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She just had to play her part properly. She hadn’t worked so diligently on their plan for one entitled asshole to ruin everything. No, she should stop calling him names, she reminded herself.
She didn’t want to antagonize him any more than she already had. She had to put on the charm, not that she had ever owned much in that department.
She groaned silently on the inside.
This was not supposed to happen.
It didn’t help that at her sudden silence, he turned to look at her and heat rose under her skin as if she had disrupted a dormant volcano inside her. She really needed to eat something. Then find a way to contact Uncle Matteo and let him know she was still alive but that their plan had hit a snag in the form of one Elliot No Last Name. She also planned to assure him that he had nothing to worry about. She would take care of everything because she was the strong one.
Maintaining her silence, she peered out the window of his car. They had landed in New York and it didn’t take long before he slipped the car into an underground parking lot.
She forced herself to be easily conveyed, again over his shoulder, despite trying to tell him she was capable of walking if only he’d let her. He didn’t put her down as they rode the elevator up.
She also dared not to breathe. The onslaught of his nearness on her senses had left her stupefied.
She quietly took stock of her surroundings, storing it away for future reference when she formulated her escape plan.
From the outside, the building had looked nondescript. But the underground parking area showcased a fleet of luxury cars possibly belonging to the other tenants.
The elevator soon came to a stop and Elliot stepped directly into what appeared to be the foyer of his apartment.
He set her down onto the tiled floor then removed the strap of lace which was her wedding garter from between her lips and unfastened her wrists from his tie.
She really had to have her head fully examined and then demand a second opinion when a cold draft settled on her wrists where the silk of his tie had covered. As if being bound by him had somehow offered her a sense of security. What the actual fuck was wrong with her? In her mind, she punctuated that question with a trio of question marks.
“We’re the only people here. No one will hear you scream,” he said as a way of warning.
It dawned on her instantly that he owned the whole building and all those cars she had seen in the underground parking lot must all belong to him.
“Fine,” she said stiffly. “I was hoping you might finally allow a more civilized conversation between us now as opposed to your otherwise Paleolithic behavior,” she said almost sweetly. She couldn’t stop herself from adding the sparsely veiled insult.
“You calling me a caveman?” he asked. He removed his jacket and began rolling up his sleeves. Every movement he made distracted her from functioning like a normal person.
Nothing as bad though as when he revealed his forearms. Corded with rivers of veins, and covered in ink, the sight of him standing there, in his white shirt and black suit pants, wrecked her just a little bit. Or maybe a lot. She gave herself a pass for being dishonest about the way he made her feel on account that she didn’t know him at all and that she absolutely hated him for ruining her marriage and all the plans that stemmed from it.
He then stood with his hands in his pants pockets, regarding her with a curious but darkened look in his eye, making her feel as if he had stripped every yard of fabric off her body but… hated what he saw beneath her clothes.
Vivian shook her head. What he thought of her shouldn’t matter in the least.
“You tricked me into marrying you by pretending to be my groom. You kidnapped me. You threw me over your shoulder like I was a rag doll. You restrained me with your freaking tie and then you gagged me with my own wedding garter. You—”
She hadn’t meant to say all that in one angry breath. She certainly hadn’t meant to fuse her words with shrilly incredulity but she had done both.
So much for a civilized approach but the man vexed her on every level.
She swallowed and straightened her shoulders, silently counting in three deep breaths. While she tried to regulate her breathing, her gaze flickered over the rest of his apartment. A huge expanse of floor area was surrounded by wrap-around windows, affording her a view of the city of New York at sunset.
Bringing her attention back to his apartment she scanned it once more and took in the fact that it was an open-plan design. No doors or walls separated one room from the other. Not his bedroom from the lounge areas or the kitchen or what appeared to be his study.
Her cheeks reddened when she found that even the shower cubicle and massive bathtub were in plain view. She sighed in relief when she found a single door, other than the front door, and realized at least the toilet facility had some privacy.
But that flush in her cheeks soon turned annoyingly hot when immediately images of ten maybe hundreds of women rolling off his bed, naked, and glowing from their lovemaking, slipped into his shower.
She didn’t know why but his living quarters and everything inside it, the rich masculine furniture, the priceless art, and decor screamed bachelor haven.
She wasn’t going to retract her opinion of him having a new woman in his bed every night. But she couldn’t understand the way those thoughts just made her irrationally madder. Which was all irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
Her gaze followed him as moved toward the bedroom area, opened a drawer and retrieved a white T-shirt which he tossed onto the bed.
