The Bed You Make
Chapter 43, concluded
Either she was developing a tolerance for the stuff or Chef Philip Gottorp had wildly exaggerated the potency of the Russian vodka she'd been drinking. Dara took a moment from her thoughts to stare in surprise at the empty glass in her hand. She was not a heavy drinker but, after the first taste at Xanthe earlier, the rest had gone down quite easily.
Dara rose from the edge of the bed where she'd been sitting and strolled restlessly across the room to the small, elegant writing desk Stefan used to peruse his daily newspapers. The desk was positioned so that it caught the earliest rays of light from the high windows in the room. Sighing, Dara lifted the decanter of vodka she'd placed there and poured another drink. Surprisingly, the private-reserve vodka she had imbibed since leaving the restaurant had served to clear her mind, not cloud it.
That was a good thing.
Since leaving Xanthe, Dara had examined and re-examined her reactions of the evening. She'd asserted to Stefan that they weren't about him. And that wasn't a lie… not totally. Her reaction to Jacqueline de Mardors' behavior was the reaction anyone would have had to such blatant disrespect. It didn't matter that Dara's marriage to Stefan wasn't a real one. The Countess didn't know that. She had dismissed Dara's presence as though the other woman was Stefan's house servant, not his wife. Dara could not let that pass.
What truly bothered Dara was the anger she felt at Stefan afterward, anger that he had allowed the Countess to disrespect Dara's place as the woman in his life. And therein lay the problem, she concluded. Dara's anger hadn't been on behalf of Mrs. Stefan Cassadine, the newest royal whose title and social standing had been blatantly and publicly ignored. No, the urge to put a knot atop the head of her 'husband' belonged wholly to Dara Jensen Cassadine, the woman who slept beside Stefan each night.
Most people would not see the distinction between the two. Or they would contend that Dara was simply splitting hairs. But she was a lawyer; splitting hairs came naturally. And, Dara reasoned, it was her willingness to make such fine distinctions that had enabled her to keep pace with Stefan thus far. All that would change if she lost sight of one immutable fact… developing an attraction to Stefan Cassadine could only end in disaster.
Dara sighed, threw back the remainder of her drink and poured another. She needed all the clarity she could get while dealing with her thoughts. The current state of events troubled her more than anything she'd ever known in her life.
