Read Online Pandora's Box by Cristiane Serruya - Free Book Online Page B

that. But I don’t like the sneaking around in the morning, coming back to bed and pretending you weren’t up.”
    Oh, damn. “Yeah. Maybe I overdid it a little.” She bit her lip, caught red-handed.
    He wasn’t expecting her to agree and pulled her bottom lip from her teeth. “So, do you plan to keep this pace now that we’re married?”
    Wait! “What does our marriage have to do with my work?”
    Wait! “Don’t get me wrong. I love that you’re an independent woman and that you have your own life and routine. I think you, as a woman, should have other priorities than just your partner— Your husband,” he corrected himself, quickly. “And this is important and I’ll never think of asking you to stop being like this, but I’ve always thought Gabriela and you could use a little more free time. And now, of course, me too.”
    Hmm. I see. “Well, now that we are together—”
    “Married,” he corrected again immediately.
    “Married.” A smile opened her lips wide. “Well, I can use Munro to come and go to Cambridge. It’ll save me a considerable amount of time. I don’t know why I never thought about it before. By June, next year, my thesis will be finished and my teaching contract will be up. It’s just one more year of hard work. I can’t throw it all away now.”
    “No. Of course not. But at least while you’re getting your the PhD and teaching, you could work less at Leibowitz Oil and on the foundation, don’t you think? Davidoff and Mrs. Chanda are quite competent.”
    “Yes, they are.” She sighed. “But—”
    But? Without taking his eyes from her face, he leaned back on the chair, crossing a bare ankle over his knee. He didn’t understand her workaholic mania, never had. She doesn’t need to work that hard. “But…”
    “Oh, I— You wouldn’t understand.” No one does. Only my therapists. “I have to do it. Simple as that.”
    He mused at her answer. Talk, so I can understand. “I can’t figure out why you keep pushing yourself, Sophia.” Worried, he frowned when her face fell. By her reaction, he knew that he had plucked the right chord. “To prove what? To whom?”
    “I’m not trying to prove anything to anyone. I don’t care what others think about me.” Really, Alistair Connor!
    Bullshit, Sophia! It was then that he remembered all the things Tavish had explained to him when she had run away to Brazil; how all the many traumas Sophia had suffered could be driving her away from social contact to relieve them, or yet to relive them in the places where they happened.
    How can I make her see it? “Hmm… Bear with me. You entered law school when you were fourteen through a court order your grandparents secured for you. Why, Sophia? You left your friends behind and never really made new ones with the new, older students at law school. Because you needed to prove to yourself that you, an orphan, could do it better than anyone else?”
    He almost stopped and apologized when she flinched but he needed to unravel that side of her.
    “I passed a test just like anyone else did, only with the highest grades. The university gave me a full scholarship. It was based on merit, not on my financial needs. They wanted me.”
    They wanted you? Oh, my dear Sophia! Everybody does. He raised a hand, stopping her. “So, a full scholarship. You finished law school when you were nineteen, already married to an older, successful man. Followed it with a Master’s degree. At Cambridge no less. You were already working as a lawyer.”
    She flicked her hand, diminishing her accomplishments.
    But he forged on, “Then you decided to help Congressmen create a new law. In Brasília.”
    She shook her head, “I worked online mostly. Just once a week I went to Brasília with Gabriel. Whenever he went, I went with him. It was a good arrangement. Besides, I needed to check on the cases at the High Courts for the office I was working at.”
    “And the cherry on this huge cake? A pregnancy and a