“You say that, but I don’t trust you.”
He tightened his jaw, looked at her. “Perhaps we must start trusting one another.”
She met his eyes, the gold in them fiery. “Trust has to be earned.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The first copyof the contract came through while Heather was in the middle of meeting with client to arrange her time away. She wasn’t able to look at it until she was in a car headed back to her apartment. By the time she was upstairs in her room she was fuming. She forwarded the contract to her lawyer along with a screed of notes that she trusted her to turn into a coherent revision.
Then she called Romeo. A video call so that he could see the anger in her eyes, because why miss out on that opportunity?
But as ever, she wasn’t prepared for the impact of him. Why was he still beautiful to her? After everything.
You’re jumping headlong into a marriage with this man. What do you think that’s going to look like?
That was the scary thing. It was difficult to say what a marriage to that man would look like. Very difficult indeed. And yet she didn’t see another option.
“I assume that you got the paperwork?”
“This is patriarchal nonsense,” she said.
“What exactly?”
“Well, particularly the control that you’re asking to have over my sex life.”
“If you’re unfaithful to me I will take you for everything that you have,” he said.
Rage flashed through her. “And you?”
“You’re welcome to submit a return argument.”
“So I have to live like a nun or I have you as my only option?”
He was wearing a black suit. His black tie was slightly loose, and his hair was disheveled. It made her wonder if he had been with someone else. Even now.
Thinking of him that way… It made her so angry. It also sent a shiver of desire through her body.
“The question I have for you,” he said, his gaze meeting her directly through the camera lens, “is if you think we can live in close quarters without touching each other.”
“I am willing to try. Also, expect my response soon.” She hung up the call, and paced around her apartment before stripping off all her clothes and getting in the shower, turning it on cold. The thing was, she had suggested marriage thinking about the baby, and really not about them. In her head she had thought that maybe they could live separate lives, but have some kind of protection. Not be in real relationships with anyone else, maybe, but…
Maybe she had thought they could live like they always had. Like stepsiblings raising a baby together while he independently conducted his affairs and she worked on figuring out who else she could possibly have an affair with.
He was trying to claim ownership of her. But did that mean that he wanted her? And why did that make her feel special? And not outraged?
She sent her lawyer four more emails of suggested addendums after she got out of the shower, and then waited for the response.
It went on like that for six weeks. While she wrapped everything up in New York, went to the doctor to judge the viability of the pregnancy—why go through all this if there was no baby?—threw up daily and arranged to have her mail forwarded.
They hadn’t spoken in that time. It was all lawyers, but he’d insisted they meet in person to go over the final draft.
He had asked that she meet him at his office in London, before they would go back to Italy together. She hadn’t been to the office in years. Not since her stepfather was in charge. Romeo had acquired the company to function beneath his own luxury travel conglomerate six years earlier, with the blessing of his father. In preparation for the day when he would have ultimate ownership. She could actually understand why he was angry that she had been given half of the control.
Romeo had used his connections, his education and his personal knowledge of the industry to begin his own company that didn’t work in direct competition with his father, but rather complemented it. He had started an airline, and later a multitude of cruise lines. From luxury yacht travel to large, affordable cruise ships. Meanwhile his father owned one of the largest hotel chains in the world. Now they were all under one umbrella, and Romeo was certainly more qualified to attend to any of that than she was.
She didn’t even want it. There was a reason that she had ended up ditching her degree in publicity. She had decided that she wasn’t going to pursue a place in the Accardi business empire.
She loved books. All kinds. When she’d been younger it had been escapism while she’d waited out long hours with her mother cleaning, and then when she’d been older it had made the situation with Romeo manageable, in a strange way. She read all kinds of books—horror, thrillers, romance, mysteries. It made her think of herself as a heroine and him as her antagonist; it made her feel brave.
