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Laughing quietly, she left the room.
The minute she was gone, the temperature went from comfortable to a frozen tundra, and he half expected frost to leave Emmaline’s nostrils with every unsteady exhalation.
He folded his arms over his chest. “Are you proud of yourself, Em? Threatening an innocent student?”
“Luke—”
“Lucas.”
Miguel and Delilah called him Luc, which he was okay with, although there was no difference between the two phonetically. Still, he personally heard the distinction between thecand theke.
“Lucas,”Emmaline corrected. “Lucas, this is why it would have been helpful if you gave me more information about your marriage. Your relationship with Delilah Daniels is rather intimate. What else was I supposed to think?”
“It’s not about what you were supposed to think,” he spat. “It’s about what was true. You could have asked me. You can tell me how I’m not a good person and only have two things going for me, but you can’t tell me when you’ll accuse one of the best students in our program of sleeping with an instructor.”
“I know you probably think this was jealousy or maliciousness, but this didn’t come from a bad place.”
“Did you ask me if I married Delilah?”
“Would you have told me if you had? You said you weren’t interested in discussing your marriage.”
“I could have told you that there are multiple YouTube videos of Miguel’s proposal to Delilah. I could have said no, I didn’t marry Delilah Daniels, but you didn’t give anyone that opportunity. Instead, you chose to scold her. Is there something about her that bothers you? Is it that she’s still managed to find the ability to be a good person despite coming from a family whose net worth makes yours look like pennies?”
Outside of flared nostrils and a clenching, twitching jaw, she didn’t respond.
“I love what I do, Em. I love the difference I get to make in the world and in students’ lives. I’ll never do anything to jeopardize that, and I’ll be damned if I let you jeopardize my sister’s future over anassumption.”
Her face fell, and her eyes filled. “I’m sorry, Lucas. Malice wasn’t my intention. You just seem so different. It’s like I never knew you.”
Happy.
He seemed happy.
His students still cowered when he walked by, but ever since he met Raina, none of them, as far as he knew, had thrown up or passed out. A few had even come close to seeing him smile.
“Emmaline, a student could have been kicked out, and I could have lost my position. You could have damaged my reputation. I take my job seriously. Doesn’t it bother you that you didn’t think twice about possibly destroying someone’s livelihood?”
A tear fell onto her cheek, one after the other, and she stared up at him, not bothering to try to brush them away. It was what she did, brought out the tears when she thought they would work in her favor. When she thought they would force him to crumble the way he did in the past, not because they’d affected him but because he’d assumed he needed her.
“Cry,” he said.
She gasped and swiped at her eyes.
“Expect a formal complaint on my and Delilah’s behalf,” he continued. “If I’m feeling merry, I’ll toss in a defamation lawsuit. Keep fucking with me and my family, and watch what kind of damage the name Lucas Saraci can do. Learn to act like a professional, or you won’t be welcome in a professional environment. This isn’t high school. It’s the fucking John Hopkins University College of Medicine.”
Before he threatened more damage, he returned to the venue’s central area, the wide open courtyard lit in soft blues and reds. Seconds away from dragging off his tie and going home, he grabbed a glass of champagne from a passing server’s tray. Tonight was too important of a night to bail out, but what he wouldn’t do for his wife’s arms and legs wrapped around him right about then.
“Saraci!” John Nelson waved, and he imagined chopping off the man’s arm from John’s shoulder to his wrist. “Come over here. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
Lucas downed the glass of champagne, grabbed a second, and headed to the small circle of too-large suits stuffed with bombastic personalities. There was John, a neurosurgeon he’d met a few times named Dr. Weston Mills, and a third face he didn’t know, but the man’s aura screamedwealthy benefactor who expected them to bend over if he dangled enough dollar signs the university’s way.
“This is Lucas Saraci,” John said, gesturing to him. “Let me tell you, this guy is the brightest spot here at the university. Saraci, this is Rich Engleton of Engleton Enterprises.”
They shook hands.
While John spoke, he scanned the room, searching forhisbrightest spot. The most brilliant star in his universe.
“Heard that you married the daughter of a friend of mine, Saraci,” Rich said.
