For a moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer. That maybe he hadn’t even been listening.
‘I see...’
The change in him was barely discernible. His voice was perfectly calm and even, but she could sense an indecision in him that she had never seen before.
‘I keep a box at the Met Opera.’ He pulled out his phone. ‘I don’t actually know what’s on, but I’m sure you’ll enjoy it and it’s completely private. I’ll get my PA to notify the theatre.’
She stared at him numbly. Clearly he hadn’t been listening. Or why would he suggest a night at the opera? It was hardly the most laid-back way to spend an evening—nor would they even be able to talk. It was probably just somewhere he took whatever woman he happened to be seeing at the time.
Pushing aside the niggle of pain that thought caused, she glared at him coldly. ‘I wouldn’t want you to put yourself out. Besides, I don’t like opera.’
His eyes jerked up to hers, their expression so cold and hostile that instantly her muscles tautened for flight.
There was a long hiss of silence.
Rollo stared at her coldly. Anger was blanking his brain, so that for a moment he couldn’t speak—and besides, he needed the time to bank down his fury. Not just with Daisy for her rudeness, but with himself for trying to meet her halfway.
For being weak.
Keeping his eyes unfocused, he stared past her until finally he could trust his voice.
‘In that case, I’ll leave you to get on with learning your lines.’
It took her a moment to understand what he was saying. ‘What do you mean? Are you going somewhere?’
‘To the office.’
She felt his words scoop out a hollow at the bottom of her stomach.
‘The office? But I thought you wanted to—’
‘Then you made a mistake. As I did.’ A muscle flickered at his jawline. ‘But on the plus side, at least we really are getting to know each other.’
He turned and crossed the room in three long strides.
Daisy let out a short jerky breath. She wasn’t quite sure what had just happened. But the emptiness of the room was doing something strange to her body—making her pulse race too fast so that suddenly she needed to do something with her hands.
Picking up her glass, she rinsed it out and started drying it furiously.
His words were rolling round her head like marbles in a jar. What kind of person upped and went to work in the middle of an argument? And then abruptly the marbles stilled.
Going to the office? But why the hell was he going into the office? It was Sunday.
* * *
Slumped behind his desk, Rollo stared bleakly out of the window at the city he called home. To the left was the past: the building where he’d grown up—the building he’d been trying to buy from James Dunmore for all of his adult life. To the right lay his future: the penthouse where he was living with Daisy. And, whichever way he looked at it, he needed one in order to acquire the other.
He wasn’t regretting his decision to coerce Daisy into being his wife so much as reassessing it. Having overridden her objections, he had thought it would be just as easy to maintain her cooperation.
But, remembering her expression when he’d offered to take her to the opera, he felt a twist of anger low in his stomach. He should have just told her how it was going to be. Instead, driven by some inexplicable need to make their relationship more natural, more spontaneous, he’d let down his guard.
Let himself be manipulated, more like.
He gritted his teeth. A long time ago, he had sworn never to make himself vulnerable like that. Never to become his father—a man who had spent a lifetime trying and failing to please one woman.
Only he’d broken his own rules.
And there was nobody to blame but himself.