Chapter 14 #2
“And yours matters surprisingly little, considering you work in PR.” His arm comes around my shoulders, and I steady myself against him as I step out of the fountain.
“It does. And I’m great at cultivating it. Fan-fucking-tastic.”
“Right. Until you sabotage it.” He looks down at my feet, and the frown deepens. “Your heels?”
“I left them at the table. They were hurting.”
“Of course they were.” He bends, and then he sweeps me up in his arms, carrying me against his chest. I have to hold on to his shoulders for support, and I catch Leelyn’s eyes over his shoulder.
She blows me a kiss.
Rafe doesn’t walk back up toward the others. He walks across the gravel instead, toward a door in the east wing.
He’s holding me.
We’ve only held hands briefly before, and now I’m in his arms, and he’s carrying me like it’s nothing to him. Annoying. I want to be a burden to him in every way possible.
His face is set in hard lines. He’s displeased, and that, at least, is a victory.
“You’re wrong,” I tell him.
“So you like to say. But about what in particular, this time?”
“I’m not sabotaging anything.” I look back at the terrace with the investors, colleagues and designers and catch more than a few looking at us.
“Everyone is watching you carry your crazy new wife inside. I look like a woman newly in love, and you look like a protective husband. It doesn’t make us look bad. It makes us look real.”
He shoulders open the side door to the villa, and we walk through a guest bedroom.
“That’s good PR,” I add, because I can’t resist. “If we want to sell being real, we can’t look too polished. There’s nothing for people to grip on to if the public image is too smooth, you know? We need some edges and some scars.”
He sets me down inside a large bathroom and pushes the door shut behind us.
“Sylvie loves me,” I say. It’s a bold claim, and I feel a bit dizzy. “I’m unexpected, and people love that. Everyone but you.”
I shrug out of his dinner jacket. It’s got wet patches along the arms and the collar from my wet hair. He accepts it, folding it over the back of the tub.
There’s a deadly calm to him.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” I ask.
He looks at me, and then he does say something. In French. With my poor high school French, so underused to be barely existent, I can’t understand him.
I shake my head. “That’s not fair!”
“Very fair,” he says.
“What did you say?” I ask. “Are you annoyed? Angry? Furious?”
He takes a step closer. “If you think,” he says, “that you can annoy me into asking for a divorce so you get the company shares, you don’t know me at all. Swim in the fountain every single night if you want to. Steal the Porsche again. I can promise that you’ll get bored of it before me.”
“Want to bet?”
“Gladly.” He takes a step closer, and his eyes drop down to where my dress clings to me before returning to my gaze.
There’s a steady drip, drip, drip from the fabric down onto the marble floor.
“You can’t sit still, Wilde. You chase and provoke.
You’re running from something, but me? I know how to be patient. I’ll wait you out.”
My hands tighten at my sides. This whole thing was about throwing him off. Not me. “I can make your life difficult.”
“Try me,” he says.
I do the only thing I can think of. I reach for the hem of my wet dress and pull it off.
I’m wearing underwear, a beige bra and a thong, and they’re just as wet as the dress is.
“Be careful what you ask for, Montclair.” I lean against the vanity, feeling like someone else. Someone who’s confident and drunk and furious. “The sex toy I bought you? I left it on your bed.”
His eyes drop down again, and a flash of victory passes through me. He doesn’t like it, but he does want me.
The triumph feels better than any swim could.
“I don’t want your toy,” he says.
“Are you sure? Because you’re looking a little turned on there, husband.”
His eyes snap back to mine. “Don’t embarrass yourself. There’s nothing I find attractive about you.”
“Nothing? Your eyes tell a different story.” If I can get him to admit this, I will have won a point.
And I want a win so badly. So I reach up and tug at my bra strap, letting it fall down my shoulder, and ignore the faint flicker of hurt his words caused.
I can never let him see that. “This is soaked too.”
“Because you swam in a fountain,” he says. “In front of some of my most important guests.” He takes a step closer and rests a hand beside me on the counter. A shiver runs down my spine.
He’s so frustratingly, annoyingly handsome.
I shouldn’t be turned on. I know that. I’ll never admit it.
But that doesn’t make it any less true.
“I think annoying you is my new favorite thing,” I say instead of doing something I shouldn’t, like touching his collar again.
He doesn’t move away. He’s so close that for a wild second, I think he might kiss me. But he doesn’t. “Then you should pace yourself,” he says, quiet and sharp, “or you’ll soon run out of ways to catch my attention.”
“Want to bet?” I ask.
“Always,” he says.