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“Get away from me or I’ll scream.”
He laughed softly. “You’d be wasting your time, baby. After the little scene Sylvia walked in on a few minutes ago, she’d take the sound of you screaming as a vote of feminine satisfaction.”
Color flew into Devon’s cheeks. “What a bastard you are!”
“Let’s stick to the subject, if you don’t mind.”
“There is no subject. Not that involves me, at any rate.”
His smile was quick and chill. “No?”
“No.”
“Is that what you’re going to tell Mama?”
It was a shot that hit home. Devon fought to keep her expression from giving anything away.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Come on, Devon. Don’t play dumb. It doesn’t suit you. James decided you and I would make a perfect pair. He told that to your mother. And I’ve told you I see no way out of the situation. Now, what do you think Bettina’s going to do when you tell her that you said ‘no’?”
Devon swallowed, and Ryan smiled coldly.
“Cat got your tongue? When you tell her you turned your back on this once-in-a-lifetime offer, she’ll explode with a bang that’ll make Krakatoa sound like a firecracker. To put it succinctly, she’ll go bananas.”
Devon stared up at him, her eyes huge and dark.
“She’ll call you every kind of fool, and she’ll keep at it day and night.”
Bettina would do more than that, Devon knew. She would sob out stories of a life of struggle and sacrifice. She’d accuse Devon of turning her back on her the way her father had.
“And she’ll never let you forget that the house she and my brother lived in in San Francisco would have been deeded over to her, if you’d married me.”
“No,” Devon whispered, “you can’t—”
“She’ll never let you rest or forget what you’ve denied her. And, sooner or later, just to get her off your back, you’ll give up the fight and agree to become Mrs. Ryan Kincaid.”
Devon’s mouth trembled. “All right,” she whispered. “Suppose, just for the sake of argument, my mother did want me to... want me to...” She swallowed hard. “I suppose...I suppose I can think of reasons why she might...might encourage me to...to accept your grandfather’s offer. But...but why would your grandfather do this? I know what he thinks of my mother. Why would he want me—her daughter—to marry you?” She tried to smile. “Maybe he’s read Pygmalion one time too many.”
“It’s that school of yours. He thinks it taught you to be a good wife.”
“It taught me everything I’d need to know if they decided to turn the clock back a couple of hundred years,” she said bitterly.
“He finds that part of your charm.” Ryan’s mouth twisted. “He thinks the perfect wife is one who’s never noticed that the twentieth century’s almost over.”
“Well, tell that old reprobate he made a mistake. He wanted a woman who was brainless, opinionless, and compliant.” Devon’s head lifted in defiance. “I am none of those things.”
She was other things, though, Ryan thought as he looked down at her. She was sexy and beautiful, and whether it was one hell of an act or some unbelievable truth, there was an innocence to her that made him want—that made him want...
He frowned, dropped his hands to his sides, and stepped back.
“I’ve told him that,” he said bluntly.
“And?”
Ryan sighed as he made his way across the room. Frank might laugh and say thirty-two wasn’t middle-aged, but hell, right now he felt older than Methuselah.
“And,” Ryan said gloomily, sinking slowly into the chair behind his desk, “he said that was OK, that he liked your spirit.”
