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“Yes.”
“You’re not going to pretend that you didn’t know I was falling hard for you a year ago.” She would be so disappointed if he tried to prevaricate on that point.
“No.”
Good. “So, there wouldn’t be any point in lying about it.”
“No, I don’t suppose there is.” He turned on a familiar street and she realized they weren’t headed to any of his usual haunts.
“So, what do you say?”
“To one night of sex?”
“Yes.” Yikes, what else were they talking about?
“I say no.”
“Good, so…” Her voice trailed off as his denial registered. “What? After all that…are you kidding me?”
He wanted her. She knew he did. He hadn’t denied it, either. What was wrong with him?
“I assure you, I would not joke about this.”
“Well, why the heck not?”
“One night would be in direct conflict with my own plans. I have my own deal for you to consider.”
“What is it?” she asked with very little grace and even less patience.
“Marriage.”
She was still choking on her own breath in shock when they turned into the parking garage for his apartment building.
CHAPTER FIVE
ROMI WAS STILL trying to come to terms with the bombshell Max had dropped in the car as he gave her a tour of his penthouse apartment.
She’d say he realized she needed time to collect herself, but that would be attributing a level of consideration she would never have accused him of in the past.
Not that he’d ever been inconsiderate with her, but he could change his name to Ruthless and it would so fit.
With a master suite that included a home office and a spa-sized bathroom, two guest bedrooms and a truly enormous living area that boasted a full-size living room, billiard area and dining room that merged into the kitchen, his home took up the entire top floor of his building.
Decorated in warm browns, coppers and brass accents, it was a very masculine space, but not at all utilitarian-feeling.
While the décor registered, his words sort of skated over her head. Her own thoughts were too scattered to settle in understanding, her hands cold and clammy where they were fisted at her sides.
Had he said marriage in the car?
Food was laid on the shiny mahogany table: small plates topped with Caesar salad, silver dome-covered entrée plates off to the side and a basket of Parmesan-crusted flatbread placed strategically between the two place settings. The tangy scent of Caesar dressing and garlic tickled her nose, even from the middle of the living room.
The setting was romantic, the Tiffany box on the table a glaring testament to the fact Max had not been joking in the car.
“Lunch smells good.” She moved toward the table and then spun to face him, unable to hold it in any longer. “You want to marry me?”
“Now you react. I thought you might not have heard me.” The humor in his tone was matched by the glint in his gorgeous gray eyes.
“I thought I had to have misheard you. Maybe you said carriage.” It was as likely as what he actually had said. “Or suffrage, or masonage.”
“Is that even a word?”
“Maybe? I don’t know. The Masons are a real thing right, so Masonage.” It should be a word.
In a move that would have appalled Helene Archer, who had been a free spirit in many ways, but firmly traditional when it came to proper manners, Romi rubbed her palms against the cotton knit of her leggings, getting rid of unwanted moisture.
His lips quirked at the corner. “I think perhaps you are in shock. Sit down. I will pour you a glass of wine.”
“Shouldn’t it be champagne?” she asked snarkily, but let him lead her to the table, where she settled into a chair with nothing like grace.
She just sort of plopped. Gobsmacked. That was a word, right? Kim from England, who had organized the clean air march back in April, said it sometimes.
Romi liked her. She was smart.
Oh, crap. Her mind was rabbiting all over the place to avoid that Tiffany box on the table.
“You don’t want to marry me,” she told him, sure she was right. “You don’t want to get married at all.”
“You are mistaken.”
Finally, something other than total annihilating confusion pushed at Romi’s brain. Anger suffused her. “A year ago, you were pretty clear that you weren’t looking for a lifetime.”
“No one can promise that.” Oh, he sounded so superior.
“You are wrong, Max. I know that’s hard for you to comprehend, but in this? You are totally off-base.” She crossed her arms and glared up at all six feet five inches of him. “Millions of people make just those kinds of promises all the time.”
He wasn’t impressed. The flat line of his lips and equally flat look in his pewter eyes told her that. “And break them as often as not.”
“They still make them.” And if Max made a promise?
He would keep it. Ruthless he might be, but he kept his word. It was why he didn’t give it very often.
“That meeting I attended with Madison and her father was very illuminating,” Max said, apropos of nothing.
Romi continued to glare at him, letting her annoyance show. “Are you determined to keep me off balance?”
“It is a good negotiation tactic.”
“Am I a competitor you are hoping to absorb or defeat?” she asked, sounding downright cranky.
Which she was on the verge of being. So, okay. Yeah. Really irritated. He was talking about marriage like it was a business deal and that was just a really raw wound right now, after everything Maddie had been through lately.
“No, you are the woman I intend to marry.”
“You aren’t making any sense. You do know that, right?” Seriously. He had to know it.
“I am speaking English.”
“Mostly. You did curse in Russian.”
He shrugged and she didn’t belabor the point. She was getting side-tracked again and even she knew she needed to rein in her wayward thoughts.
“You don’t love me.” That was something she was very sure of.
He almost looked regretful. “Love is not in my emotional repertoire.”
“Tell your mom that.”
“Familial love is not the same as romantic love as you are well aware.”
This man! He would test the patience of Santa Claus and Romi was no children’s benevolent holiday trope. “They come from the same place.”
“So you say.”
She rolled her eyes. “Pretty much everyone agrees that love—all kinds of love—comes from the heart.”
“My heart beats blood, not bloody-minded emotion.” Spoken with his typical certainty, the claim focused on the concrete rather than the concept.
“You’re being obtuse on purpose.”
“No.” Oh, he just oozed sincerity and certainty. “We simply do not agree on this point.”
“When I marry it will be to a man who loves me as much as my father loved my mother.” Of that she was very sure.
She settled her once cold, now shaking, hands in her lap, unwilling to admit how much she’d hoped that might be him at one time.
Max looked supremely unconvinced. “I have no desire to be a carbon copy of your father.”
“He’s not weak.” That’s not what Max had said, but she knew what he meant.
“He is, but he is also intelligent, loyal and willing to dig for the inner strength he has not utilized in too long.”
“Wow, I don’t know what to say to that.” She was all set to just be mad at this man and th
en he showed so much humanity, she couldn’t ignore it.
“Say you will hear me out, with an open mind.”
She sighed, wishing this conversation could actually go somewhere meaningful. “Some things are not negotiable, Max.”
Leaning toward her, he cupped her cheeks with gentle firmness. “And sometimes we are surprised by the compromises we are willing to make.”
She wanted to say his touch made her weak, but what it really did was make her feel things that made her doubt her own convictions. Was that just another definition of weakness? Or something more?
“This marriage idea is a compromise for you.” He desired her enough to offer it and that blew her mind really, but that kind of physical passion without love was just lust.
And lust made a lousy basis for a marriage. The divorce rate and tabloid headlines made that reality clear pretty much every day.
“My dad did not offer you part of Grayson Enterprises to marry me.” She knew that without a doubt.
“No, but his company is involved.”
She moved her head away from that too-inspiring touch and he let her go.
“How?” she asked.
“Did Madison tell you her father threatened your father’s company in order to try to force her into Jeremy’s plans for her marriage?”
“Maddie married Viktor to save my dad’s company?” Romi asked, feeling like all the air was slowly being sucked from the room.
“Oh, no. Your sister-by-choice is a formidable opponent.” Max’s admiration was clear.
Regardless of the very unfamiliar sting of jealousy, particularly directed at her SBC, Romi said, “Maddie is amazing.”
“She gave your father a very limited opportunity to take the threat off the table.”
“But he didn’t.” Romi knew Jeremy Archer well enough to guess that.
“No.”
“What did Maddie do?” If she hadn’t given in to her dad’s bullying, she’d done something big to make him back off.
“Madison told Archer that if your father’s company was under threat on her twenty-fifth birthday, all of the shares to AIH in her trust fund would be transferred to your father personally.”
“What? No. She can’t do that!”
“I assure you it has been done. She signed the paperwork that afternoon.”
