His eyes narrowed, and she felt a tingle at the back of her nape, a presentiment, a warning.
“I’ll just bet life has always been easy for you,” she muttered, then could have kicked herself because she knew that wasn’t the case. Max had famously dealt with his own share of grief and devastation. Then again, if you didn’t really have a heart, how hard could anything be? “You don’t feel anything,” she snapped. “Meaning you don’t respect anyone else’s feelings.”
“This is business,” he reminded her. “We’re not actually a couple.”
She flinched at his reminder of that, but not just because his own choice of words were so brutally honest.
“And if we were?” She simpered with false sweetness. “Would you fete and adore me with roses and the all-important shares I need to retain ownership?”
“We’ll never know.” He bared his teeth in what might have been meant as an approximation of a smile. “Do we have a deal, or shall I just let you out in Manhattan and return by myself to Rome?”
“Damn it.” Angry tears of indignation sparkled on her lashes. She tilted her chin defiantly, glaring him down. “We have a deal, but I will never forgive you for this.”
“As you’ve said.”
“I’m serious. This is…”
“Unforgivable?”
“Are you laughing at me?”
“Not at all.”
But he was. She could feel it. And with a rising temper which she knew she was inching closer to expressing, she quickly turned her back and chose a seat as far away from Max Valentino as she could possibly get.
Three
“IF THIS IS GOING to work, you’ll need to act as though you can at least tolerate being in the same room as me.”
She fixed him with a condescending look. “Oh really? Is that right? Thank you for clueing me in on that all-important tip.”
“And stop sniping at me,” he responded, lifting his arm along the back of the car seat, fascinated by the way she flinched when he hadn’t even touched her. Did she understand that some physical intimacy—or the imitation of it, anyway—would be necessary to fool anyone?
“I can do whatever I want when we’re alone.”
“But we are almost at your father’s office,” he pointed out. “And I know shockingly little about you.”
She bit into her lip and fixed her gaze belligerently out of the window. An unusual frustration champed at his gut.
Max was used to getting whatever he wanted, and Andie was certainly going out of her way not to oblige that expectation.
“Tell me what I need to know about you,” he encouraged, allowing his hand to slip slightly, brushing her shoulder. She startled again, her gaze jolting back to his face.
“Don’t touch me.”
He removed his hand, but the seed of curiosity that had formed exploded into a full-blown question mark hanging over an Andie-sized picture in his mind.
“You went to school here?”
She ground her teeth together but nodded briskly, naming an exclusive private school on the Upper East Side.
“You grew up in the city?”
Another crisp nod.
“Did you always want to work in the family business?”
Her eyes showed hesitation and then she nodded. He made a mental note to query that later. He was almost certain she was obfuscating.