you are,” he said, lifting up the next folder and holding it out toward her. “Ilya Kuznetsov.”
She arched a brow. “Russian?”
He raised one in response. “Very.”
Sophia wrinkled her nose. “Is his fortune in vodka and caviar?”
“I hate to disappoint you but it’s in tech. So, quite close to that IT guy you were professing to have a burning desire for.”
“I didn’t say I had a burning desire for anyone,” she pointed out, her delicate fingers tracing the edge of the file.
He couldn’t help but imagine those same fingers stroking him.
If he believed in curses, he would believe he was under one.
“I don’t know anything about computers,” she continued, setting the folder off to the opposite side of the first one. “I prefer sheep.”
She was infuriating. And baffling. “Not something you hear every day. Now, to the next one.”
She set aside the next two. An Italian business mogul and a Greek tycoon. Neither one meeting up to some strange specification that she blathered on about in vague terms. Then she rejected an Argentine polo player, who was also nobility of some kind, on the basis of the fact that a quick Google search revealed him to be an inveterate womanizer.
“You’re not much better,” she said mournfully, looking up from her phone.
“Then it is a good thing that I am not in the files for consideration.”
Something quite like shock flashed through her eyes, and her mouth dropped open. Color flooded her cheeks, irritation, anger.
“As if that would ever happen. As if I would consider you.” She sniffed very loudly.
“As my sister, you could not,” he bit out.
“Stepsister,” she said, looking up at him from beneath her dark lashes.
His gut twisted, his body hardening for a moment before he gathered his control. The moment seemed to last an eternity. Stolen, removed from time. Nothing but those eyes boring holes through him, as though she could see right into him. As though she could see his every debauched thought.
Every dark, terrible thing in him.
But no, there was no way she could.
Or she would run and hide like a frightened mouse.
“In terms of legality, in terms of my father’s will, you’re my sister,” he said. “Now, the next one.”
She went through the folders until she had selected five, though she maintained that the Swedish candidate was top of her list.
It did not escape his notice that she had selected all men with lighter features. Diametrically opposed to his own rather dark appearance.
He should rejoice in that.
He found he did not.
“Then these are the invitations that will be sent out,” he said. “And I will be reserving dances with each of the gentlemen.”
“Dances?” She blinked. “Are we in a Regency romance novel? Am I going to have a card to keep track?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You can keep track of it in an app.”
She barked out a laugh. “This is ridiculous. You’re ridiculous.”
“Perhaps,” he said, “but if you can think of a better way to bring together the most eligible men in the world, I’m all ears.”
“And what happens if I don’t like any of them?”
“You’re very excited about the sweaters.”
“What if I don’t like any of them?” she reiterated.
“I imagine something will work out.”
“I’m serious,” she said, her blue eyes blazing with emotion. “I’m not marrying a man I don’t like because you have some strange time frame you need to fulfill.”
“Then we will keep looking.”
“No,” she said. “I promise that I will be fair, and I will give this a chance. But if it doesn’t work, give me six months to make my own choice. If I can’t find somebody that is suitable to me, and suitable to you, then I will let you choose.”
“That was not part of the original bargain.”
Six months more of her might just kill him.
“I don’t care,” Sophia said. “This isn’t the Dark Ages, and you can’t make me do what I don’t want to. And you know it.”
“Then you have a bargain. But you will have to put in serious effort. I am not wasting my time and resources.”
“Well I’m not marrying a man just to suit you, Luca. I want to care for the man I marry. I want to like him, if I can’t love him. I want to be able to talk to him. I want him to make me laugh.”
Luca braced himself. Braced himself for her to start talking about passion. About wanting a man who would set her body on fire.
She didn’t.
She had stopped at a man who made her laugh, and had not said she wanted a man who would make her come. He shouldn’t think such thoughts. Shouldn’t want to find out why that didn’t seem to occur to her.
Why attraction didn’t come into her lists of demands to be met.
It made him want to teach her. Didn’t she understand? That physical desire mattered?
And if she didn’t understand...
Some Swedish sheep farmer would be the one to teach her.
Luca gritted his teeth. “But do you need to want him, sorellina?”
He should not have asked the question. He shouldn’t entertain these thoughts, and he certainly shouldn’t give voice to them.
Cursed.
If he weren’t a logical man, he would swear it.
“Want him?” she asked, tilting her head to the side.
“Yes,” he bit out. “Want him. His hands on your body. His mouth on yours. Does it matter to you whether or not you want him inside you?”
He hadn’t realized it, but he’d moved closer to her with each sentence. And now he was so near her he could smell her. That delicate, citrus scent that always rose above the more cloying floral or vanilla perfumes the women around the palace typically favored. A scent he was always assured he could pick out, regardless of who else was around. Always Sophia,
