Page 185 of A Vicious Love

Reeves stared at the open velvet case in front of him. “There are eleven necklaces.”

I leaned back against the edge of the table and lit a cigarette because if I didn’t, I would have to acknowledge the heat crawling beneath my skin. “Women like jewelry.”

“Women also like apologies.”

I exhaled smoke slowly. “That sounds like poverty thinking.”

“It is spoken language.”

“Jewelry is language.”

“Then you appear to be screaming.”

I looked around the room.

Fine.

There was a lot.

The first floor of my Harlan residence had turned into something between a luxury vault and a funeral for my dignity.

There were flowers in quantities that had taken over rooms. White peonies. Blush roses. Cream gardenias. Pale pink orchids. Buckets and buckets of them, arranged by men who kept glancing at me as if I might kill them if the stems faced the wrong direction. Which was unfair, I had only threatened one florist.

And only because he had said seasonal limitations with a tone that implied nature was my superior.

There were boxes from every jeweler in Harlan worth robbing. Diamonds. Pearls. Platinum. A ridiculous sapphire bracelet because Sienna once wore blue to some winter event and I had remembered against my will.

A collection of first edition art books because she liked old paintings and human effort. A key to a rehearsal studio I had bought two blocks from her current one because her existing security offended me.

There was also a small antique box containing hair pins made of diamonds and black enamel.

That one had been a mistake.

Because the second I imagined my fingers sliding them into her hair, pinning up those soft dark waves while she sat still for me, something violent and hot had gone through my body and I had ordered three more sets because apparently restraint had left the building.

“I’m not screaming,” I said.

Reeves looked at a second delivery being carried through the side entrance. Two men struggled under the weight of a refrigerated floral trunk.

He blinked once. “No. Of course not.”

I ignored him.

That was usually best for morale.

The problem with sucking up was that no one had taught me the rules.

I knew how to get a man to sign over a shipping corridor while smiling as if the idea had belonged to him. But this had no operational manual.

No acceptable amount of money that could undo three years of treating Sienna Bellemere like a public inconvenience when she had been standing there with her hand out, asking for one harmless piece of me.

Hand, please.

My jaw tightened.

I took another drag from the cigarette.

I had trained her out of it.