring at her like she was something distasteful that the housekeeper had neglected to clean up.

The Bradford matriarch wasn’t finished yet. With a short, humorless laugh she continued her tirade. “My God, girl,” she declared. “What exactly have you been doing in this house all these years? Enjoying his name? Spending his money? Playing the devoted wife — and yet you can’t even manage the one obvious thing expected of you?”

Rebecca’s fingers tightened further, threatening to crease the pages of the medical report she was holding.

Margaret stood up with finality. With an irritated toss of her head, she turned to leave. At the doorway she paused, casting a last exasperated grimace at Rebecca.

Mercilessly, she declared, “Tonight, young lady, you will do your duty and get this marriage consummated. Is that too difficult a task? For a wife? If you fail again, your belongings will be outside by breakfast.”

Margaret’s imperious departure took the frozen air with her.

For a long moment, Rebecca remained where she was, the tension in her shoulders refusing to ease. She looked up and scanned the drawing room, now thankfully empty apart from herself.

She finally exhaled, and loosened her grip on the doctor’s report clutched in her hands. Despite trying to hold back, she couldn’t prevent hot tears from welling in her eyes. She stared down at the form without really seeing it; the neat black letters were blurred and meaningless.

With an ironic smile touching her lips, she thought how ridiculous that she had to provide medically validated proof for something that her husband’s family wouldn’t accept, regardless.

She crushed the paperwork into a ball and dropped it into the wastebasket as she headed through the house. She went upstairs to the bedroom she had shared with Vance Bradford for three years. Shared in name only.

But the bedroom was no welcoming retreat. It held no warm memories of the sharing and loving closeness most marriages enjoyed. Only echoes of the endless nights of loneliness and cold rejection.

It was a large room, grand and forbidding. Rebecca sometimes thought there was plenty of room for two beds. They could replace the king-size bed monstering the center of the room, for one each side of the room.

Not that it would have made much difference, since the one they shared was already divided in half with enough precision that it might as well be two beds.

Vance slept on the right side, always turned toward the windows with his broad back facing her. Untouchable. Rebecca slept on the left, close enough to feel the shift of the mattress when he moved, close enough to hear his breathing in the dark, yet still further from him than any stranger.

Tonight, he came home earlier than usual.

When he arrived, he loosened his tie with the same calm, practiced ease he brought to boardrooms, charity dinners, and every occasion in which people expected a Bradford heir to be flawless. At twenty-eight, Vance Bradford had learned how to make power look effortless.

It was only with Rebecca that his natural ease became stiff and distant.

“What would you like for dinner?” he asked.

His tone was always gentle. Aiming for casual but somehow falling short. That was the worst part. The indifference. He treated her with the same polite consideration he would show staff at head office.

Rebecca stood by the bathroom door in her nightdress, quietly regarding him. Her damp hair fell over one shoulder. Once, years ago, she might have wondered whether he noticed her. She had tried silk. Lace. Bare shoulders. Bare skin. She had tried shyness, confidence, patience, and quiet devotion.

Until eventually, she learned the truth.

It didn’t matter what she wore or what intimacy she tried to offer.

“Rebecca?” Vance turned toward her when she didn’t answer.

She drew a breath and crossed the room.

He sat on the edge of the bed, working one cufflink free, then unbuttoning his shirt. The gesture was so ordinary, so familiar, that she nearly lost her nerve.

“Vance?”

He paused. Looked up at her, an eyebrow raised in query. At least she had his attention now.

“I want…” She stopped. The humiliating words caught in her throat. She couldn’t say them.

She gathered her resolve and tried again. “Vance, I want us to be… true husband and wife. I mean…” She faltered. He knew what she meant.

The silence that followed seemed endless. He continued undressing, pulling off his shirt before giving a deep sigh.

At last, he looked up. “You are my wife. Isn’t that enough?” he said quietly.

There it was again. That kindly, patient tone one used with someone fragile, someone being unreasonable.

Emboldened, Rebecca looked into his eyes. They were a clear grey-blue, untouched by panic, devoid of any hint of desire.

“I have been your wife for three years, Vance,” she dared continue. “In every way except the one that makes it a true marriage.”

His expression softened. He shrugged. “Rebecca —”

“I want a child,” she blurted out. “Don’t you?” Her hands gripped the hem of her nightdress, her fingers twisting it in agitation. “I want you to touch me,” she almost whispered.

But he heard her.

At that, he lost the carefully curated calm that Vance Bradford, the billionaire CEO, normally displayed. He frowned, and rising from the bed, went over to stand by the window. Gazing into the darkness outside, he didn’t turn back when he spoke.

“What has brought this on? You’re upset, Rebecca.”

“I’m not.”

“Maybe you’ve had a long day, I don’t know...”

“I said I’m not upset.” The confidence in her voice surprised even her.

He turned to her then, and the look on his face derailed her determination. If it had been anger or disgust, perhaps she could have hated him.

But instead, he looked lost and strangely vulnerable.

“Marriage is more than that,” he said quietly.

Rebecca stared at him, unsure what comeback could plead her case better. “Then tell me what it is,” she challenged.

He didn’t reply.

“I wait for you every night. I stand beside you at social events where no one speaks to me unless they want something from you. I tend you when you’re ill. I smile when your mother looks through me as if I’m furniture that she regrets buying.”

She kept her voice steady, trying to be reasonable. “I have done everything a wife is supposed to do.”

She swallowed. “So, why do you still refuse to touch me?”

For a moment, Vance looked as though she had struck him. Then he came toward her.

Rebecca hated herself for the way her body responded to his proximity. Hated the helpless sense of hope that rose in her.

He reached out and brushed a damp strand of hair away from her cheek. His touch was always gentle, but never intimate.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “This is my fault. Not yours.”

Rebecca closed her eyes. Three years. Always the same words, offered like a bandage over a wound he never intended to heal.

Once she had believed him. Perhaps there was grief in him, some sort of guilt, or some old ache he couldn’t name. She had told herself to be patient. If she loved him enough, he might eventually melt.

But gratitude was not desire. And no amount of tenderness could arouse love when one person was always turning away.

Rebecca caught his hand as he pulled it away. The depth of her desperation was betrayed by her trembling hold.

Vance looked down at their joined hands, then back at her.

“Rebecca?”

It was not an accusation, but Rebeca could sense the refusal.

“Just tonight?” she whispered, baring her soul.

“Please, Vance.” She held his gaze. “I want to know what it feels like to be wanted by my husband.”