Chapter 10
PAIGE
Rafe can drive the classic wooden speedboat, too. Of course he can.
He has one hand on the wheel and the other in his pocket, zipping over the glittering lake toward the other shore. The wind whips at my hair. I should have put it up, but this feeling is too good. It calms the nerves speeding inside me like racecars on a track.
I’m having dinner with Sylvie Li.
Mather & Wilde is my heart and my home, but it’s a far cry from this world. It’s not European glamour or red-carpet dresses. If the luxury industry is the solar system, my family’s company is one of the outer planets, circling around Maison Valmont’s sun.
Sylvie Li is inner circle.
I play with the new rings around my finger and think of all the people back home. Juliet in PR, and Tom, head of craftsmanship. I think of Marjorie, who knows the designs of our loafers like the back of her hand.
Hopefully they’ll realize what I’m trying to do. That it’s not a betrayal but an attempt to save us all. But seeing images of me waltzing around Europe next to world-famous designers? It’s not going to look all that selfless anymore.
I spin my ring another turn. Sometimes I hate my own spontaneity.
It’s a warm night, but Rafe’s driving fast, and there are goose bumps across my bare arms from the breeze.
I turn toward him. “We haven’t rehearsed a single thing!”
He glances at me. “Don’t improvise. Keep it simple.”
“Don’t improvise? We’ll have to improvise all the time,” I say. “Answering ‘no comment’ when they ask how we met isn’t very convincing.”
“I can hold them off,” he says. But his jaw is tense. He doesn’t like this any more than I do.
And maybe that’s why I say what I do.
“I’ve been thinking today,” I say.
He lifts an eyebrow, and it’s like I can hear the deeply infuriating thing he’s about to say. You think?
“Don’t say it,” I add.
“I’d never dream of it,” he says easily. Which means he was thinking it. “What have you been thinking about? You’re the PR expert.”
He says it without a trace of sarcasm, but I know it’s there. Hidden between the syllables. Everything with him is a dagger.
“We sell this as a Romeo and Juliet story.”
His gaze slides back to mine. “Preferably with a different ending.”
“Preferably,” I agree with a roll of my eyes. “But the premise works. I wasn’t meant to be attracted to you, and it was inconvenient for you to want me, but it happened.” I have to speak loudly to be heard, and there’s something ridiculous about half screaming attracted to you over a boat engine.
“Right. Just one problem. It’s not inconvenient,” he says. “It was extremely convenient. That’s why we got married.”
“Yes. I know that. You know that. The media is certainly suspecting it and running with it. But we’ll tell them it wasn’t. That we fought the attraction. We’ll say that it developed slowly… maybe over the last year.”
“We kept it private because we knew the press would be interested,” he says.
“Yes. The best lies are half-truths, and we’d be giving them a half-truth. Our marriage was necessary for the merger. We can’t pretend it wasn’t. But we can say that it was also for love.”
He taps his fingers against the steering wheel. “You Wildes are so good at being duplicitous.”
My hand curls into a fist, the ring on my finger digging into the meat of my palm. “None of us ever instigated a hostile takeover in secret.”
“Don’t worry,” he says. “You still manage to be plenty hostile.”
“If I’m hostile, it’s because I’m married to the one man I hate more than anyone else,” I snap. And then I take a deep breath. I shouldn’t let him see that he can get to me.
“More than anyone else?” Rafe asks. “There are some atrocious people in the world. Mass murderers. Sadists. Genocidal freaks. People with—”
“And yet, you top the list. Fascinating, isn’t it? What does that tell you?”
“That you don’t value human rights,” he says, “or you never read the news. Neither is particularly flattering.”
I cross my legs to keep the short skirt I’m wearing from riding up.
“Or that I suspect you’re the worst of them all.
You disappeared last night. I saw your car come back around four in the morning.
Who’s to say you didn’t go on a little killing spree?
” I shift forward on the chair and nod at the hand he has locked tightly on the steering wheel.
He has long fingers. Broad hands. Short nails.
“You have a lot of rage, don’t you, Montclair?
Locked beneath those fancy suits. Hidden behind all that polish… you’re a killer.”
His gaze slides to mine. There’s a bottomless flare of anger there, flashing darkly behind those eyes.
The triumphant smile on my lips freezes in place.
But then his expression returns to the faintly bored, handsome one I’ve come to know. “I don’t know if it’s flattering or pathetic,” he says, “that you spend so much time psychoanalyzing me.”
“Know your enemy,” I say again.
“You married yours, so I think you’re far past that.” He puts the boat in a different gear. His voice is colder now. “We’re almost at Sylvie’s. I’d ask you to refrain from acting like a brat, but I think that’d be pointless.”
“Don’t worry. I only act like that with you.”
“I feel so special.”
The pier can’t come fast enough. I want to get far, far away from his side. “I know what’s at stake here, and it’s both of our reputations. So I’ll bury my complete distaste for you deep, deep down. Can you do the same?”
He slows the boat as we approach the pier. Gardens open up beyond it, and a beautiful terracotta house. It’s smaller than Villa Egeria, charmingly nestled against the mountainside. A few boats already bob, tied up at the pier, their guests already inside.
Rafe ties up the boat with practiced ease. He stands on the pier and holds out a hand to me. Even when he’s furious, his manners remain in place.
“It’s always buried,” he says, and his hand closes around mine. “You haven’t seen any of it yet, Wilde.”