“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 steadydrip, drip, dripfrom the fabric down onto the marble floor. “You can’t sit still, Wilde. You chase andprovoke. 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 throwinghimoff. 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 seethat.“This is soaked too.”
“Because you swam in afountain,” 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 sayinstead 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.
