Isn't she lovely? How about settling down like your older brother? Do you see yourself spending the rest of your life with her?
Olivio had deflected each one with the ease of long practice and the courtesy of a man who understood that his family's affection, however misguided its expression, was genuine.
His own life, meanwhile, had operated with the discipline he'd spent twelve years building into it. The North American arm of the Cannizzaro empire—-his, built from a graduation gift and a particular talent for seeing what a piece of land wanted to become before anyone else did—-ran like something engineered rather than merely managed. Every quarter projecting forward.
Every variable accounted for.
Or at least it had been that way...until this morning.
Russell Marquez had been twenty-three years old and the kind of young man who moved through the world as though consequences were something that happened to other people. Olivio had spent eight months positioning himself to acquire the waterfront property in Vancouver that Russell had inherited from a grandfather who'd had better sense than his grandson. The deal had been three weeks from signing.
Then Russell had gone snowboarding without a helmet.
Olivio had spent the first hour of his morning restructuring an acquisition timeline that no longer existed and trying not to think about how a helmet cost less than the hospital bill that hadn't saved him anyway.
The property had reverted to Russell's grandparents, the Marquez family, rather infamous in certain circles for doing business exclusively with family men. Not businessmen. Not billionaires. Men with rings, with wives, with the kind of life that photographed well at charity galas and could be verified with a phone call to someone who'd attended the wedding.
Olivio had been composing his alternative strategy—-methodically, without particular feeling, the way he did most things—-when his assistant put Edgar Coolidge's call through.
He'd taken it.
He always took Edgar's calls. Whatever had happened this morning, whatever Edgar had done, that would not change. There were certain men whose absence from one's life left a particular kind of silence, and Edgar was one of them. Olivio had known that since he was eighteen years old and had first understood what it meant to have someone in your corner who asked nothing in return.
The chaos in the lobby had been handled with the efficiency of a thing well-rehearsed, which it was, because reporters had discovered long ago that Cannizzaro Tower had a particular elevator bank that Olivio favored, and security had discovered equally long ago that the solution was speed rather than confrontation.
By the time Olivio had his hand at the girl's back—-Chelsea, Edgar had told him, Chelsea Regis, now apparently Chelsea Cannizzaro—-they were already moving.
The elevator doors closed, and the lobby noise cut to nothing.
She hadn't said a word.
That was the first thing Olivio noticed—-not that she was standing beside him, not the faint scent of something light and clean that he couldn't identify, not even the quilted case she was holding against herself with both hands like something she was either protecting or being protected by.
She was looking at her hands.
He'd half-expected gratitude, the slightly breathless variety that tended to follow physical rescues, usually accompanied by wide eyes and a hand to the chest and some variation ofyou saved me.
Instead, what greeted him was a disconcerting combination of stillness and eyes that couldn't quite meet his. Disconcerting because he didn't know what to make of it...when his whole life, all the women he had known were like an open book to him.
But this girl, though...
This girl who was now his wife...
Was she acting? Or was this all real?
Olivio let his gaze move over her with the same methodical attention he applied to anything that required understanding. The single braid over one shoulder, dark hair, neatly done this morning and now coming undone in small ways she hadn't noticed—-a strand near her temple, another at the nape of her neck. His fingers registered the observation before his brain did and he redirected his attention immediately, the way he redirected everything that had no place in his current calculations.
The dress with its blue flowers, already catalogued, already absorbed.
The ivory of her complexion...it wasn't the warm ivory of someone naturally fair. It was paler than that even, like skin that had spent a long time indoors, or horizontal, or somewhere the sun couldn't reach. Like winter had gotten into her somehow and hadn't entirely finished leaving.
And on her left wrist, a smartwatch. Medical-grade, from the look of it. Not a fashion choice.
Chelsea struggled not to squirm at the way Olivio Cannizzaro was studying her with unusual intensity.
Honestly, she couldn't remember causing any man to stare at her like this, much less this long. It was making her overthink, her brain overrun with all sorts of pointless conjectures.Is he staring because I have something on my face? Is he staring because he can't get over how ordinary I look? Or is he staring because he's trying to find the right words to get rid of me without sounding like a jerk?
A part of her knew she was getting sillier by the moment, but that was mostly because a larger part of her was still reeling, with how her body was still tingling in the aftermath of having his hand briefly land against the small of her back as he led her away from the crowd.
