Centurion's Honor (Imperial Desires, Book One) by Nadia Aidan Page A

into manhood, their exchanges were always tinged with bitterness and anger. Anan closed her eyes with a heavy sigh. How she wished their encounters did not always degenerate to such a low place.
    “I am sorry,” she said quietly.
    His sea green eyes were now as hard and dark as a jade stone.
    “I am not my father. How long will you punish me for his sins?”
    “I cannot help it. Every time I look at you, I see him.”
    “I am not my father,” he repeated, his voice quieter though no less emphatic.
    “And yet you look just like him,” Anan snapped, unable to stem the bitterness that filled her suddenly.
    She turned to leave. It was not fair to Quintus that she blamed him for the sins he’d committed and the sins he hadn’t but she could not help it. His father had been an unending source of emotional pain. Quintus was the living, breathing embodiment of that pain. She knew he was not the same as Maximinius. Truthfully, he was a better man than his father. Truthfully, when she gazed upon him, she wished she could see him for the man he was, but truthfully, she could not. She could not help what she felt, the bitterness, the resentment. She was only human.
    She sighed. “I only came because I thought you would help me,” Anan said finally. “But now I see that was a mistake.”
    She’d given him one last chance to extend to her the offer of aid, but he didn’t. Instead he remained rooted to his spot, his eyes narrowed, his expression cold.
    Anan would not beg for what was rightfully hers, she decided, as she drew up her skirts and swept out of Quintus’ chambers, her chin high.

Chapter Five
     
    After leaving Quintus’ home, the journey back to her villa was fraught with far more tension and was plagued by a heavier silence than its predecessor.
    She’d just entered the outskirts of her estate when the weight of their questions, their furtive stares became too heavy to bear. Without Quintus’ help, she stood to lose everything. She could weather many of the financial storms that came from running an estate, but this was different. At first there had been tiny fires, missing livestock, before they were poisoned altogether. From the spies still loyal to her within her stepson’s house, she knew Quintus’ own holdings had been subject to the same happenings. That was truly why the Roman soldiers were here. Not knowing of her own troubles, Quintus believed she was behind everything and had insisted on having Roman soldiers sent to guard her. Of course, she hadn’t welcomed the presence of Cassius and Titus and their men, especially given the real reason they were there, but now she was almost grateful. She seemed to face one calamity after another. And if this continued…
    She did not cry. She refused to and so she simply brought her horse to a halt and sat there atop her mount, blinking at the moisture that burned the backs of her eyes.
    Both men brought their horses to a halt on either side of her and then dismounted.
    Silence still hovered between them as she let Titus help her down, even as she refused to look at him, either of them.
    With her arms folded across her chest, she turned her back to both men.
    “For some reason, Quintus seeks some type of acceptance from you, some type of acknowledgement from you that he is different from his father. He wants your forgiveness and desires a closeness with you, but I fear he has gone about it the wrong way,” Cassius said finally, quietly.
    She stiffened. Of all the things she’d expected him to say, that had been the last. “Acceptance, forgiveness, are not so easily won when you have not earned them. Besides, it is his father I blame, not him. There is nothing for me to forgive of Quintus, but I doubt we shall ever be close. I simply do not have it in me to desire such a relationship with him, because every time I see him I reminded he is the son who should have been mine, and yet he is not.”
    “I understand such feelings, but Quintus is young still and