And her smile was beautiful, as it always was, but there was steel in her gaze.
“I have my own pride,” she told him then, very matter-of-factly. “And I do not intend to let you go, or to suffer in silence in some cottage in the hills, no matter how beautiful it is. If we’re going to do this, Ranieri, then we do it together. All the way. Or not at all.”
“That sounds like an ultimatum.”
But he was smiling up at her, and she could have given him a thousand ultimatums then, for all he cared. He would have met each one.
“It’s only an ultimatum if you think it’s a choice,” she replied, grinning. “I’m speaking of facts. That’s the way it’s going to be with us. I’m going to make sure of it.”
“And I am going to hold you to it, Annika. Every day. For the rest of our lives.”
She leaned down to kiss him, sweet and hot, and when she pulled back, they were both grinning wide. Because this was how it was going to be.
This was the beginning of the beautiful life they would build—together, this time.
Ranieri knew it. He had already created fortunes out of thin air. He defied expectations as a matter of course. He had somehow won the love of this woman when he knew he could never deserve it, or her—though he intended to dedicate his life to the art of trying.
Forever would be a piece of cake in comparison.
He would make sure of it.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ONTHEFIRSTanniversary of their wedding, Ranieri presented his wife with a dahlia in a pot, this time a deep shade of purple.
She only smiled, then gave him his present.
A rainbow unicorn figurine, of course. This one the size of a football.
He placed it on his desk in his office and dared anyone who saw it to comment, but they never did. No one dared.
The Schuyler Corporation had come to the conclusion that his announcement that he was leaving was a bid for better compensation, and Ranieri had felt so guilty about that that he’d donated the difference to charity—and upped the rest of his charitable contributions by double-digit percentage points.
Because at this point, he couldn’t lose his fortune if he tried. So he figured he might as well try harder.
He and Annika carried on together, exactly as planned. Only with more laughter than he could have imagined. More love, more light.
That was their life together.More.
And on their second wedding anniversary, she presented him with a daughter.
They moved out of his Tribeca loft with the daughter who had been lovingly created in the rooftop bathhouse, back into the Schuyler Apartments on Fifth Avenue.
Where they had three floors, after all.
It was no wonder they did their best to fill them.
Ten years later, Ranieri stood in the sitting room outside their bedroom in the house in the Italian hills, where it was their custom to spend the summer far away from the demands of his job, and hers. Far away from city life and the distractions of too much technology.
He heard Annika coming, calling out as she went, corralling the children and issuing her usual commands.
When she arrived in the sitting room, she looked flushed and disheveled and more beautiful today than she had been all those years ago. She smiled when she saw him, the way she always did, and handed him the baby she held on her hip.
Their final baby, they had decided. After three girls, all of them stunners like their mother. And three boys, all of them impossible, Annika liked to say, just like him. This last had been their tiebreaker.
Accordingly, he was the most mischievous of the lot.
Ranieri loved him, as he loved all of them, with a love so deep it bordered on grief—and he had learned how to live with that.