Cyrus jabbed the intercom button and disconnected the call. He hated having to deal with something as simple as quotas first thing in the morning. He hadn’t even bothered to have breakfast sent up because he’d wanted to tackle this problem right away. Production levels had fallen well below the norm. If they didn’t hit those numbers, they couldn’t fill orders, and if they couldn’t fill orders, they lost money. As if he didn’t already have enough on his plate with a possible trademark infringement from a small brewery in Canada and the equipment failure at their facility in Portland.
Cyrus rolled his shoulders and tried to release the tension, to no avail. He was a man of routine. It kept him on track, but since he’d missed breakfast, his routine was off, and tension settled in his neck and shoulders.
He’d hoped the day would progress more smoothly moving forward, but luck was not with him. At least not by the sound of the raised voices coming from outside his office. He strode to the closed door and opened it to see Roxanne in a heated argument with his wife, Daniella.
He came to a complete stop.
The sight of her stole every molecule of air from his lungs and temporarily left him without the ability to breathe. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d visited the company—more than two years at least.
As usual she dressed like the goddess she was in a black, short-sleeved jumpsuit with wide legs. A thin gold belt brought attention to her narrow waistline, and manicured toes covered in polish the same color of a natural pearl were on display in a pair of three-inch sandals that matched the belt.
Her eyes lifted to his and he clenched a fist to fight back the instantaneous tightening of his abdominal muscles.
“Cyrus, do you mind calling off your secretary?” She looked pointedly at Roxanne, who still blocked her path to his doorway.
“She’s doing her job,” he replied.
“Her job is to keep me out?”
“Her job is to make sure I’m not disturbed. I’m a busy man, and all kinds of random people like to come here and disrupt my day.” He leaned a shoulder against the door and folded his arms.
Her tawny cheeks blushed the color of fully ripe peaches. “I’m not a random person, I’m your wife.” True, but she’d been fighting to change her status.
“Roxanne, you can let her by, and while I’m with my wife, please make sure we’re not interrupted.”
“Yes, sir.” Roxanne stepped aside. She took her job seriously, which made her indispensable to him. If he said he didn’t want to be disturbed, Jesus Christ and a host of angels couldn’t get past her without an appointment.
Daniella cast a scathing look in the older woman’s direction before lifting her head high and stalking by. She traipsed past Cyrus with a stiff spine, and he followed more slowly.
He closed the door.
“To what do I owe this visit? It’s been what—a year? Two years, since I’ve seen you?” Not since the opening of a restaurant by mutual friends, and he knew exactly how long ago that had been.
“A year, but it went by so fast. I guess that’s what happens when you enjoy your freedom and have fun,” she said.
Her cutting remark only made him smile. “You wouldn’t know what fun is if it jumped up and bit you on the nose.”
They both shunned the typical trappings of entertainment that bludgeoned less focused people. He and Daniella were both goal-oriented and driven. Those characteristics should have helped their marriage work, but the cracks in their union had widened into valleys they couldn’t bridge.
He gestured at the guest chair. “Have a seat.”
“I’d rather stand.”
“Suit yourself.”
Cyrus settled into the high-backed chair behind his desk and observed her in more detail. She’d always been thin, although she appeared to be even more so now, and he wondered if she was taking care of herself. Whenever she worked hard, she tended to forego meals, grabbing a snack here and there, which he’d told her on numerous occasions was not healthy. At the pace she kept, it was important to fuel her body.
What she lacked in curves she made up for with breasts the size of cantaloupes. They were magnificent—the only word he could think of to describe them—and large enough to seem out of place on her slender body. His gaze dipped to them and he suffered the expected consequences. His groin tightened and his mouth watered. No doubt about it, they were his favorite part of her anatomy.
“I wouldn’t be here, except you won’t accept my calls,” she explained.
He lifted his gaze to her face. Her hair was parted in the middle but pulled back with gold clips. He’d always felt the hairstyle made her look too severe because of her pointy chin and high cheekbones. He preferred when she wore it straight or wavy and allowed the lustrous strands to soften her face and frame her delicate features.
“What could you possibly want to talk to me about?” He crossed his legs and leaned back in the chair, pretending to be relaxed when in fact her appearance had made him more tense than he was before. “You were the one who said everything we needed to say could be communicated between our lawyers.”
“That’s what I prefer.”
“Well then, what’s the problem? I take it you’ve changed your mind?”
“Obviously, Cyrus, but as usual, you have to be difficult.” She walked forward, carefully, as if approaching an undomesticated animal and she didn’t know how it would respond to her overtures. “I came because I want a divorce.”
“That would be obvious from the divorce papers you served me with. I haven’t forgotten.” His gaze shifted to the purse she held in front of her. She wasn’t wearing her rings, and the sight of her bare finger pissed him off.
“It’s been three years. Now you’ve petitioned the court to dismiss the divorce completely. You’re unnecessarily dragging out the process.”
“Unnecessary for you, but necessary for me.”
“Cyrus, it’s time we end this.”
“End what?”
“End this. The back and forth, this marriage neither of us wants.”
“Where is this coming from?” he asked. To his knowledge, nothing had changed recently.
“I’m tired of fighting you. What you really want is to win, so I’ve come to make you an offer. Tell me what you need to be crowned the victor. Whatever it is, I’ll give it to you.” She took small steps forward, and despite her outward calm, the harsh grip on her purse betrayed her agitation. Had it been a neck she would have snapped it for sure. “I’ll leave with whatever I came into the marriage with and you can have everything else, even what’s due me in the prenup. I’ll walk away with nothing I didn’t earn myself.”
Any other man would be ecstatic his wife made divorce so easy, but her words pushed another button and brought him that much closer to anger. His neck muscles tightened.
Cyrus rested his elbow on the arm of the chair. “You don’t want anything else?”
“That’s right,” she assured him. “Nothing.”
“I’m afraid I can’t just let you walk away,” he said.
“Why not?” The desperation in her voice scraped the air like nails on soft flesh. “I don’t want anything—not the cars or the jewelry. Nothing. You can have it all back.”
“Those were gifts,” he said quietly. Her willingness to give up all he’d given her, to cut her losses and get out of their marriage, burned his stomach. While she earned a comfortable living, his degree of wealth had exposed her to a lifestyle most people only dreamed about. Her dismissal was nothing more than an insult.
“I’ll give it all back if you sign.”
“You know the situation is not that simple, Dani.”
“It can be. Would it help if I withdrew?” She sounded more and more desperate. Desperate to get away from him. “You could divorce me, instead. I don’t care. Just…let me go, Cyrus. I can’t fight you anymore.”
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Then stop fighting and come home.”
“Come home to what?�
� She huffed in exasperation. “There’s nothing there for me.”
He was there, but obviously she didn’t see him as much of an incentive.
“Then this conversation is over.” He turned his attention to the financial reports displayed on the computer screen in front of him. He had way too much work to do to waste any more time on this ridiculous argument.
“I won’t beg you.”
“I never asked you to beg,” he said, talking to the screen on his desk. He checked the variance column and used the cursor to highlight a budget item with a twenty-three percent increase over the previous year. Then he waved his hand dismissively toward the door. “See yourself out.”
“Cyrus.” He shielded his conscience from the pleading tone of her voice. She took a deep breath. “Think about this for a minute. Your behavior is keeping us both from moving on and being happy. If we end our marriage, we’d be free to find other spouses, people we’re more compatible with.”
He paid closer attention to her now.
Was that it? Had she met someone? His brain recoiled at the thought, and anger raged anew inside him. She thought she could get a divorce so she could run into someone else’s arms? Not a chance.
“I’m done talking,” he said coldly.
“Cyrus.”
He shot to his feet and she jerked back at the sudden movement. Pressing his hands on the surface of the desk, he leaned toward her. “The answer is no.” He kept his voice even, but firm.
“You can’t keep me tied to you forever!” Her eyes flashed in anger.
“Marriage is a contract.”
“Any contract can be broken,” she retorted.
“You want to break the contract of our marriage? You want a divorce?” he seethed. “Give me what I want. And you know what I want.”
Her eyes widened in disbelief. They were a striking brown color—copper, the same tint as a shiny new penny. “You can’t be serious.”
“You know I never say anything I don’t mean.”
“You black-hearted bastard.”
“Flatter me all you want. The answer is the same.”
“You were serious? You can’t possibly expect me to—”
“I do.”
The color drained from her face, and she stepped back from the desk, shunning his words.
“Give me a child, Dani, and I’ll give you a divorce.”
Chapter Three
Daniella knew her husband could be unreasonable, but this was too much even for him. He was mad. Completely and utterly off his rocker.
Yes, he’d told her he wanted a child, preferably a son. An heir he could groom to carry on the Johnson name and take his rightful place at the helm of the company, the same way he had done. But after so much time apart, she didn’t think he would still demand the same from her. She’d hoped she could reason with him, but he remained as ruthless and irrational as ever.
His coffee-colored eyes bored into hers, and his face, handsome by anyone’s standards, was set in arrogant, unyielding lines that made it clear this one point was nonnegotiable. The angular planes were offset by a pair of lips that were sensual in design and soft to the touch. She almost shuddered at the memory of how those lips could make her unravel.
“We haven’t lived together as husband and wife in a long time.”
“Refusing to wear your rings and live in our house doesn’t make you any less my wife.”
Her eyes dropped to his fingers splayed out on the desk. He still wore his ring, a platinum band custom designed to match her engagement and wedding rings. The fact he still wore the jewelry, the symbol of their union, didn’t surprise her. Cyrus had never accepted their marriage was over.
She’d spent the last few years fighting to be free of him, but they weren’t any closer to the termination of their marriage than when she’d started the process. He’d told her he wouldn’t give her a divorce, and she’d disregarded his resolve, believing—no, hoping—once the proceedings started he would see she was serious and give in. But she’d learned the hard way that he truly never said anything he didn’t mean.
The first year after she’d left him, she’d thought they were simply ironing out the details. Her lawyer had assured her the time frame was typical, but halfway through year two she realized Cyrus had no intention of ending their relationship, no matter her concessions. Even his travel schedule had been used as an excuse to prolong the process. He had an infinite amount of funds at his disposal, and he used his money to pay a team of lawyers to create constant delays, filing motion after motion and requests for evidence to keep her chained to him.
“What you’re suggesting will never happen,” she said.
“If that’s your final answer, then as I said before, we’re done talking, aren’t we?”
“This is insane!” Daniella exclaimed. “How do you expect me to give you a child?”
“Do I really need to explain the birds and the bees to you?” he asked. “I thought I’d done a pretty good job already of showing you how the male and female anatomy worked together. Do you need a refresher?”
The flutter of her stomach testified to how her body managed to betray her time and time again. His voice had lowered to a silky timbre and brought back memories of constantly making love, where sleep and food were unwelcome interruptions, and the only sustenance she craved came from his drugging kisses and tender caresses. His eyes held a possessive gleam as they drifted over her. She fought back the sensual images creeping to the perimeter of her mind and the unwanted throb manifesting between her thighs—a not-so-subtle reminder that when they made love, almost nothing was off-limits.
“No, I don’t need a refresher,” she said huskily.
She told herself her undeniable attraction to him was because he was her first and only lover. She’d waited much longer than most to explore sex because she’d been focused on academic achievements. She’d continued to hold out, despite the ribbing incurred from friends and the unrelenting efforts of boyfriends to wear her down over the years. But she’d had her eyes on the prize of success, and nothing—especially not a man—would deter her from achieving her goals. In her own home she’d seen the result of dreams deferred, and she’d decided years ago she would not fall prey to the unrealistic romantic ideas of happily ever after.
Yet she’d been intensely attracted to him from their first introduction. Unnervingly so. Who wouldn’t be? Indecently good looking, he carried himself with a level of confidence she’d never encountered in any other man. It wasn’t only the way he walked or his movements. It was the sound of his voice, the beauty of his smooth, dark brown skin, his full lips, and the intense way he always looked at her as if no one else was around. But at the time she’d been involved with someone else, Roland Dubois, though it hadn’t been a love match. She’d told Cyrus about her relationship, beating back his aggressive tactics to win her over—which hadn’t been easy.
Even with her lack of experience, she knew her body’s response to him had less to do with him being her first and more to do with his skills as a lover. Sex with him had transcended mere physical pleasure, bordering on the spiritual, and had always left her spent and in a euphoric state afterward.
To hide the truth from his probing gaze, Daniella stared down at her hands. Noting the stranglehold on her purse, she loosened her grip. She had to make him understand they couldn’t possibly bring a child into the world and then simply divorce.
To prove her own fortitude in the face of his unyielding strength, she edged forward, her thighs touching his desk. “What you’re suggesting is unconscionable. Why are you doing this?”
“Shouldn’t I get something out of this marriage?” he asked roughly.
His question surprised her. It meant he believed he had been shortchanged—that she had not held up her end of the marriage deal, which was untrue. She’d done her part. He was the one who’d changed the rules and expected her to fall in line with his plans.
“You expect me to have a baby with you and then
walk away?” She couldn’t quell the note of hysteria in her voice.
“I’ve told you what I want.”
“And what about what I want? Can’t you find someone else to do this for you?” There were numerous women who would gladly give birth to a Johnson heir. During the brief time they dated, she’d seen how mothers and fathers practically tossed their daughters at his feet. Even after they married, the same behavior continued, though not as flagrantly. The parents at least took into account if she was standing beside him.
“I’m not going to keep arguing with you about the same thing. I won’t change. If all you want to do is argue, you can leave now.”
He sat down and returned his eyes to the screen, effectively dismissing her. For him, the conversation was over, because that’s how he operated. He’d laid out what he wanted and expected her to simply fall in line with his plans.
His gaze remained on the laptop. She stared at his profile, his hard, clean-shaven jaw and hair cut low on his head. He wore a Brioni suit in the darkest black with a navy blue tie and matching handkerchief sticking out the left pocket. Immaculate. Always.
He didn’t look at her, and his lack of interest pushed her over the edge. She wanted to unsettle him, the same as he’d done to her. Short of smashing one of the desk organizers over his head, she couldn’t think of any nonviolent way to disturb him except one.
She cast her eyes across his neatly arranged desk. Everything in its place. He was obsessive about it, a man of routine and discipline. Three pens were lined up across the top, perpendicular to the edge of the desk. One black. One blue. One red. A cylindrical container held his letter opener, highlighters, a pencil, and two more pens. A leather bound notepad sat in the middle of the desk.
She snatched up the blue pen from the desk and his eyes snapped to her. She had his attention now.
“What are you doing, Dani? Put that down.”
“Your answer is no and so is mine,” she said. She used the blue pen to knock the other two askew.
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