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She looked back at her computer and ignored me.
That made me snap her laptop closed. “That was rude.”
“Really?” she asked. “Because showing up here isn’t rude?”
“You’re my wife. I can show up wherever you are whenever I feel like it.” I pulled the laptop to my side of the table so she wouldn’t try to open it again. “I made it clear that you would work from home—our home.”
“I’m used to working here?—”
“I don’t care. My bottom line is none of your father’s business. He gets his cut, and that’s it.”
She was still as she stared at me, her eyes burning in their anger. “I want to spend time with him?—”
“Then go out to dinner with him. See a movie. I don’t care. I want you at home.”
“Don’t tell me what to do?—”
“I will tell you what the fuck to do when it comes to my business.”
“It’s half mine, asshole.”
I slid the laptop back at her and got to my feet. “We made a deal. A marriage for a business. I feel like I’m not getting my end of the deal here because you haven’t made even the smallest effort to participate.” My patience had run so thin that it barely held on. “So maybe we should just get an annulment and go our separate ways because I’m tired of this bullshit.” I marched off and headed to the door.
“Axel.”
I ignored her, stormed out to the car, and took off.
I sat on the couch in my room, drinking my scotch and watching the game, pissed off with no release. I had dinner alone and didn’t bother to wait for her. She was probably in her bedroom down the hall, and I wouldn’t see her until tomorrow, if I saw her at all.
A knock sounded on my door.
“What?” I barked, knowing I shouldn’t talk to Aldo like that if it was him.
But it was Scarlett, my loving wife.
I gave her a cold stare before I looked at the TV again. “What?” I repeated, angrier than before.
She was still in the clothes she’d worn earlier, like she’d stayed there after I stormed off. In her pumps, she joined me in the living room and sat in the armchair close by. It was the closest she’d come to me voluntarily. “I thought about what you said…and you’re right.”
“Yeah?” I asked, letting my attitude come through, the frustration unrestrained. I took a drink and looked at the TV.
“Axel.”
I ignored her.
“Please look at me.”
I set my glass down and looked directly at her, her eyes beautiful with the dark shadow across the lids, her lips a pretty pink from her gloss, her hair in soft curls that I wanted to fist.
“I’m sorry I’ve been so distant. I’ve just…been having a hard time with this.” Her eyes shifted away like it was too hard to look at me. “But you’re right. You asked for a marriage, and I haven’t given that to you.”
I couldn’t believe she’d said any of that. I half expected her to ask for a divorce and back out of the arrangement.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just hard.”
All my anger disappeared at seeing her being vulnerable with me for the first time. She was close, close enough that I could grab her hand if I wanted to. “I promised I wouldn’t hurt you. But I can’t fulfill that promise if you won’t let me.”
She looked down at her hands. “I know.” She continued to keep her eyes down. “If this were just an arranged marriage and we had no history, it would be different. I’d be married to a sexy man and it would be fun, but that’s not how it is.” Her eyes finally lifted to mine, guarded but still vulnerable. “I’ve never stopped caring about you, not even after what you did.”
My heart gave a twinge of pain because it was so fucking hard to sit there and listen to her tell me how much I’d crushed her, over and over, and be powerless to speak the truth. To tell her how I really felt.
“I—I just can’t go through that again.”
I left the couch and moved to my knee in front of her, our eyes still level. My hand grabbed hers, and I placed it over my heart, right against my hot skin, my other hand cradling her arm in my grasp. “You won’t.”
Her eyes softened, and that heavy guard started to dissolve.
I said the words like they were vows. “I promise you won’t.”
17
SCARLETT
The study downstairs was huge, a large mahogany desk on a rug, a grand fireplace that took up most of the wall. Two couches faced each other with a glass table in the middle, and the other side of the room was windows and curtains.
I preferred the mahogany desk to the little desk in my bedroom and used it instead. As far as I could tell, it seemed like Axel hardly used this room. I’d never even seen him on a laptop before. Wasn’t sure if he had one. He owned this large villa but only used the fraction of it in his bedroom.
