CHAPTER ONE
ANNIKASCHUYLERSTAREDacross the disturbingly overpolished conference room table in disbelief.
“That’s impossible,” she said.
Not for the first time. Possibly not even for the tenth time, which would have embarrassed her if she wasn’t sobeside herself.
“Your father made his wishes excruciatingly clear,” said the head lawyer, Stanley Something-or-other, who distinguished himself from the crowd of them who cluttered up the whole of the opposite side of the table by managing to look sorrowful. As if this turn of events had taken him, personally, by surprise.
Judging by the avid, too-shrewd expressions on all the other faces staring back at her, Annika suspected that she was the only one who was actually shocked.
“His wishes might be clear,” she managed to say, “but I’m pretty sure they’re not actuallylegal.”
Annika tried to settle herself, but panic and something a lot like desperation clawed at her as she sat there at the long table. Everyone else in the nosebleed-high law firm conference room, some fifty floors up from the New York streets, looked cool and corporate. The way she’d planned to look herself, because she’d expected the reading of her father’s will today to be tough. It didn’t matter that Bennett Schuyler, IV, had been effectively lost years before his death at the start of the month. He had still been here and now he wasn’t.
She had expected this to be painful for emotional reasons. And it was, but she couldn’t stop obsessing about the fact that in a room full of calmly suited white-collar warriors, she was nothing but disheveled. She could see her own reflection in the shiny tabletop and there was no getting around it. She’d thought it would be lovely—read: soothing, and Annika needed some of that these days—to walk down into midtown Manhattan from the Upper East Side for this meeting. Alas, she had overestimated the comfort of hercool and corporateshoes.
That situation had spiraled quickly. And so, now, her hair was disastrous, she’d had to come hobbling into the meeting while everyone else had been aboutmasterful strides, and she was not entirely sure that her deodorant was up to the task of the overly hot September day outside, the shock of her father’s will, and, of course,him.
Ranieri Furlan, who currently stood with his back to the room, hands clasped behind him, looking out at the city splayed out at his feet in the last of the summer sunshine.
He, naturally, looked as if men’s fashion had been developed purely to celebrate his astonishing physique and that intensity of his that made grown men go doe-eyed when he walked in the room. To say nothing of what it did to weak-willed women.
If there was a more irritating man alive, Annika had yet to meet him. She had no desire to meet him.
She’d expected today to be her emancipation from this man. Not...
God, she couldn’t eventhinkit.
“Your father has not insisted that you behave in any particular way,” Stanley, or maybe it was Stuart, was telling her. “That would certainly be legally questionable. Let me be clear. You can walk out of here today wholly unencumbered by your father’s wishes in regard to one small fraction of his estate, as the rest will pass to you. All he has done is lay out a set of conditions regarding two specific parts of his estate and certain consequences that will accrue if particular benchmarks are not reached. If, within three months of the reading of this will, an independent review by this law firm finds that you are not married, Schuyler House will be donated to the city. If, in those three months, Mr. Furlan is not married, he will forfeit his position as CEO of the Schuyler Corporation. If you are not married to each other, there will be significant penalties. You will be barred from working at Schuyler House entirely. Mr. Furlan will be officially censured.”
Annika had really hoped that she’d gone a little hysterical and had imagined the breadth and depth of the hole her father had left her in—but she had not. Her father wanted her married or he would take away Schuyler House, the museum Annika’s grandparents had made from the home that had been built for her Gilded Age ancestors. It was quirky and beautiful and filled with art and antiquities, and Annika had loved it since she was a child. She had gotten an Art History degree at Wellesley for the express purpose of dedicating her life to her family’s tangible, accessible legacy, right there on the Upper East Side in the original Schuyler family home. It was the next best thing to actually having family, she’d often thought.
She was the last Schuyler. The museum helped her feel less alone, surrounded by so much of her family over the ages. Their things. Their treasures. Their portraits. The museum connected her to all of them.
That was the part that had made her lapse off into a little bit of private hysteria. Now, as she forced herself to really pay attention this time, she realized it was much worse.
There was afine ifshe was not engagedwithin twenty-four hours of the reading of the will. There was a fine if she was not engaged to Ranieri. There was a fineif she did not share a home with Ranieri, or whoever she was engaged to, within a week.She was not only to be married within the month, but significant financial penalties—to be taken out of the money her father had left her—applied if she did not remain married for at least a year.If she achieved any orall ofthese things,yet was to blame for any of them failing—whether she called off an engagement, initiated a divorce, or refused to marry—she would lose Schuyler House. She supposed it was meant to be some small comfort that if Ranieri—or, presumably, whatever other fool she could coerce into proposing to herin the next twenty-four hours, an unlikely endeavor given she wasn’t dating anyone and hadn’t in ages—faced his own set of financial penalties, to be taken out of his compensation package.
Though, of course, the penalties if the groom in questionwasn’tRanieri were less about taking things away and more about what he wouldn’t be getting. No bonuses, no stock options, no bribes at all.
Thanks a lot, Dad,Annika thought darkly.
“Do you understand?” askedStephen, or whatever he was called. And this time, she did not find the kindly look on his face at all encouraging.
“I understood the first time,”Annika assured him. She attempted a smile, but didn’t quite pull it off.“Until today I was under the impression my father loved me.”
She realized when she said it that the army of lawyers now all thought she was terribly sad. When what she was actually struggling to keep inside was her temper.
Really, Dad,she thought then.What were you thinking?
Annika wasn’t looking at him directly and yet still she was aware that this was the momentRanieridecided to move.He turned back around to face the long conference room, andAnnika was certainly not the only onewho cringed away from the ferocityhe wore as easilyas that dark suit, exquisitely tailored to simplyexultin the lean, fine lines of his powerful body.
RanieriFurlancame from ancient Italian stock, descended from generationsupon generations ofnorthern Italians with the same dark hair, golden eyes,andheight. He was out of context here, butthere,he would be unremarkable. Or so she liked to tell herself. She’d visited Milan once or twice and she’d assured herself for years that if they were strolling around the Duomo, she would lose him in a crowd. Ranieri would simply blend. He’d be mundane and run-of-the-mill over there.
Sadly, Annika knew that wasn’t true, no matter how many times she tried to convince herself otherwise. She’d wandered the whole of the north of Italy without ever clapping eyes on a man who seemed tosimmerlike Ranieri did. Somehow, he managed toseethejust under the surface while remainingeffortlessly sophisticated all the while.
She had no idea how he did it.