Oddly enough, that made her think she still had a chance to change his mind.
And she had been waiting all this time for just this. Just one chance.
“I went into your office before I came here,” she said, a strange sort of calm washing through her despite the hurry and rush and worry that had propelled her here. She studied him. “I see you still have our plant. The embodiment of our love.”
He threw his pen onto the pad before him and sat back in his chair, then took a moment to make a meal out of arranging his features into something suggesting an attempt at patience more than patience itself. “I cannot claim to have a green thumb, of course. That would be my assistant. Gregory can make anything grow, apparently.”
Even your silly plant, was the obvious next line, though he didn’t say it.
“I only have one question for you,” Annika said, instead of chasing down the things he hadn’t said.
And she wished that she’d known what this night would bring. She would have dressed the way he liked best. That sophistication, that hint of glamour. Because he’d taught her the language of fine clothing and she was fluent in it now. Instead, she’d spent the day in the museum and had dressed for that, followed by a dinner with an old college friend. She was wearing her usual uniform of jeans tucked into boots and a cozy sweater to keep the chill off. But if she was right—and she had to be right, or she didn’t know what she would do with herself, or how she would possibly survive this—none of that actually mattered.
She moved farther into the room, peeling off her coat and tossing it on the conference room table. Then she kept going until she could take the seat catty-corner to him, pulling it in close so she was right there. Right next to him.
Then it was her turn to put on a little show of resting her chin on her hands and gazing at him as if her whole life hung in the balance here.
Because it did.
“Whatever you’re about to do or say, don’t,” Ranieri said, his voice forbidding. Not so much withering as gruff. “No round of rainbow unicorns is going to change anything. There is nothing that requires changing, in any case. I have simply come to the conclusion that the inconvenience of looking for another company to run pales in comparison to the inconvenience of being married.”
“You don’t actually meanmarried, though,” Annika corrected him, and though it was a fight to keep her voice even, she managed it. “You mean married tome. Because you take your grandfather’s position on this one, don’t you? You should be allowed to do whatever you want, without question. Isn’t that right?”
His eyes blazed, and that stark mouth of his thinned.
“Yes,” he said, though his jaw looked tight enough to shatter. “Precisely.”
She could have pointed out how little he thought of his grandfather’s pride, but she didn’t. She could have asked him if he thought that his own father’s behavior, not to mention his marriage, perhaps followed on directly from the choices his grandfather had made. It seemed like a straight line to her. But she didn’t ask him that, either.
Because all of that was noise.
Last night had been a rare night without an event, so she’d gone up to the roof to sit in the hot tub for a while. Then she’d stood out in the cold until it made her shake before going into the hot water again.
She called it therapy.
When she’d come back down into the loft, Ranieri had been finishing a call. He’d tossed his cell phone aside as he came in the kitchen. One look at her, her hair piled on top of her head, wearing nothing but a robe, his golden eyes had gone molten.
And the next thing she’d known, Annika had been flat on her back in his bed and he had been pounding into her in another scalding, blistering rush to that beautiful finish.
But when she’d made as if to roll away, to gather her robe and make her way back to her room—lest she get any ideas that might turn into emotions, the horror—he had pulled her back into place beside him.
He had taken her again and again that night.
The last time, so late at night it had become early the next morning, it had been like that final morning in Italy.
Slow. Intense.
Shattering, inside and out.
When she’d woken up hours later to find herself still in his bed, he’d been gone.
But she understood now.
She reached over and gripped his hands in hers, holding tight because she expected him to pull away.
“Ranieri.” Annika said his name softly, like some kind of prayer. “When did you decide that you were doomed, no matter what you did?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN