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“You can take that long waiting for an elevator in a building like this.” She shrugged. “And anyway, I don’t really think the state of my hair is the issue here.”
There were a great many issues, but she chose at that moment to concentrate on one of the major ones. That beinghisdeep and historic dislike of her.
When she’d been younger, she’d thought that she was imagining things.She’d met the man when she was sixteen. And sure, she’d watched him be his own brand of brashly charming to everyone he met, except her.But she had been so awkward. So overset by the things her friends found so easy.What to wear, how to act,how to behave as if they were at least ten years older than they were.Her mother would have helped her with these things, she was sure, but she had died when Annika was small.Annika sometimes worried she remembered only the idea of her, handed down by those with real memories. And she felt lucky if she got her dress on the right way.
The effortlessly collected Ranieri had always looked at her as if she was the human, teenage version of a tornado. As if he fully expected her to take downthe foundations of any building they sat in if she wasn’t carefully watched.
As she’d gotten older, his dislike had only grown.He had made it abundantly clear that she was an embarrassment to the Schuyler name. She knew his argument. That he and her father were engagedin building that name, yet there Annika was, whirling about in her usual fashion, spreading embarrassment and chaos wherever she went. She was always too messy, too inappropriately dressed, too scatterbrained,too clumsy, too awkward.
Annika had, previous to Ranieri, considered that her own brand of charm. Her father had always smiled fondly and told her that her mother had been a tornado too—but he’d always said that like it was a good thing.
She wasn’t actually used to people disliking her. Maybe everyone she encountered didn’tloveher,but they usually didn’t dislike her. She wasn’t the kind of woman who inspired strong feelings in others. She’d accepted that.
Only Ranieri made it clear that he not only didn’t like her—she wasan affront to his sensibilities in every way.Only this man, of all people.
The good newswas that it didn’t hurt her feelings anymore.
“I want Schuyler House and I assume you want to continue doing your CEO thing.”She aimeda politesmile his way, because it was that or sob in horror. He would consider it a weakness, so that was out. “Sowhatdo you think? Elope?”
He studied her as if she’d suggested something tawdry. And she couldn’t say she cared for the fluttery sensation that overtook herthe moment she thought about tawdry things involving Ranieri Furlan. She couldn’t say she liked it at all.
“Elope?” he asked, as if he was unfamiliar with the word.
Like most things,once Annika had the idea in her head, she could do nothing at all but roll with it. “It’s a perfect solution,” she told him gaily.
He was still looming there at the bottom of the table,which she figured was probably some kind of power game. If she was feeling charitable, she might say that Ranieri didn’ttryto play power games. Probably. He simply was that powerful.
But she didn’t have to attempt to compete on that level. She swiveled her chair around, and lounged back in it,gazing at him like she was some kind offat catherself.So replete with her own majesty that she didn’t need to stand and face him.
“I’m not surewhy my father thought that matchmaking was a good use of the little time he had left,” she continued. “But I think it’s perfectly easy to obey the letter of the law without inconveniencing ourselves too much.We can elope easilyenough. And that will instantly sort all the rest of it out. As far as living under one roof goes,that’s easily done.I know you have that loft downtown. There’s also the family brownstone.I’m sure both are spacious enough to allow usto live our own lives. After a year, we go our separate ways. Everyone wins.”
She gazed down the table, smiling winningly.
Ranieri appeared unmoved.
Ranieri always appeared unmoved. He was a one-man Stonehenge, only less approachable.
“And how do you think this plan of yours will look?” He asked the question as if he was interrogating her. In a court of law. In which she was a known murderer or something equally distasteful. “To the casual observer?”
She stared back at him, not comprehending either the tone or his actual words. “What does it matter?”
His lips thinned. “Naturally it doesn’t matter toyou. This does not surprise me. But I have a reputation to uphold,Annika. I cannot simply hurtle about through life, heedless of the way my actions reflecton the Schuyler Corporation.”
He paused, likely so she could marinate in the fact that really, he was calling her heedless. And hurtling.
But she didn’t react, because what was the point when it was always the same litany from him, so he carried on.“Having to jump through hoops like these to secure a position I have already earned is insulting.”That cold gold gaze of his was a slap. “It is distasteful in the extremeto imagine colleagues and rivals aliketittering over your father’s stipulations.Am I evertobetaken seriously again?”
Annika had always found him about as serious as a heartattack, butrefrained from saying so. “We don’t have to tellanyone that these are the terms of his will if you don’t want to. I don’t care what anyone thinks about me.”
“That is quite apparent.”
She was used to his putdowns, but this one made her ears singe just that little bit.Still, she kept herself from retorting. She knew from experience that any show of temper from her produced amazement on his part that she, as ever, was soemotional.
“But that creates another quandary,” Ranieri mused,his gaze glittering.He seemed to take pleasure in looking at her, all the way down the length of his nose as well as the table, as if going out of his way to point out to herhow much better he thought he was. If this was the sort of energy he brought to his business meetings, Annika wasn’t surprised that, as far she could tell,any C-suitehe glanced at flung itself at his feeten masse. “It is entirely believable that you might wish to marry me.”
“Only if you’ve never met me,” Annikaretorted, more stung by thatthan she reallywanted to investigate.
And anyway,he was ignoring her. “No one will have any trouble believing that you have spent your life pining away for me,” he said, and the truly outrageous part was that he wasn’t waiting for her response. He didn’t even seem to notice her outrage. He truly believed what he was saying.She would have leaped to her feet and argued the point, because how dare he, but he skewered her with another cold glare. “But I’m afraid,Annika, that it will be impossible for anyone to believe that Iwould ever marry you.”
