Page 22 of Untamed Billionaire's Innocent Bride
“Come now, Lauren. A man likes a little romance, not a bullet-pointed list. The very least you could do is bend a knee and mouth a sweet nothing or two.”
“I’m not proposing to you!” Her veneer slipped at that, and her face reddened. “Mr. Combe thinks—”
“Will I be marrying my own brother?” He lay his hand over his heart in mock astonishment. “What sort of family is this?”
He thought her head might explode. He watched her hands curl into fists at her sides as if that alone could keep her together.
“You agreed to do whatever was asked of you,” she reminded him, fiercely. “Don’t tell me that you’re the one who’s going to break our deal. Now. After—”
After kissing him repeatedly, he knew she meant to say, but she stopped herself.
The more he stared back at her without saying a word, the more agitated she became. And the more he enjoyed himself, though perhaps that made him a worse man than even he’d imagined. And he’d spent a great quantity of time facing his less savory attributes head-on, thanks in part to the ministrations of the nuns who had taught him shame and how best to hate himself for existing. The army had taken care of the rest.
These days Dominik was merrily conversant on all his weaknesses, but Lauren made him...something else again.
But that was one more thing he didn’t want to focus on.
“What would be the point of a marriage that wasn’t real?” he asked idly. “The public will need to have reason to believe it’s real for it to be worth bothering, no?”
The truth was that Dominik had never thought much about marriage one way or the other. Traditional family relationships weren’t something he had ever seen modeled in the orphanage or on the streets in Spain. He had no particular feelings about the state of marriage in any personal sense, except that he found it a mystifying custom, this strange notion that two people should share their lives. Worse, themselves.
And odder still, call it love—of all things—while they did it.
What Dominik knew of love was what the nuns had doled out in such a miserly way, always shot through with disappointment, too many novenas and demands for better behavior. Love was indistinguishable from its unpleasant consequences and character assassinations, and Dominik had been much happier when he’d left all that mess and failure behind him.
He had grown used to thinking of himself as a solitary being, alone by choice rather than circumstance. He liked his own company. He was content to avoid others. And he enjoyed the peace and quiet that conducting his affairs to his own specifications, with no outside opinion and according to his own wishes and whims, afforded him. He was answerable to no one and chained to nothing.
The very notion of marrying anyone, for any reason, should have appalled him.
But it didn’t.
Not while he gazed at this woman before him—
That pricked at him, certainly. But not enough to stop. Or leave, the way he should have already.
He told himself it was because this was a game, that was all. An amusement. What did he care about the San Giacomo reputation or public opinion? He didn’t.
But he did like the way Lauren Clarke tasted when she melted against him. And it appeared he liked toying with her in between those meltings, too.
“What we’re talking about is a publicity stunt, nothing more,” she told him, frowning all the while. “You understand what that means, don’t you? There’s nothing real about it. It’s entirely temporary. And when it ends, we will go our separate ways and pretend it never happened.”
“You look distressed, little red,” he murmured, because all she seemed to do as she stood there before him was grow redder and stiffer, and far more nervous, if the way she wrung her hands together was any indication.
He didn’t think she had the slightest idea what she was doing. Which was fair enough, as neither did he. Evidently. Since he was still sitting here, lounging about in the sort of stuffy corporate office he’d sworn off when he’d sold his company, as if he was obedient. When he was not. Actually subjecting himself to this charade.
Participating in it wholeheartedly, in point of fact, or he never would have invited her into his cabin. Much less left it in her company—then flown off to rainy, miserable England.
“I wouldn’t call myself distressed.” But her voice told him otherwise. “I don’t generally find business concerns distressing. Occasionally challenging, certainly.”
“And yet I am somehow unconvinced.” He studied the way she stood. The way she bit at her lower lip. Those hands that telegraphed the feelings she claimed not to have. “Could it be that your Mr. Combe, that paragon of virtue and all that is wise and true in an employer by your reckoning, has finally pushed you too far?”
“Of course not.” She seemed to notice what she was doing with her hands then, because she dropped them back to her sides. Then she drew herself up in that way she did, lifted her chin and met his gaze. With squared shoulders and full-on challenge in her caramel-colored eyes—which, really, he shouldn’t have found quite as entertaining as he did. What was it about this woman? Why did he find her so difficult to resist? He, who had made a life out of resisting everything? “Perhaps you’ve already forgotten, but you promised that you would do whatever was asked of you.”
He stopped trying to control his grin. “I recall my promises perfectly, thank you. I am shocked and appalled that you think so little of the institution of marriage that you would suggest wedding me in some kind of cold-blooded attempt to fool the general populace, all of whom you appear to imagine will be hanging on our every move.”
He shook his head at her as if disappointed unto his very soul at what she had revealed here, and had the distinct pleasure of watching her grit her teeth.
“I find it difficult to believe that you care one way or the other,” she said after a moment. “About fooling anyone for any reason. And, for that matter, about marriage.”