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“Humor is very subjective,” she demurred, spurred by a sudden sense of self-preservation she wasn’t sure she had ever felt before. It had something to do with his eyes, the color of coffee too bitter to drink. It was something about all the harshly elegant lines of his face, like old sculptures that had never been meant for the menial gaze of the peasants. It was that last notion that infuriated her enough to keep talking. “I doubt you would find it as funny as I do. What with all the cultural differences and whatnot.”
“Try me.”
It was not request.
And Geraldine found that she had to remind herself, sharply, that she was not here for this man’s entertainment. She was not here for him to command her in any way.
She was not here forhimat all. This was about Seanna. This was about the daughter her cousin had left behind.
Despite her body’s worrying reactions to Lionel Asensio in all his considerable state, she forced herself to get to her feet. Right then, toproveshe was unaffected.
But she found that it had not been a trick of the Italian pew where she’d been sitting. It was no optical illusion. Lionel Asensio really did tower over her.
Even when she was standing tall.
“It’s not every day that you see a bride carried off from a groom who does not seem to mind a bit,” she pointed out.
As she stood there in her ill-fitting dress in this Italian chapel filled with incense and sunlight and this glowering, appallingly handsome man.
Notquitequivering.
And really, Geraldine had just thrown that last bit out there to be provoking. But as she said it, she could see that it was true. For one thing, the man was standing here, talking to her about jokes and languages. He wasn’t racing out of the chapel himself. He wasn’t ordering the people around him, all his minions if she had to guess by their deferential expressions, to chase after his bride for him. Neither he nor they were calling in the authorities.
“Who are you?” he asked her, instead of addressing what she would have assumed was the more glaring issue of his missing bride.
Yet it did not occur to her to disobey him by not answering the question. “My name is Geraldine Gertrude Casey, not that I expect that to mean anything to you.”
He did not quite incline his head. Though there was what appeared to be an infinitesimal gesture in that direction. Almost. “It does not.”
And then he infuriated her all the more by subjecting her to what could only be called an overtly thorough head-to-toeexaminationthat was in no possible way appropriate, much less polite. That too-dark, too-intense gaze of his traveled from the top of her admittedly frazzled head all the way down to her sturdy travel shoes, then made its slow way up again, taking care to linger over her deliberately frumpy dress.
Itwasdeliberate, she reminded herself as the urge to flush in some kind of heretofore unknown embarrassment nearly took her over.If you cared in the slightest about how dresses look upon your frame, you would have bought one that fit it.
She then told herself that when she did flush, and all over, it was from fury.
Geraldine was well used to not exactly bewitching men with her charms. Though she had many gifts in this life, and was proud of all of them, that particular skill had never been one of them. It had been her poor cousin who had possessed that talent, and nothing in Seanna’s short and largely troubled life had convinced Geraldine that she ought to think she’d missed out. She didn’t.
But it had also been a long while, possibly since she’d been in those dreadful middle school years, since anyone had dared look at her the way this man did now.
As if he was sizing her up and finding her wanting—as a woman, clearly—in every possible way.
It almost made her laugh all over again.
She was certain that mad heat bubbling up within her waslaughter.
“You do not look married,” he said, and there was a note in that silk-and-steel voice of his that she could not say she liked.
The insinuation was all too obvious. He did not have to ask,Who would marry the likes of you?—and yet the question hung over the old stone floor as if it was smokier by far than the burning incense.
It got right up her nose.
Normally she would have found hilarious the very idea that some hulking billionaire found a librarian from Minnesota not to his taste.
I should hope not, she might have said with a peal of laughter.Or I would assume I’d lived the whole of my life entirely wrong.
But today Geraldine was overly tired. So tired she felt pale straight through. And she did not like being looked at and analyzed with so muchderision, as if she was a bit of spoiled produce in a bargain bin set out in front of the sort of down-market grocery store that she, personally, did not frequent.
“I cannot imagine what it is you thinkmarriedlooks like,” she shot back at him, a bit recklessly. Maybe more thana bit, given that she was on her own here in this chapel whilehehad brought a selection of minions with him. “Though I would imagine that anyone married toyouwould likely look desperate for escape. If your previous almost-bride is any indication.”
