IT WAS A long and bitter fall.
Back in New York, Annika immersed herself in the life she’d left behind and called herself lucky that it was still there, waiting for her to wake up from the dream she’d been in and remember herself.
Even if she felt a deep well of embarrassment within her because she knew how little she’d wanted to do anything but lose herself in Italy—and in Ranieri—forever.
Well. She liked to call it embarrassment, but she knew it was something far deeper than that. It was the way her heart beat now, and the hurt in it. It was the way the world seemed changed all around her. Darker, dimmer. Even in this city that seemed too bright to her after the soft, sultry Italian dark.
When she first landed in New York, she’d almost asked that the car drop her off at her father’s old apartment, but bit back the request. Like it or not, she had married Ranieri.
That meant that if he wanted her to move out, he would have to say so and if he did, she would win.
And that was all she had left. Winning this thing.
Ranieri did not come back to New York for three long weeks. And when he did, he was a different man. Or rather, he was the man she’d always thought he was before all of this. Grim. Disapproving. Unimpressed with her in every possible way.
There were no cozy lunches. There were no intimate dinners.
There was no waking up to find him so deep inside her that she was shattering into bright, hot pieces before she’d fully come out of her dreams.
That she cried about these losses, alone in her room at night, was something she would deny if asked. But he never asked. That she had missed him—and still missed him—so horribly that it was like a flu, was something she thought she would rather die than admit.
“Is it already happening?” she asked him one night as they returned from one of the social events he insisted they attend. Because his appearance was always necessary. He left her to handle whatever social niceties were called for and closed business deals over drinks. It would have felt like a partnership, she supposed, if he didn’t treat her like a questionable employee. And if she didn’t have this regrettable need to torture herself like this, dashing herself against the sullen stone of his new indifference to her. “Are you already cheating on me?”
“I would not consider it cheating if I were,” he replied from the other side of the car, his voice sounding gravelly. She glanced at him, watching the lights from the Manhattan street outside the windows wash over his hard face. Harder these days. “You were as blackmailed into this marriage as I was. There was nothing in your father’s will about fidelity, Annika. I think you know this.”
“Yes or no?”
“And if I say yes?”
It cost her something to shrug then, with such unconcern. Such blasé sophistication. That was what she’d learned, night after night, out swimming with these sharks she liked so little. That was what he wanted, wasn’t it?
And it wasn’t truly killing her. It only felt like it might.
“Then I will congratulate you and wish you well. The tabloids are certain to make sure the whole world knows if you’re cheating, and that would reflect badly on both of us. I was hoping you and I could come to an arrangement before that happens, but not if there’s already other women in the mix. That seems entirely too unsavory.”
She felt the heat of his gaze on the side of her face. “An arrangement?”
“You’re not the only one with needs, Ranieri.”
He sighed, managing to make it sound withering. “Amore. Please. You are only embarrassing yourself.”
She wanted to hurt him then. She actually felt bloodthirsty. But she wanted this more. Even if he kept calling her amore, which seemed more mocking and pointed each time.
Annika was sure he meant it to feel that way, like a blade beneath her skin. Because he was banking on the possibility that he could win that way.
Because that was the game. Hadn’t she thought of it as a game, long ago? And now there was nothing left but to play it.
“I don’t feel the slightest bit embarrassed,” she told him, still managing to keep her voice cool. “You introduced me to sex. I’d like more of it. If we decide that stepping outside the marriage isn’t cheating, then I suppose that opens doors. It just sounds a bit inconvenient, that’s all.”
And she would never know how she sounded so bored. All the many polished and poisonous society events she’d been forced to attend had finally paid off, apparently. Because she sounded like the rest of them now.
Ranieri let out another one of those sighs. “Forgive me, Annika, but surely what happened in Italy has proven that you cannot handle having sex with me. You become too emotional. You want it to mean things that it cannot.”
Yes, she thought balefully. I am the emotional one here.
“We live together, I like orgasms, and I thought you could help,” she said, impatiently. “But believe me, this conversation makes me wish I was dead. So by all means, find yourself the emotionless mistress of your dreams. I will handle my own needs however I see fit.”
He didn’t say anything, but when they stepped into his elevator, she was sure she could feel a kind of edgy heat emanating from him. And when the doors opened and let them into his apartment, she’d taken all of three angry strides when he was on her.
And it wasn’t like Italy. It wasn’t languorous. It wasn’t an endless, rolling delight, or feeling as if the two of them were one.
It was hot. Furious. He lifted her up, dug beneath her dress, and dragged her legs around his waist. Then he held her there, pressing her back against the nearest wall, as he reached between them to free himself, ripped off her panties, then plunged deep.
It was a mad gallop to a blistering finish, and when he was done, when she was limp and wheezing, he stepped back and fixed himself while she clung to the wall and pretended she really believed her legs could hold her.
“Sleep well, amore,” he said, his voice dark, then he left her there.
And for some time in those darkest days of the year, that was what it was like between them. They lived separate lives. They came together for the usual social events. And there was sex, but it was always about the goal, not the journey.
There was nothing wrong with that, necessarily. It was still mind-blowing. It was still Ranieri.
But she knew the shift was deliberate.
And, yes, when it was done she would sob out her love, her loneliness into her shower, but surely as long as no one knew that but her it didn’t count. It swirled its way down the drain and was gone again by morning.
Annika just kept telling herself that she could live with it. One way or another, she would live with it.
Not because you want to win this, that voice would whisper as she lay in her bed, alone, her eyes swollen from tears. But because you cannot bear to leave him, even now.
It was obvious to her that she’d missed something that day with his parents. Not everybody was lucky enough to have family they admired, the way she had admired and loved her father, and the memories of her mother. Not everyone had even a family they liked. If anything, meeting Ranieri’s parents had made her love who he’d made himself even more.
Because they’d certainly given him no guidance. In anything. That much was clear.
She knew that he’d decided to end what had been happening between the two of them because of that day even though she’d thought they’d handled the situation about as well as it could have been handled.
The real truth, that she could admit only late, late at night when her heart ached for him, was that Annika persisted in believing that if she could just hold on, he would come back to her.
But as the long, cold fall wore on, Ranieri showed no signs of blinking.
It was coming on the middle of December when she caught up with one of her college friends one evening. It was a chilly night, though outside, the city was festive. She had become adept at avoiding the paparazzi these days, or perhaps they’d finally grown bored with her. Either way, she had no photographers on her tail when she slipped into a quiet booth in the sort of restaurant Ranieri would never frequent, looking forward to an evening of nostalgia and laughter in thankfully unpretentious surroundings.
But her friend was looking at her mobile phone when Annika sat down, and smiled oddly when she looked up again. “Congratulations, Annika. It looks like you won.”
“I won?” Annika shook her head, not understanding. “What did I win?”
Her friend swiveled the screen of her phone around and showed it to Annika. “It says it right here. Ranieri Furlan is leaving the Schuyler Corporation. Annika. You did it.”
And later, her friend would tell her that it was as if Annika had been hit in the head. She had stared back at that phone for far too long. She didn’t respond when her friend tried to speak to her.
Then she’d simply stood and walked out.
Annika wasn’t aware of any of that. She had a vague impression of running down a side street on the Upper West Side, then angrily hailing a taxi out on Columbus. Then she sat in the back of the cab and stared out blankly at storefronts and bodegas done up in holiday splendor, crowds on the street, and the usual outraged honking from too many vehicles trying to make their way around Manhattan.
She suffered through the slowest elevator in the history of the universe at Ranieri’s loft down in Tribeca, but when it finally opened on his floor, he wasn’t home. She even checked up on the roof, though she knew he rarely ventured there.
But he was nowhere to be found, so she headed to the only other place she knew he was likely to be, even in the wake of his announcement.
And just like the last time she’d marched into the Schuyler Corporation offices bearing a potted plant, the reception desk was no match for her.
“You can’t just walk back there,” the poor woman tried to tell her.
Annika smiled. “Do you know who I am?” she asked. Nicely, she thought.
Wide-eyed, the woman nodded.
“Wonderful, then you know my name.”
“Yes, Mrs. Furlan.” The woman bit the name off, not that Annika could blame her. “I know who you are and your name, but—”
“That’s Annika Schuyler Furlan,” Annika corrected her, jabbing her finger toward the logo on the wall behind the woman’s head. “That’s my name right there. I think I can go where I want, don’t you?”
She didn’t get the impression the woman did think that. But Annika knew she wouldn’t stop her. And it felt like déjà vu to march down these halls again, this time unencumbered by a pot of dahlias. But weighed down all the same, this time by what she wished was a righteous fury—but she was fairly certain it was fear.
Just sheer terror that he was really leaving the company, and therefore her.
He wasn’t in his office, so she turned and marched along the same hall he’d once escorted her down with his arm around her shoulders. And that silly plant held before him.
And it felt not only right, but good to throw open the doors of his conference room and march in once again.
This time, Ranieri was the only one inside. He sat at the head of the table, surrounded by what appeared to be even more stacks of paper, file folders, and not one but two laptops.
“Hello, Annika,” he said, with only a brief glance up her way. He managed to make that withering, too. “I take it you’ve heard the news.”
She only realized now that she’d been running around this whole time—through the city, through his loft, through this office—because it was difficult to catch her breath. But she made herself slow down and try, because she could tell by the way he was deliberately not looking at her that he was trying to get under her skin. He expected her to fly off the handle.
And she understood that though this felt like one more round of their same game, the stakes tonight were higher.
The stakes tonight were everything.
As if he hadn’t already conceded.
Oddly enough, that made her think she still had a chance to change his mind.
And she had been waiting all this time for just this. Just one chance.
“I went into your office before I came here,” she said, a strange sort of calm washing through her despite the hurry and rush and worry that had propelled her here. She studied him. “I see you still have our plant. The embodiment of our love.”
He threw his pen onto the pad before him and sat back in his chair, then took a moment to make a meal out of arranging his features into something suggesting an attempt at patience more than patience itself. “I cannot claim to have a green thumb, of course. That would be my assistant. Gregory can make anything grow, apparently.”
Even your silly plant, was the obvious next line, though he didn’t say it.
“I only have one question for you,” Annika said, instead of chasing down the things he hadn’t said.
And she wished that she’d known what this night would bring. She would have dressed the way he liked best. That sophistication, that hint of glamour. Because he’d taught her the language of fine clothing and she was fluent in it now. Instead, she’d spent the day in the museum and had dressed for that, followed by a dinner with an old college friend. She was wearing her usual uniform of jeans tucked into boots and a cozy sweater to keep the chill off. But if she was right—and she had to be right, or she didn’t know what she would do with herself, or how she would possibly survive this—none of that actually mattered.
She moved farther into the room, peeling off her coat and tossing it on the conference room table. Then she kept going until she could take the seat catty-corner to him, pulling it in close so she was right there. Right next to him.
Then it was her turn to put on a little show of resting her chin on her hands and gazing at him as if her whole life hung in the balance here.
Because it did.
“Whatever you’re about to do or say, don’t,” Ranieri said, his voice forbidding. Not so much withering as gruff. “No round of rainbow unicorns is going to change anything. There is nothing that requires changing, in any case. I have simply come to the conclusion that the inconvenience of looking for another company to run pales in comparison to the inconvenience of being married.”
“You don’t actually mean married, though,” Annika corrected him, and though it was a fight to keep her voice even, she managed it. “You mean married to me. Because you take your grandfather’s position on this one, don’t you? You should be allowed to do whatever you want, without question. Isn’t that right?”
His eyes blazed, and that stark mouth of his thinned.
“Yes,” he said, though his jaw looked tight enough to shatter. “Precisely.”
She could have pointed out how little he thought of his grandfather’s pride, but she didn’t. She could have asked him if he thought that his own father’s behavior, not to mention his marriage, perhaps followed on directly from the choices his grandfather had made. It seemed like a straight line to her. But she didn’t ask him that, either.
Because all of that was noise.
Last night had been a rare night without an event, so she’d gone up to the roof to sit in the hot tub for a while. Then she’d stood out in the cold until it made her shake before going into the hot water again.
She called it therapy.
When she’d come back down into the loft, Ranieri had been finishing a call. He’d tossed his cell phone aside as he came in the kitchen. One look at her, her hair piled on top of her head, wearing nothing but a robe, his golden eyes had gone molten.
And the next thing she’d known, Annika had been flat on her back in his bed and he had been pounding into her in another scalding, blistering rush to that beautiful finish.
But when she’d made as if to roll away, to gather her robe and make her way back to her room—lest she get any ideas that might turn into emotions, the horror—he had pulled her back into place beside him.
He had taken her again and again that night.
The last time, so late at night it had become early the next morning, it had been like that final morning in Italy.
Slow. Intense.
Shattering, inside and out.
When she’d woken up hours later to find herself still in his bed, he’d been gone.
But she understood now.
She reached over and gripped his hands in hers, holding tight because she expected him to pull away.
“Ranieri.” Annika said his name softly, like some kind of prayer. “When did you decide that you were doomed, no matter what you did?”