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But there was no possibility of being soothed tonight.
He found her in the bathhouse that contained the hot tub and sauna and small sitting area that he had never used. She was curled up on the sofa with a colorful throw blanket over her legs, a tray of charcuterie on the ottoman, and a thick hardcover book open on her lap.
Annika glanced up when he slammed open the door, but did not otherwise react to his presence. Then, as he watched, she very calmly picked up a bit of hard salami and cheese and popped them into her mouth, gazing back at him as if he was the unhinged one here.
What Ranieri did not understand was how it was possible that he, widely renowned to have ice water in his veins, actuallyfeltunhinged in her presence. But the figurine in his hand was an excellent reminder.
“Do you think you can hide up here?” he demanded, his voice a kind of rasp.
“If I was hiding,” she said in the sort of overtly patient voice that suggested that she, for one, felt he was grossly overreacting, “I would be hiding. Instead of sitting here, easily found, and making no attempt whatsoever to spirit myself away.”
Ranieri felt coiled tight. Too tight. And once again, he felt that disturbing heaviness in his sex. Once again, he found himself entirely too aware of her.
As a woman.
She was no longer wearing that teal dress. Her hair was down, spilling over her shoulders, and in this little bathhouse, festooned with strands of lights overhead, she seemed toglow.It hit him then, like a kick to the chest that she was unquestionably pretty.
How had he never before noticed howprettyshe was?
She was lounging on that couch, the throw half kicked off, so he could see that she wore a cozy-looking sweater in a copper shade and what he believed were called lounging pants in an understated neutral shade of oatmeal. Both in what looked very much like cashmere.
He should have approved, as it was a serious upgrade from that deplorable T-shirt he’d seen her in that first morning. But what caught his attention instead was that the sweater had ridden up, so that all he could seem to focus on before him was that swathe of skin. A ribbon of delicate ivory, just above her hips.
Ranieri had the nearly ungovernable impulse to set his mouth to that ribbon, then taste every bit of it.
Somehow, he held himself in check. He was not sure how.
When he moved forward, all he did was place the unicorn figurine in the center of her charcuterie platter.
Then he straightened, waiting.
Annika looked at the unicorn and then she lifted her gaze to his.
“My unicorn collection is very important to me,” she told him, even though he could see the unholy amusement in her dancing green gaze. “Obviously, anywhere I live, I need all of them around me like magical guardians. It’s the only way I can feel at home.”
He could have pointed out that he’d spent an inordinate amount of time in the Fifth Avenue apartment she had shared with her father and had never seen even one unicorn. Really, he did not understand why he refrained.
Because she knows full well that you know that she’s lying, he scolded himself.The lying is the point.
“Today the unwanted delivery of a dahlia and an army of unicorn figurines.” He didn’t sound like himself. He had the scent of her in his nose again and he was hard and ready, even though this was Annika Schuyler, for God’s sake. “What is next, I wonder?”
She had disrupted a meeting, which was sacrosanct to Ranieri and would have gotten anyone who worked for him fired. And yet he had ordered Gregory to keep the damned plant watered. She had absolutely destroyed the sanctuary that was his home, with a rainbow of hideous unicorn tat as far as the eye could see. And still, he did nothing.
Annika very clearly saw her advantage. She sat up, looking entirely too pleased with herself.
“The possibilities are endless,” she told him. “After all, as you pointed out to me before, I’m already known to be a disaster. Why not an emotional disaster? I know you care about very little as much as you care about your reputation. And it occurred to me that I don’t have a reputation.”
“Oh, you do. Be assured of that.”
She only laughed. “I don’t have a reputation I care about. That’s the difference. So really, Ranieri. The sky’s the limit.”
He scowled at her, and she laughed.
She laughed and she kept right on laughing. She laughed so much that the offensively bright unicorn before her seemed to laugh with her. The lights were too bright, and she was too pretty, and his sex pulsed as if he’d been some kind of monk—possibly for years—and then he was moving.
Without thought, when he never acted without thinking it through.
Never—but then he was reaching down and wrapping his hands around the tops of her arms.
