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“We don’t really require acceptance, of course.” Ranieri said that as if she’d mounted a coherent argument instead of staring at him as if he’d lost the plot. “There needs to be a rationale that people can whisper amongst themselves. They don’t have to believe it so much as accept that it could exist, and then do as they normally do and gossip shamelessly about it.”
He waited for her to offer the usual accolades and acceptance that his statements usually provoked in those around him.Thank you, Ranieri, you are quite right,she ought to say.
But this was Annika Schuyler. The only woman he had ever met who looked at him as ifhedid not make sense.
She had looked at him the same way when she was only a girl. It had only gotten worse over time.
Today she had the unmitigated gall to sit there, her hair all askew, and regard him as if he was a raving madman while she was a bastion of calm rationality.
When he could see that she had kicked off her shoes and was currently sitting in one of the most august and revered law firms in the world—priced accordingly in fifteen-minute increments—in her bare feet.
Yet her expression suggested thatheshould be embarrassed.
She wrinkled up her nose in distaste.Distaste.“I’m not sure that I’m interested in claiming that I’m suddenly swept away by passion for you, of all people. So suddenly and uncharacteristically swept away, in fact, that I’m suddenly flinging myself headlong into a very public marriage with the kind of man I would never, ever consider. No one who’s ever met me will believe for one moment that I could possibly end up with such a man. Not one. They are far more likely to believe that I have been blackmailed into it for nefarious purposes.”
It took him long moments to accept that she had actually managed to prick his temper. He normally kept it so far under wraps that he barely thought about it any longer. And yet here, beneath the baleful gaze of a messy, impertinent girl who should have been prostrate on the floor in the face of her good fortune, he could feel it surge.
He had to stand there and fight it down, like the boy he had not been in a lifetime.
And accept that while he did so, there was a part of him that thought that if she was so heedless of the dragon she poked at, perhaps she should meet him in all his glory—
But no. He chose to be civil. He alone would choose if that should end. He would not be goaded into it by a woman who, he needed to recollect, had a vested interest in making him walk away from this and leave her to it. She wanted her silly museum. It was possible she wanted the whole company, too. He would not consider her a candidate for even a low-level corporate position, but the company did bear her name. Maybe this was all another part and parcel of her sentimentality.
In any case, whatever her motivations, he did not intend to succumb to her needling, like a child might.
Ranieri comprehended in that moment that he had almost—almost—committed the cardinal sin of any negotiation. He had almost underestimated his opponent.
Maybe Annika Schuyler was, at heart, the disaster she appeared to be. But that didn’t mean that wasallshe was. He was grateful he’d caught himself before he’d allowed her to take advantage of the five years he’d spent attempting to be careful with her. For her father’s sake.
“I understand that I am not to everyone’s taste.” He managed to sound almost smooth. A triumph, given the growing storm in him. “Rich, devastatinglyattractive, and sought after by all and sundry can be off-putting to some, I am sure.I suppose that if left to your own devices you would be far more interested in a poor, weak man who was an assault upon the eyes?”
“I don’t know,” she said, tilting her head, her green eyes blazing. He didn’t know why he’d never noticed that her eyes weregreenbefore. Not hazel. Not muddy. Pure, brightgreen. “Is the poor ugly weakling arrogant? Full of himself? Suffering from delusions of grandeur?”
“My grandeur is a fact,” Ranieri replied with soft menace. “Not a delusion. As I think you arewell aware.”
“If you say so.” Annika sniffed. “Again,this is all a little too icky, thank you.I don’t really care if the whole world knows that I was forced to marry you to retain my birthright. It doesn’t makemelook bad.”
“I see.” He regarded her for a longmoment,andtook pleasure in the way her cheeks heated. Because he liked making her uncomfortable in turn, he assured himself. That was all. “Are you throwing in the towel, then?”
“Not at all. I’m just...not agreeing to your modifications.”
“But you already agreed.” He shook his head slightly, as if he despaired of her. “Is this what your word is worth, Annika? No wonderyour life is so...hapless. A person’s word is their bond.”
“Nice try.”
Annika stood up then, with no apparent grace. The dress she was wearing, a perfectly serviceable linen sheath, was a wrinkled mess. Her hair had slid farther down the back of her head, so she looked truly bedraggled. And she winced as she stood, reminding him that she, apparently, didn’t know how to walkin her shoes.Even when she wasn’t wearing them.
She was adisaster.
He wanted to raise Bennett Schuyler from the dead so he could wring his fool neck.
“You can’t actually make me do what you wantjust because you want it,” Annika was informing him.“I don’t work for you. This thundery, growly, alpha male thing probably worksreally wellfor youin your capacity as CEO of all the things. But you’re not the CEO ofme.”
Ranieri had the bizarre urge to put his hands—
But no. He rejected that urge with every part of him. There would be no hands. And if, later, he found himself questioning the fact that he had imagined sinking his own deep into the bedraggled mess of her silky brown hair... Well.
That was a horror he did not intend to delve into too deeply now. Or ever. Not all questions required answers.
