She had not yet learned that he always paid attention.
“There you are,” he said as he came up beside her. As if he might have lost track of her in the small crowd. Or ever.
Then he found himself smiling slightly as her friends all turned the same sort of steely, assessing looks upon him.
“Do you not have a family?” one of them asked. “Is that why none of them are here?”
“Or are you estranged from your family?” asked another.
His brand-new wife frowned at her friends, but her smile was apologetic when she aimed it at him. “They’re very nosy and wholly ungovernable,” she told him. “I told them to leave it alone, but you see how well that went.”
“We can’t be contained,” said the third friend with a shrug. “But it is interesting...” She lingered over that word as if it was the clue they’d all been looking for, and perhaps it was “...that your side of the aisle was all business associates, isn’t it?”
Ranieri acknowledged her with the barest lift of his brow. “I admire this support for your friend. But I must steal her away.”
And then, he steered Annika away with him, giving her no choice but to follow him—unless she wished to make a scene. He rather thought her appetite for scenes had diminished these past few days. Maybe it was because she viewed the wedding as a setback, having failed to make him call it off. Or possibly it was because he kept responding to each attempt on her part to make a scene with a kiss.
Either way, though he braced himself for her to struggle with him now, she didn’t.
He led her over to the center of the long table and seated her, then took the chair beside her. All around them, the guests filled in the empty seats, and then the caterers outdid themselves as they began to serve the simple, but exquisitely prepared meal that Ranieri had chosen.
Yet he could barely taste it.
Beside him, Annika only picked at the food on her plate. And Ranieri almost laughed, because to all appearances, it must have looked as if they were consumed with the sort of wedding nerves normally reserved for people in love. That or virgins, tremulously expecting the unknown on their wedding night.
“If you wish to ask me questions about my personal life, you should simply ask,” he said, sitting back in his seat and looping his arm on the back of her chair, because he could. Because she was his wife. And possibly also because she didn’t sit up straight to get away from him, so his fingers could graze the delicate strap of her dress, the tempting line of her shoulder blade.
“I don’t know what makes you think I have the faintest interest in your personal life,” she said, but she didn’t say such things the way she had at first. Her voice was warm. And the look she shot him was green and bright.
“It must be your friends, then, who are so interested. Such that they feel it reasonable to interrogate me at my own wedding.”
Annika shifted around in her seat to look at him then. And it should not have surprised him as much as it did, the way the rest of the reception seemed to fall away. As if it was only the two of them out here in the Manhattan night.
He would have sworn they were entirely alone.
“I’m the very last of my family. And there’s not a lot I wouldn’t do to bring them back, if I could.” Annika glanced away briefly, her eyes moving over the museum and then returning to him. Almost shyly, he thought, or perhaps that was a trick of the lantern light. “It’s not really a surprise that I’ve chosen to spend my life immersed in all this family history. It’s the closest I can get to the real thing.”
Ranieri felt very nearly...unsettled, and that was a new sensation. He had to fight the urge to rub his free hand over his chest.
“This seems unduly introspective,” he said, but softly. Very softly, and not, for once, because he wished to score any points. “But it is not surprising. Weddings can be very emotional.”
He would not have thought so, previously. They had always been networking opportunities to him. But in this moment of sudden, bracing honesty, here in this private little bubble between them despite the fact they were surrounded on all sides, he found it was easy to admit it.
Alarmingly easy, as though it took nothing from him. He had to consider that its own sort of win, he supposed.
“Everything happened so fast,” Annika told him, almost gravely. “It wasn’t until I walked down the aisle that it really hit me. My father isn’t here. I actually got married without him.”
Her green eyes were too bright, for a moment. She lowered her gaze. And he had to fight not to reach over and pull her to him. He didn’t know why it occurred to him to try. When had he last offered anyone comfort? But this was Annika.
He allowed his hand to move, rising until he could wrap his palm over the nape of her neck. It wasn’t enough, he felt certain. But it was something.
She looked at him again and took a steadying sort of breath, and he wasn’t sure if the warmth he felt in his hand was hers or his. Perhaps it was both of theirs.
“I think I’ve decided to be grateful that I didn’t have to anticipate the loss,” she said in the same grave tone. “I didn’t spend years having to imagine walking down a wedding aisle without him. It happened so fast that it’s already done.”
“I’m delighted that could be a part of this...expediency.”
That should have come out sardonic. Hadn’t he meant it to? But instead, he said it with the same weight and gravity she had used.