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“I’m not a team player. It’s worked out.”
“Businesswise, yes,” I say, and ignore the look he shoots my way. I’d spent a year making observations about him and never once did I think I’d get the chance to share them with him. Doing it now is heady.
“That may be so,” he says, “but could you do it, Cecilia? A fight at home would spread to your work, and that’s intolerable.”
“Not all couples fight that much.”
“Married ones do.”
“They do? We haven’t had a single one.”
His lips twist. “Not yet, anyway. But you and I are a different story.”
“We are?”
“We’re not a real couple. They,” he says, inclining his head to the couple in the distance, “are.”
“That’s your take on relationships, then. They’re bound to devolve into fighting?”
He looks away from me. The sharp line of his jaw above me looks like a pane of glass, distant and imposing. But he answers. “Yes. Small disagreements grow, turn to nagging, which turns to arguments. I don’t have time for that.”
“But the rewards are bigger, too,” I say. “When you know someone well enough to get past a disagreement. It strengthens you.”
He snorts. “Are you a psychologist, as well?”
I can’t let this go, even if I’m just poking the bear. He leads the way beneath a large archway. “What was the longest relationship you’ve ever had?”
“I’m not lying on a couch in your office,” he says.
“So you don’t want to answer my question.”
He turns me toward a set of stone stairs. I let my hand trail along the smooth wood railing as we ascend. The place still smells of new construction, the promise of memories yet to be made. It’s beautiful.
“I’ll answer your question if you answer it first,” he says.
“Three and a half years.”
He’s silent as we walk along an empty hallway. I tighten my grip on his forearm. “Victor?”
“A year,” he says. “Almost.”
“Gabriella?”
He looks down at me. The question is in his eyes, but he swallows it, and shakes his head. “No. This was college.”
I nod. I had been in charge of booking his weekly dates with his supermodel ex, and when they ended things right after he took over as CEO of Exciteur, I’d been the one to send her flowers, too.
“College was a long time ago.”
“You’re my wife,” he says. “Not my therapist.”
The gruff way it’s said makes me laugh, and then I can’t stop, the sound filling the empty hallway. “No relationships for you, then. Just marriages.”
Victor shakes his head. It’s not in anger, though. More like exasperation. “Yes, and only when they’re business arrangements.”
“Noted,” I tease. It’s his word.
“What I really don’t like,” he says, “is when a woman gets under your skin. When you can’t get them out of your head.”
