A Bride For Him

CHAPTER 4: An Unwelcome Distraction

Ace

I leave her standing in the corridor like a stain on the hardwood.

I don’t look back as I stride down the west wing. My leather soles strike the floor in a sharp, murderous tempo that matches the tight pulse in my jaw. The audacity of her. The sheer, unadulterated nerve.

People don’t talk to me like that. Board members fold when I look at them. Competitors pull out of deals at the mere sound of my name. Yet there she stood, glaring at me like I am the intruder in my own family’s house.

My hand tightens into a fist at my side as I round the landing and descend the grand staircase two steps at a time. The quiet grandeur of the house feels suddenly stifling.

I slam the heavy front door of the estate hard enough that the sound cracks through the foyer like a gunshot.

The cold evening air hits me instantly. Waiting at the bottom of the stone steps, my sleek black Maybach idles silently. George stands by the open door, his expression carefully blank as I approach.

“Sir,” George says smoothly.

I don’t answer. I throw myself into the plush leather interior. Before the door even clicks shut, I reach up, yanking my silk tie loose with one harsh pull. I shrug my jacket off, pop the top two buttons of my collar, and lean my head back against the headrest as the cool stream of the AC washes over me. It does nothing to cool the electric prickle still thrumming beneath my skin.

I can still see her standing outside the double doors of my study. Black hair, a chaotic mess of damp strands and escaped curls. That cheap polyester-linen yellow sundress clinging to her in all the wrong places, faint sweat streaks smeared across her hips. Flushed. Wide-eyed.

She looked out of place, unrefined, and entirely beneath my notice.

Except I couldn’t ignore her.

I can still feel the furious heat radiating off her skin when I stepped into her space. I closed the distance on purpose, leaning down until my voice could drop into the register that usually makes people shut up and step back.

She didn’t step back.

She turned her head, met my eyes, and answered with that same maddening sweetness that still scrapes under my skin like sandpaper.

She tipped her chin up in pure defiance, even as her pulse fluttered visibly at the base of her throat.

I was forced to step around her.

Forced to walk away first.

The click of my shoes down the corridor felt like a retreat, and that alone is enough to set my teeth on edge.

A stray, I think bitterly as the car rolls down the long gravel driveway. An unmannered, foul-tempered stray.

By the time the Maybach pulls into the subterranean garage beneath Sullivan Enterprises, the anger has settled into a cold, focused itch.

The company occupies the upper floors of a glass-and-steel tower on Park Avenue, where the city’s wealth gathers behind polished doors and men in expensive suits pretend their decisions are more important than the people who make them.

I ride the private elevator straight to the executive floor. I push open the double glass doors of my office, and step inside not bothering with the lights.

The city glitters beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows.

I walk straight to the crystal decanter, pour myself two fingers of scotch, and toss it back in one smooth, burning swallow. The liquid hits my stomach, but it doesn’t dull the memory of her flushed, defiant face.

I set the glass down with a sharp clink, staring at my reflection in the dark windowpane.

I sit down at my desk and open the first contract.

For the next forty minutes, I attempt to do what I came here to do.

Work.

The words sit in front of me in neat black print, surrounded by figures, clauses, and legal language designed to make millions of dollars sound like something ordinary. I read the first page twice. On the third attempt, I realize I have been staring at the same paragraph without absorbing a single word.

My mind keeps dragging me back to the girl in the hallway. I run my hands through my hair.

I force my attention back to the contract and sign the first approval.

The pen scratches across the paper.

I turn another page harder than necessary.

The second contract concerns a property acquisition in Tribeca. I review the projected returns and mark two figures for correction. Then I reach for the next file.

Nothing changes.

I lean forward.

The next file remains untouched.

Outside the windows, Manhattan glitters beneath the night, indifferent and restless. Traffic crawls along the avenue. Thousands of people move through the city.

Every quiet second gives my mind room to return to her.

Who is she anyway?

It’s not the question itself that bothers me. Diane hires and fires staff the way other people change bedsheets — cooks, drivers, nurses, some new assistant every few months. A new face in that house is nothing. It shouldn’t register at all.

But I’ve met every one of them, at some point or another, in some hallway or doorway much like that one, and not a single one has ever looked at me the way she just did. They avert their eyes. They murmur ‘sir’ and find somewhere else to be.

The email. My grandmother’s new caregiver was supposed to arrive today. I’d skimmed the details three days ago and moved on. A temporary arrangement, someone from Brooklyn, the sort of thing Diane handled herself because apparently hiring a stranger to live in our house was less complicated than asking me to sign off on a budget. I hadn’t bothered with the name. I hadn’t bothered with much of anything.

I close my eyes, pick up my phone, and check the email again. Actually reading it this time.

Ruby Barkley.

I’d come back to the office tonight to bury myself in contracts, to let the numbers do what they always do — scour every other thought out of my head until there’s nothing left but the work.

That was the plan an hour ago. Now I’m standing in the dark with a glass of scotch and a name I can’t stop turning over, and the contracts are still sitting untouched on my desk, and for the first time in longer than I care to admit, I don’t want to be here at all.

I want to go home.

There’s an itch under my skin that has a name now, and it isn’t going away just because I left her standing in a corridor.

I set my jaw, pull my jacket back on, and head for the door.

Three months.

I am going to enjoy breaking that temper.