His for a Price. CAITLIN CREWS
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the honeymoon? I have a few ideas. And ten years of a very vivid imagination to bring to life, at last.”
There was no denying the flush that moved over her face then, or that look of something like panic that she blinked away in an instant. Not touching her then very nearly hurt—though wanting Mattie was second nature to him now. What was waiting a little bit longer after a decade?
Besides, he suspected that his feigned laziness drove her crazy, and he wanted any weapon he could find with this woman he still couldn’t read. Not the way he wanted to read her.
“I meant when we return in all our marital splendor to New York City,” she said, and it occurred to him to wonder if it was difficult for her to render her voice so loftily indifferent. If it was a skill she’d acquired once and could put on whenever she liked or if she had to work at it every time. “I have my own apartment there. A life, a job. Of course, I’m happy to live separately—”
“I’m not.”
She blinked. Then smiled. “I doubt very much you’d enjoy moving into my tiny little two-bedroom. It’s very girlie and I don’t think you’d look good in all that pink.”
She reached into one of the pockets he hadn’t realized she had in that dress of hers to pull out a cigarette and a lighter, then lit the cigarette, watching him blandly as she blew out a stream of smoke.
“Enjoy that cigarette, Mattie,” he told her mildly. “It will be your last.”
She let out another stream of smoke. “Will it?”
“I have very specific ideas about how my wife will behave,” he said, and smiled when that coolly unbothered front of hers slipped slightly. “That she will live in my house and that she will not work, if that’s what you call it, at that laughable excuse for a public relations firm in all those see-through clothes.”
“I see. This will be a medieval marriage, to go along with the Stone Age courtship rituals we’ve been enjoying thus far. What a thrill.”
He ignored her. “I have certain expectations regarding her behavior. Her style of dress, her comportment. The lack of cigarettes sticking from her mouth, making her smell and taste like an ashtray.” He shrugged. “The usual.”
She held the cigarette in one hand, not looking the least bit worried, though that faint tremor in the hand that held that cigarette told a different story, and stared at him. “I understand that this is all a big chess game to you, Nicodemus, with me playing the role of the most convenient pawn—”
“More the queen than a pawn. Unpredictable and hard to pin down, but once that’s sorted, the game is over.” He smiled when she frowned.
“I hate chess.”
“Then perhaps you should choose a better metaphor.”
“I’m a person,” she told him, and he thought that was temper that made each word like a blade. Her dark eyes blazed with heat. And fear. And yet her voice was cool, and he wanted her with that desperate edge that made him loathe himself. The wanting was fine. The desperation was not. He’d thought he’d outgrown that kind of thing when he’d shaken Arista off. “And this is not, despite all appearances to the contrary, the twelfth century—”
“Then why are you marrying me?” he asked, making no attempt to keep that lash from his voice. “You don’t have to do it, as you’ve pointed out. There’s no gun to your head.”
“A merger between our two companies will strengthen both, and bolster Chase’s position as CEO,” she replied after a moment, something shrewd and sad in her gaze. “It changes the conversation he’s been having with the board and the shareholders, anyway. And of course, you’d become the COO, and you’ve proved you’re very good at operating companies and making piles of money. But you don’t have to marry me to make that happen.”
“I don’t.” He shrugged. “I’m not the one crafting objections to this marriage and looking for explanations. You are.”
“But you won’t hold up your end of your business arrangement with Chase if I don’t agree to do this.” Her eyes darkened. “I want to be a hundred percent certain we’re both clear about who’s pressuring who in this.”
“I’m perfectly clear about it.” And practically cheerful, as he smiled at her obvious flash of temper. “But this is all more of these games you like to play, Mattie. We both know you’re going to marry me. You’ve known it since we met.”
She didn’t like that. He could see it on her face, stamped across those lovely cheeks of hers. But it didn’t change that simple truth. Nothing ever had.
“I haven’t done it yet,” she pointed out quietly. “I’m not sure I’d get carried away counting my chickens if I were you.”
He laughed then. “I’m going to enjoy teaching you the appropriate way to respond to your husband, Mattie. I really am.” He leaned forward, took that nasty cigarette from her and tossed it into the fire without looking away from her. “I’m marrying you because I want you. I always have. More than that, I want to merge my company with your father’s, and I want the link between us to be strong. I want to be part of the family, so there can never be any question about who deserves a seat at the table. That means marriage. Babies. A very long life together, because I don’t believe in separations or divorce. Or secrets.”
Especially the secrets, he thought, shoving those terrible old memories aside. The lies and the devastation they’d wrought.
Mattie held his gaze for a long moment, something slick and glazed in hers. The only sound was the storm outside, harsh against the windows, and the crackle of the fire. He fancied he could hear her breath below that, too fast and uneven, betraying her—but he doubted she’d let that show and assumed it was only in his head. More wishful thinking, and he should know better.
“What you mean is, I’m a pawn,” she said evenly. “You can say it, Nicodemus. It’s not as if I don’t know it already.”
“And you’re marrying me because...?” His lips curved when she only glared at him. “You enjoy playing the martyr? You’ve always wanted to barter yourself? You have a deep desire to prostrate yourself before the ambitions of others?”
“Family duty,” she said primly. Piously. “I don’t expect you to understand that.”
“Of course not,” he said, and he wasn’t laughing then. “Because everything I have I tore from the world with my own two hands. My father never believed I would amount to anything.” And he did his best to see that I wouldn’t, Nicodemus thought grimly, those same old lies like painful scars deep inside him. “My mother cleaned houses and worked in the factories. The only thing they gave me was life. The rest I worked for.”
And held on to, despite the best effort of grasping materialistic little parasites like Arista.
“No one ever said you weren’t an impressive man, Nicodemus,” Mattie said to him. “But what does it have to do with anything? You’ve been chasing me for so long, I think you don’t even know why you started.”
“No, Mattie,” he said gently. Too gently, maybe. He thought that might have been the trouble from the start. He’d treated her like she was made of glass, and she’d done nothing but cut him with her own sharp edges. It was time he remembered that.
It was time he took control of this.
Her cheeks were flushed and her mouth was so close, and he’d waited so long. He could see the panic in her eyes as she looked back at him, the rise and fall of her perfect breasts against that unfathomably soft dress she wore. He couldn’t stop himself from reaching over and taking her hot cheek in his hand, holding her there and tracing her lips with a single restless movement of his thumb.
He watched her redden, felt himself tighten at once in reaction, and it was like that lightning all over again. A bolt, brilliant and true, burning him alive where he sat.
It