Or was he putting two and two together and realizing why Vincenzo was so adamant that he’d never find love?
Suddenly, bitterness and dejection ambushed him as if they’d never subsided.
Ferruccio went on, “But you’re pushing forty …”
“I’m thirty-eight!”
“…and you’ve been alone since your parents died two decades ago …”
“I’m not alone. I have friends.”
“Whom you don’t have time for and who don’t have time for you.” Ferruccio raised his hand, aborting Vincenzo’s interjection. “Make a new family, Vincenzo. It’s the best thing you can do for yourself, and incidentally, for the kingdom.”
“Next you’ll dictate the wife I should ‘get.’”
“If you don’t decide on one on your own, ASAP, I will.”
Vincenzo snorted. “Is that crown you’ve been wearing for the last four years too tight? Or is your head getting bigger? Or is it the mind-scrambling domestic bliss?”
Ferruccio just smiled that inexorable smile of his.
Knowing the kind of laserlike determination Ferruccio had, Vincenzo knew there was no refusing him.
Might as well give in. To an extent he found acceptable.
He sighed. “If I take the position …”
“If implies this is a negotiation, Vincenzo. It isn’t.”
“… it will be only for a year …”
“It will be until I say.”
“A year. This isn’t up for negotiation, either. There will be no more ‘scandals’ in the rags, so this wife thing …”
Ferruccio gave him his signature discussion-ending smile. “Is also nonnegotiable. ‘Get a wife’ wasn’t a suggestion or a request. It’s a royal decree.”
Ferruccio had eventually buckled. On Vincenzo’s one-year proviso. Provided that Vincenzo chose and trained his replacement to his satisfaction.
He hadn’t budged on the “get a wife” stipulation. He’d even made it official. Vincenzo still couldn’t believe what he was looking at. A royal edict ruling that Vincenzo must choose a suitable woman and marry her within two months.
This deserved an official letter from his own corporation telling Ferruccio not to hold his regal breath.
There was no way he’d choose a “suitable woman.” Not in two months or two decades. There was no suitable woman for him. Like Ferruccio, he’d been a one-woman man. Unlike him, he’d blown his one shot on an illusion. After six years of being unable to muster the least interest in any other woman he was resigned to his condition.
Though he knew resigned wasn’t the word for it. Not when every time her memory sank its inky tentacles into his mind, his muscles felt as if they’d snap.
He braced himself until this latest attack passed….
A realization went off in his head like a solar flare.
All these years … he’d been going about it all wrong!
Fighting what he felt with every breath had been the worst thing he could have done. After he’d realized none of it was going away, he should have done the opposite. He should have let it run its course, until it was purged from his system.
But it didn’t matter that he hadn’t done that before. Now was the perfect time to do it. And to let all those still-seething emotions work to his advantage for once.
A smile tugged at his lips, fueled by what he hadn’t felt in six years, what he’d thought he’d never feel again. Excitement. Anticipation. Drive. Challenge.
All he needed now were some updates on Glory to use in this acquisition. He already had enough to make it a hostile takeover, but more leverage wouldn’t hurt.
Wouldn’t hurt him.
Now, her—that was a totally different story.
Glory Monaghan stared dazedly at her laptop screen.
She couldn’t be seeing this. An email from him.
She drew a shaky hand across numb lips, shock reverberating in her every nerve.
Slow down. Think. It must be an old one….
No. This was new. She’d deleted his old emails. Though she had only two months ago. And by accident, too.
Yep, for six years, those emails had migrated from one computer to another with all of her vital data. She hadn’t clicked a mouse to scrub her life clean of his degrading echoes. She hadn’t gotten rid of one shred of him. Not his scribbled notes, voice messages or anything he’d given her or left at her place.
It hadn’t been as pathetic as it sounded. It had been therapeutic. Educational. To analyze the mementos and the events associated with each, to familiarize herself further with the workings of the mind of a unique son of a bitch.
The lessons gained from such in-depth scrutiny had been invaluable. No one had ever come close to fooling her again. No one had come close again, period. No one had surprised her, let alone shocked her, since.
Leave it to that royal bastard to be the one to do it.
She resisted the urge to blink in hope that his email would disappear. She did squeeze her eyes, but opened them to find it still staring back at her. His unread message, somehow bolder and blacker than the other unread ones. As if taunting her.
The subject line read An Offer You Can’t Refuse.
Incredulity swept inside her like a tornado.
But wait! Why was she thinking it was an actual email from Vincenzo? Some spammer with some lewd scam must have hacked into his account. Yeah. That was it. With a subject line like that, this had to be the only explanation.
Still … it was strange that Vincenzo hadn’t deleted her from his list of contacts.
Whatever. This email belonged in the trash.
But before she emptied it, her hand froze on the button, an internal voice warning, Do that and go nuts wondering what that email was really all about.
Okay. She had to concede that point. Knowing herself, she wouldn’t be able to function today if she didn’t know for sure.
But what if she opened it, only to find some nasty surprise? In the name of her quest for peace of mind, she should delete the damn thing.
God. That bastard was reaching through time and space, tugging at her like a marionette. Just an email with an inflammatory subject line had her spiraling down a vortex of agitation as if she’d never exited it.
Maybe
