.
The other couple was not at that angle.
Even without the wind, the evening air was still chilly.
He removed his jacket and tucked it around Romi like a cape. “Better?” he asked.
Nodding, Romi bit her lip in a gesture of vulnerability that nearly derailed his intention to talk.
“You didn’t need to give me your coat.” She pulled it closer, a clearly unconscious action in direct opposition to the words she spoke. “We won’t be out here long. I’m not even sure why I came with you in the first place.”
“Because you are angry I considered Jeremy Archer’s business proposal and we need to talk about that.”
“I don’t know why.”
He merely waited in silence.
Romi huffed out a sigh. “Maddie deserves better than a business marriage.” She glared up at Maxwell with a mix of emotions he couldn’t quite read. “You do, too.”
“I do not find Madison particularly attractive. Foregoing conjugal rights would not have been a great sacrifice.”
“She’s beautiful.”
“I find beauty in a different package.” The red-headed Archer heiress was undeniably pleasing to the eye, but she did nothing for Maxwell personally.
He liked willowy figures, usually going for taller women because of his own six-foot-five-inch height. Though despite the foot difference in their height, Romi fit with him surprisingly well. He preferred dark hair and found her black tresses particularly appealing. Sharp elfin features were also unexpectedly attractive.
Before Romi, he’d never been drawn to blue eyes, but hers were so striking, so expressive, he found them intensely alluring. He liked knowing everything his sexual partners were feeling and thinking. Romi’s eyes revealed what her charming verbal honesty did not.
And unlike her SBC, who rarely blushed at all, Romi’s frequently pink cheeks—at least in his presence—that had nothing to do with her makeup were equally expressive.
“I just don’t understand how you were willing to marry her.” With a sound of frustration, Romi put her hand over her mouth, a sure sign she wished she hadn’t said that out loud.
“I was willing to entertain the idea, but she wasn’t interested in me as her future husband and I knew that before I ever made the offer of a marriage in name only.”
“What? How did you know?”
“Madison Archer may be better at hiding her emotions than you, but there can be no doubt that only one man in that conference room had the remotest of chances in fulfilling the contract her father had drawn up.”
Romi’s smile was soft. “They’re good together.”
“Let’s hope so.” Viktor and Madison’s engagement had already been announced, along with the whirlwind date set for their wedding.
He didn’t know Madison Archer well, but what he knew of her, he respected and liked. And while many would look on Viktor as Maxwell’s lifelong rival, the man who shared his Russian heritage was one of a select few Maxwell called friend.
Considering the fact that both people appeared to be entering the agreement with poorly hidden—to him at least—romantic aspirations and a long-term future together as their goal, Maxwell hoped it worked out for them.
He didn’t believe in permanent romantic ties. He considered marriage like any other contract—to be kept in place for the duration of the benefit of both parties.
His mother had taught him from an early age to see romantic relationships as a means to an end. Natalya Black had always told her son that love was the biggest fairy tale of all.
She’d believed in Maxwell and told him he could do anything he set his mind to, but never give in to “so-called” love. It only weakened the afflicted and made them lose their focus.
Maxwell didn’t know where his mother’s life lessons had come from, but he knew his own and he’d discovered early on she was right.
Leaving Russia and her disapproving relatives for a new start in America had not included Natalya giving up her tendency to line her nest with the golden straw of cleverly chosen bed partners of defined duration.
The transience of the men in his mother’s life had taught him one thing. There was no such thing as forever and anyone who believed in it was a fool.
They’d only come close one time. One man had made Natalya glow with something besides satisfaction in a well-chosen partner. The man had also taken a paternal interest in Maxwell as none of his mother’s other affairs ever had or been allowed to.
For three years, Maxwell had a father figure show up at his activities, someone as interested in teaching him what it was to be a boy raised in America as his mother and those at the cultural center had been in exposing him to bits of his Russian heritage, someone besides a neighbor the school could call when Maxwell needed to go home early with the flu.
Then Carlyle’s estranged wife had returned, along with his real son and daughter, and Maxwell never saw the man again. Natalya lost her glow, but not her determination to give Maxwell every chance life in America had to offer.
“Madison said she thought something about Perry’s claims intrigued you.” Romi frowned, her gaze searching.
Broken out of the unexpected reverie, Maxwell took a moment to catch up. Then he said, “You know I like control in bed.”
“I figured.”
Yes, he hadn’t hidden his preferences during their kisses and the touching. “I had no desire to take her to bed, therefore it follows my preference for control wasn’t my reason for intrigue.”
“Oh.” Romi’s frown turned to puzzlement. “Then why?”
“I found it interesting that Perry made the claims he did.”
“The more salacious the story, the more money they would pay for it.” The lovely heiress’s tone dripped cynicism.
Maxwell’s was a bit more derisive when he said, “Perry Timwater isn’t capable of upholding a more dominant role in sex.”
“How would you know?”
“I’ve met him.” And what Maxwell had seen of the other man had neither impressed, nor inspired a desire to further their association. “He has neither the confidence, nor the attention to the needs of others to succeed in that role.”
“I’m sure he’s a selfish lover,” Romi said with her customary direct honesty. “He was a very selfish friend.”
“You are probably right.” Maxwell felt his lips quirking as they often did in her presence.
Romi Grayson always entertained him, even when she didn’t mean to. She intrigued him as much because of the attraction he felt for her as the fact she was so unlike him. He didn’t understand her.
That was not something Maxwell was used to.
Understanding what motivated people was what made him so good in the business world. He knew how to identify a need and exploit it, without compromising his own sense of honor.
It might not be as shiny and uncomplicated as Viktor’s, but Maxwell did have one.
Romi’s mercurial nature made her an enigma. He’d been sure she would go for his offer of monogamy of limited duration, but she hadn’t. Even more inexplicably, her reaction had told him the offer had hurt her in some way, which he hadn’t expected and found he did not like.
“So, why were you intrigued?”
“Why do you think?” he prodded, wondering how much she’d really learned about him during their brief time of dating.
She paused and thought, which wasn’t something