Page 54 of Ruthless Claim

I sit down next to her, trying not to think about how that look burns through me.

The dining room is decorated in dark wood and candlelight.

The extra good China is out.

That only comes out when Connor wants to communicate that an evening is significant.

A dozen people are arranged around the table, conversations already running.

Valentina is immediately part of three conversations simultaneously—the woman on her other side, Walsh across the table, and Connor’s associate two seats down.

I watch her do it and think, not for the first time tonight, that she moves through rooms like she was built for them.

She reaches for the wine and fills my glass before she fills her own, mid-sentence, not breaking eye contact with the woman on her right.

I catch Walsh watching it.

At some point during the first course her leg presses against mine under the table.

It’s definitely not accidental—the table is long enough that there’s room.

It’s just a steady pressure, warm through the fabric.

She is still talking to Walsh about something I can’t focus on because she is pressing her leg against mine.

I don’t show that it affects me.

I put my hand over hers on the table midway through the first course to really play up the affection, just as Connor demanded. What I wasn’t expecting was for her to turn her palm up and thread her fingers through mine.

Walsh leans back in his chair. Hannigan says something to the man beside him.

The question of whether this marriage is real stops being a question.

She works on Connor through the main course.

She asks him things he actually knows, listening like the answers interest her, redirecting conversation his direction at the precise right moment.

Connor, who presides over his own table like a man above it, starts leaning forward when she talks.

He asks her a follow-up question, which Connor Brennan does not do, and she answers him with her chin slightly up and something in her eyes that is attentive and not even a little impressed.

He leans in further.

I think about make sure she understands how this works and I scoff. She understood it before I said a word.

She turns to me at some point during the main course to ask me something— something about whether I want more bread—and her hand finds my jaw for a second, turning my face toward hers.

Her hand is gentle on my face and the way she touches me is the way you touch someone whose face you know.

She asks her question and turns away, and I sit there for a moment with the ghost of her hand on my jaw. She is very, very good at this.

I’m not entirely sure all of it is performance anymore.

Maureen Fitz is across the table and two seats down. She married into the family twelve years ago through one of Connor’s more distant cousins.

She has been working to make herself central to it ever since. I can’t stand her.

She seems to think that because she married into the Brennan family, that means she should be considered a trusted member.