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“I’m sorry, did you want something more public?”
She shrugged. “No.”
Anger surged in him, anger and something else that he couldn’t quite identify. “You’re disappointed?”
“I’m not disappointed. That implies I had an expectation about this moment and, truly, for all I knew, you were going to courier me a ring at my office. But I did have expectations of this moment as far as my life goes.”
“And this doesn’t meet your standards?” he asked, his stomach tightening.
“Not really.”
“You might want to look at the rock before you declare the effort subpar, querida,” he said, conscious of the fact that his accent had thickened with his building anger.
He popped the top on the box and pushed it closer to her. She looked down and her eyes widened. Not a big surprise. Five carats would have that effect on someone like her.
“I hope that’s fitting of a woman of your status.”
Vanessa looked down at the ring, glittering beneath the lantern light. The large, square diamond set into a band of white gold with an intricate, antique-style weave was nestled in cream silk, looking as if it had been made just for her.
There was so much about the moment that seemed made just for her. An empty art museum, a gorgeous man and a marriage proposal. If it had been a real marriage proposal—real in the sense that there was love behind it and not just mercenary business dealings—he would have gotten down on one knee. They would have walked through the museum and talked about their future. They would have felt like the only two people in the world.
If they had never parted, if she had stopped him from leaving that night, maybe it would be real.
Her heart squeezed in her chest and she squelched the thought. It didn’t matter. This was reality. And in reality, he’d shoved the ring in her direction and barely looked at her. He hadn’t even asked the question, and it all just hung between them, awkward and unspoken. Painful. Because this was like some nightmare version of a fantasy she might have created for herself.
“It’s lovely.” She reached out and touched it, hesitant to pick it up, to put it on, because the ring made it all seem real. And final.
And because part of her wanted so badly to wear Lazaro’s ring, so very badly. And that was embarrassing, humiliating. She didn’t really want the Lazaro that had come back into her life with all the finesse of a jackhammer. She wanted the man she used to imagine he was. The man he never had been.
“Don’t you like it, querida?” he asked.
“I love it. It’s beautiful. Perfect.”
“You seem giddy,” he said, his expression flat.
“I love it,” she said, teeth gritted.
“Put it on.”
Anger surged through her, pummeling her tender heart. “That’s your job, isn’t it?”
She held her hand out, determined not to be the one to fasten her own diamond handcuffs. He took her hand in his, the heat of his skin on hers sending prickles of electricity through her body, making it nearly impossible for her to cling to the anger that was anchoring her to the balcony, reminding her that this was nothing more than a farce.
He took the ring out of the box and it caught the light. Such a beautiful sign of eternal bondage. She closed her eyes while he pushed it onto her fourth finger. It fit perfectly, and it was more disturbing than anything that it fit. That it somehow seemed right.
She pulled her hand back and brushed her palm down over her skirt, trying to ease the fiery, tingling sensation that was spreading from her fingertips to her wrist.
“How big is it?” Her own voice, the mercenary tone, cooled her off quickly. Reminded her that this was a transaction. Nothing more. Because she had to do something to stop her heart from pounding faster. To keep herself from thinking of all the what-ifs.
“Does it matter?” he asked, his voice as cold as the sick weight in her stomach.
“I’ve heard size matters.”
A muscle in his jaw jumped. “Big enough to satisfy you.”
She swallowed hard, the need to get the upper hand fueling her, choosing her words for her. “I’m not sure about that.”
“The purebred could do better?”
She looked at the ring again. It was beautiful. Perfect. “Possibly.” The lie stuck in her throat.
He jerked back, as though she’d struck him. He looked, just for a moment, like the boy he’d been the night she’d rejected him. Then any vulnerability was gone, replaced with an expression that was as hard as granite.
“I think,” he said, “it’s time we went and had a talk with your father.”
CHAPTER SIX
“I’VE already heard your news, Vanessa. I’ve been down at the club this morning.”
Vanessa fought the urge to hang her head and stare at the toes of her ruby-red shoes. Something happened to her when her father used that tone, that flat, disappointed tone that let her know she’d somehow made a mess of things. She felt like a child again. Small and desperately inadequate, trying to live up to an ideal that had been placed just out of her reach, an ideal she was falling so short of it was nearly laughable.
Michael Pickett wasn’t a large man; he wasn’t young anymore. His voice was thin now, wispy. He couldn’t yell. He didn’t need to. What he could do with a small hint of disapproval in his voice couldn’t be underestimated.
Vanessa swallowed. “Well, it was … unexpected.” She looked down at the rug, a floral-print rug, the same one that had been in place in her father’s office since she could remember. Everything was the same at the Pickett estate. Nothing ever changed. The house was like a relic, surrounded by the modern world but not really a part of it. Like the owner of the estate himself.
“And what of your obligations to Craig Freeman? Do they mean nothing?”
“I want to marry Lazaro,” she said. “I don’t want to marry Craig.” That, in the very strictest sense, was the truth. In spite of the fact that things had been stilted between the two of them since the previous night’s engagement, he was still the better option.
“Since when is life about what you want?” he said, his voice soft, and deadlier for it.
“I …”
“Don’t be stupid, Vanessa. This man is beneath you.”
She could sense the moment Lazaro’s control slipped its leash. The moment he was no longer playing his part.
“You had better damn well watch what you say to my fiancée,” Lazaro said, his voice hard, dangerous, each word rougher, less civilized, as though a veneer was slowly being stripped away, revealing the true man. Dangerous. Feral. As far from the polished, old-money setting as it was possible to be.
Lazaro had been silent for most of the meeting, letting Vanessa do the talking. But the silence was broken now. “Vanessa was handed a crippled corporation, and with the remains that you gave to her she’s fashioning something that can survive the new market, the modern sensibility, something no one else on your staff, including you, had the creativity to do.”
She waited for him to say exactly why they were getting married. That he was the one saving the company from a slow corporate death. But he didn’t.
Her father curled his hands into fists. “I’m not taking orders from a man whose mother used to scrub my floors.”
She felt Lazaro stiffen next to her. “But maybe you will take orders from the man who is now the principal shareholder of Pickett Industries. Interesting thing about going public, Mr. Pickett … the public can buy pieces of your company. And I’ve bought quite a few pieces for myself.”
“Having money does not make you an equal with my family,” her father said. “Money doesn’t buy class.”
“But money does buy stock.”
“Vanessa.” Her father leveled his cold gray eyes on her. “Did you know about this?”
“Yes.” Vanessa cleared her throat and tilted her chin up, fighting the urge to look back down at the carpet. She wasn’t going to look down anymore. “He’s my fiancé. So it will still be all in the family, won’t it?”
She felt a thrill of excitement race through her, a surge of adrenaline that chased away any intimidation or fear.
“You do not have my blessing on this.” Michael Pickett stood from behind the desk, and suddenly Vanessa saw her father clearly for the first time. How he controlled her. How hard he tried to exert his will over her.
“I didn’t come here to get your blessing.” She bit out the words. “Just to tell you what was going to happen. What do you want?” she asked him. “Do you want the company to succeed? Because, trust me, right now we need Lazaro for that. Accept him, welcome him, and we stand a chance at some success.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“No. I’m telling you how it is. This is reality.” Her heart was pounding hard, blood roaring through her ears. She felt dizzy.
“We’ll be in touch,” Lazaro said, wrapping his arm around her waist and leading her from the room. He closed the heavy oak door behind them, the sound echoing in the expansive corridor of the old house.
“Thank you,” Vanessa said quietly when they were back on the paved circular drive in front of her childhood home.
“For?”
“For saying that stuff. For making it sound like some of the good ideas were mine.” She expelled the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. “I don’t think any of them were.”
Lazaro opened the passenger door of his dark blue sports car and she sank inside, letting the soft leather seats absorb some of her tension.
He rounded the car and slid into the driver’s seat, putting the key into the ignition and turning the engine on.
When they were on the maple-lined highway, headed back into Boston, Lazaro flicked her a glance. “Why exactly do you work so hard to please him?”
“I …” She looked out the window and focused on the trees, watching them blur into a steady stream of color. “He’s all I have. My mother died when I was four. And my brother died when I was thirteen. Thomas was going to take over the company. He was brilliant. He would have done an amazing job. But without him … there was only me.” She turned to face him. “It’s up to me, Lazaro. I can’t be the one that fails.”
“Do you love what you do?”
“Do you?”
He laughed. “I love the money that it brings in. And yes, I like solving problems. Fixing things. Making them run better.”
“I don’t love what I do. I have to take antacids when I get up in the morning,” she said. She’d never said that out loud to anyone. She’d never even fully admitted to herself that she was unhappy, that she didn’t like what she was doing. She was the CEO of a much-lauded company and saying she would rather do almost anything else seemed ridiculous. But it was true.
It was also too late. Her course had been set since she was thirteen. She knew there were plenty of people who would have walked away. People who would have pursued the life they wanted. But there was such a weight on her, a burden of responsibility. She couldn’t turn her back on it.
If not for her father, then for Thomas’s memory.
“And before you ask why I do it,” she said, “I’ll just tell you. Because how could I be the one to put an end to a legacy? How could I let it be my fault? Because Pickett Industries has to keep going, for my eventual children as much as for my father and for the memory of my brother. I do it because it’s the right thing to do.”
She took her phone out of her pocket and fiddled with the touch screen, moving icons around with her thumb. “My father will accept the marriage because he has no other choice. But the bluster was kind of a necessity for him. It’s how he is.”
“I know,” Lazaro said, his voice hard, his grip tight on the wheel.
Vanessa looked down at the ring on her finger and turned the phone camera on, snapping a picture of the diamond glittering in the late-afternoon sunlight.
“What would you do if you could do something else?” Lazaro asked.
She smiled. “I would take pictures.”
“Of what?”
She leaned her head back against the seat and let the soft leather ease away some of her tension. “Everything.”
“You might find the time to do that someday. Maybe not of everything, but … of some things.”
She forced the corners of her mouth up into a smile. “Maybe. Maybe when all of this gets sorted out, and things settle down in the company I’ll have time.”
“You will.”
“No one else knows that,” she said, realizing it as she spoke the words.
“That can only be a good thing. Shouldn’t a husband know things about his wife no one else knows?”
Heat made her skin prickle. “I suppose so.” That made her think of sexy things. Erotic things. Things that made her lips tingle with the memory of his kiss. “But it isn’t like we’re going to have a real marriage.”
“What will be unreal about it?” he asked.
Only the very core of the union. But of course, he didn’t seem overly concerned with that detail. “Well, we don’t love each other.”
“No.” Something about the way he said it, so matter of fact, so logical, made her chest ache. Maybe because there had been a time when she’d loved him, so much, with everything she had. It seemed like yesterday and another lifetime all at once.
She put her sunglasses on, all the better to avoid his eyes. “So that’s the part that makes it seem … not real.”
“You didn’t love that purebred you were supposed to marry.”
His choice of words made her snort. “No. I barely knew him. But I didn’t really … I tried not to think about it.”
“This is no different.”
It was different. It was different because, with Lazaro, she wanted things. Things no other man had ever made her want. At sixteen, loving him had made her feel that the whole world was open to her. As if she could do anything. Be anyone. Not just Vanessa Pickett of the Picketts of Boston.
He made her feel like that now. It was dangerous and stupid.
“I suppose it’s not.”
She looked at his profile. Strong. Masculine. Angry. She’d said something wrong again and she had no idea what.
“Is there any way you can take time away from the office?” he asked, effectively changing the subject.
“For how long?”
“A week. I’ve been doing some consulting work with a corporation in Argentina and I have to make a physical appearance this week.”
“And why do you want to take me?” she asked.
“What better way to celebrate our engagement?”
“I’m not just going to jump into bed with you. We already established that,” she said, sounding prim even to herself.
“I remember. Vividly. Although you certainly do a good impression of a woman who wants to do some jumping when I kiss you.”
“Kissing isn’t sex,” she said coldly. “You’ve always seemed to get the two confused.”
“I assure you, Vanessa, I’m not confused about any part of sex. And a kiss is not sex, I’m well aware. Not even close.”
“So don’t equate one kiss with me being ready to sleep with you.” He’d certainly made that assumption the first time she’d kissed him. “I’m not ready. I don’t sleep with men I don’t know. And if that’s the point of the trip …”
“It will look nice if I take my fiancée on a celebratory vacation. If you’re going to be a harpy you can stay here.”
She thought of the two options for her week. Staring at the four walls of her office again, or escaping to Argentina for seven days. Even if it was with Lazaro, option two was the winner. She wanted to escape. Just go for a while. Leave reality behind.
“I’ll go.”
“Bien. You and I can … get to know each other.”
Buenos Aires was electric. There was energy in everything, motion and lights and heat. Vanessa had never seen anything like it. She’d traveled quite a bit before she’d graduated from high school, but they’d been trips with her father, trips that had begun at airports in air-conditioned limousines and ended up at cloistered resort properties.
She’d never truly gotten to enjoy the culture of the country she’d been visiting. And she’d never realized how sad that was until now. Had never realized what she’d been missing.
She wished she could capture it forever. The curves of the buildings, the brick on the street, the sun-washed blue sky.
“You grew up here?” She turned to Lazaro, who was sitting next to her in the back seat of the limo, engrossed in something on his smartphone.
“We left when I was thirteen,” he said, not bothering to spare her a glance.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Sure. If you don’t go down to where I used to live. But every city has its slums.”
Vanessa’s stomach tightened. “And that’s where you’re from?”
“Does that bother you, princesa?”
“No. Yes. Only in the sense that I don’t like to think of you … of anyone, living like that.”
“It’s reality,” he said, his voice rough.
“I know.” She did. But it was sort of a hollow, half-realized knowledge.
“It’s where I’m from. I hope it doesn’t cause you too much despair to have a husband who comes from nothing. As your father is so fond of saying, class can’t be bought.”
“I’ve never cared, Lazaro. Never.”
“That isn’t how I remember it.”
“How do you remember it? Because I remember risking my father’s wrath to speak to you whenever I got the chance, and I don’t think I ever treated you like a second-class citizen. In fact, I pretty much remember my entire sixteen-year-old world revolving around you.”
The limo pulled up the curb in front of a stretch of tall, white, connected buildings. “My penthouse is here,” Lazaro said.
“Good.”
“Good?”
“I like it,” she said, opening her own door and getting out without waiting for Lazaro.
She liked it, and she was glad to be done with the conversation. She didn’t want to talk about what an idiot she’d been for him back in her angsty teenage days. And she really didn’t want him guessing just how close she was to being an idiot for him now.
Lazaro Marino was as hard as concrete and just as loving. The last thing she wanted was to cultivate feelings for him. She’d had her heart broken by him before. Granted, at sixteen, everything felt fatal, and she was sure that whatever it was she’d felt for him was more infatuation than anything else. But still, she had no desire to relive it.
This time, she did have Lazaro in her future. And a lifetime of living with him and loving him while he saw her as nothing more than a possession would be worse than a relationship with no emotions at all.
So she was aiming for cool and distant. She could do that. She had plenty of practice being treated with cool distance; she ought to be able to dish a little bit out.
Lazaro got out of the limo and opened the trunk, retrieving their bags without waiting for the driver or for aid from one of the apartment building’s employees.
She couldn’t help but admire the grace in his movements, the easy strength. Even angry—and he was angry with her, that much was obvious—he was the single most gorgeous man she’d ever seen. Deep bronze skin, square jaw—which he was clenching tightly. He always did that when he was annoyed with her.
“You’re going to get TMJ,” she blurted, following him into the building.
“Que?”
“TMJ. You can get it from grinding your teeth. There was a girl at school who had to wear a mouth guard to stop her from doing it.”
A smile curved his lips and a ridiculous, happy, fluttering sensation assaulted her. “Perhaps you should just endeavor to be less of a cause of stress.”
She huffed out a laugh. “I stress you out, Lazaro? Really?”
He stopped walking and turned to face her, the look on his face intense. And for a second, she forgot that breathing was important. Because nothing seemed more important, more compelling, than what was happening between herself and Lazaro.
“Maybe stress is the wrong word.”
Vanessa leaned back slightly and her shoulders connected with the wall. “It is?”
“But I am having trouble sleeping.”
“Why is that?”
“Because every night since you came to me at the museum I have stayed awake. Wanting you. In my arms. In my bed.”
The need to kiss him again was unbearable. It was hard to remember why she was fighting her attraction for him, especially when sleeping with him was inevitable.
A thrill shot through her system when she realized that fully, for the first time. It was a matter of when, not if, and having it suddenly seem real made the distance between Lazaro and herself seem that much smaller.
He released his hold on one of the bags and let it drop to the carpeted floor of the lobby area. He brushed his thumb over her lower lip, an action that was becoming familiar to her. Maybe familiar was the wrong word, because each time he touched her like that it made her knees weaken.
She flicked the tip of her tongue to his finger, curiosity and desire mixing together to create a potent temptation she couldn’t resist. His body shuddered, the movement running through every strong inch of him. She leaned her head back against the wall, pulling away from him. But he was still close. So close it wouldn’t take a very big action for him to close the distance between them and take her in his arms. To kiss her again as he’d done in her office. As he’d done in the guesthouse.
“Oh, yes, Vanessa, I very much look forward to getting to know you better this week.” He picked up the suitcase again and turned away from her, the spell that had descended over her breaking.
He was playing with her. Teasing her. Proving that at any moment he could call up that desire in her that was so strong, so close to the surface.
If he kept behaving like that, it wouldn’t be hard to keep her emotional distance from him. Not hard at all.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“WHAT’S this?”
Lazaro flicked her an uninterested look from his position at the sleek penthouse bar. “I had some things sent ahead for you.”
A lot of things. Dresses, a swimsuit … the large armoire had been stocked with items, as had the freestanding vanity in the massive bathroom that was just off her expansive bedroom. But that wasn’t what caught her eye. “This,” she said again, picking up a black camera bag that was positioned in the middle of the sumptuous four-poster bed, almost afraid to open it.
She peered through the open door of her bedroom and out into the spacious living area.
Lazaro waved his hand in a dismissive manner. “You mentioned you liked taking pictures.”
Her heart thundered hard in her head, and she felt dizzy. Overwhelmed. She ran her fingers along the edge of the bag. It was very high-quality heavy canvas sewn with thick nylon thread.
She grasped the zipper and pulled it open. Her hands shook as she pulled the camera out. It wasn’t just a camera. It was lenses and filters and just about every other accessory she could think of. Much more than she would ever need to take pictures as a hobby.
She walked out of her room and into the living room, stepping up the marble steps into the bar area.
She felt short of breath as she turned the camera over in her hands, her fingers sliding over the slick black casing. Her body felt strange, hollow.
“Lazaro, why … why did you do this for me?”
He moved around to the other side of the bar, drink in hand. “Why not? You said you liked to take pictures. You were doing it with your phone and I thought you might want a real camera. Especially as I knew you would want pictures of Buenos Aires.”
“I do … I was … I was so wishing I could capture it all forever while we were driving from the airport and … you knew.”
He shrugged. “It isn’t a big deal. Money is nothing to me.”
“This is more than money.”
“It’s not,” he said, his focus on the city skyline beyond the large window that extended the length of the living area.
“But I just don’t understand why you went to the trouble to …”