Cristoff’s laughter filled the room as she squeezed my knee. And it only served to make me angrier. I’d have to have a talk with this woman. She needed to know her place in all this. We were on a business venture, not a pleasurable one. She didn’t control this scenario; I did. But I knew if the two of us retired back to our room, I’d have to start resisting her. And after the two glasses of wine that accompanied dinner, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to at that point.
“Well, why don’t we all go for a walk in the garden? It seems as if Elizabeth has already gotten a taste of it, but the walk might do us a bit of good. We can talk down some of this food, and the breath of fresh air will revive Elizabeth’s spirits while tiring you out, hmm, Phillip?”
“I really do believe we should be—”
“A walk sounds wonderful, Cristoff. Thank you for the offer,” Elizabeth said.
“Plus, the garden is very romantic underneath the moonlight. It’s my favorite space to be in the evenings,” Cristoff said.
“Actually, that sounds fantastic. I’m always up for a bit of romance. Aren’t you, sweetheart?” Elizabeth asked.
Fucking great. I couldn’t get one second alone with Cristoff because of this woman.
All of us stood, and Cristoff bid most of his family farewell. Elizabeth stuck by my side, but I didn’t want to be anywhere near her. The mixture of anger at the situation coursing through my veins and my cock constantly at half-mast with want for her was distracting my mind. I was two steps away from sealing this deal with him, and she’d be hanging off my damn arm squeezing the life out of it to get me to shut up.
Elizabeth threaded her arm within mine, and the two of us started out onto the terrace. I looked back at Cristoff as he talked with his sister and her husband, and he tossed me a playful wave. Fuck. That man had no intentions of coming out into this garden with us. What in the hell was wrong with everyone? Did no one understand that this was a damn business trip?
I walked alongside Elizabeth and away from the only person I needed to be addressing so we could flounce around in the moonlight like two lovesick individuals who couldn’t keep their hands off each other.
We stepped into the gardens, and the atmosphere was heady. The starry sky of Vienna twinkled above us, and Elizabeth’s hands were warm against my body. I looked down at her and watched the moonlight bathe her in its glow. She looked phenomenal in it. Nighttime suited her well. The two of us continued our journey toward the hedges, a place where I’d found her earlier. I’d gone back up to the room to change out of my clothes and into something else and found her scouring the damn place by herself.
But being there with her underneath the stars was something else altogether, and I felt my anger at dinner quickly falling to the background.
“I love all of the edelweiss that lines the pathways of the garden,” Elizabeth said.
“It’s nice.”
“And the rosebushes are phenomenal. I rarely ever see them paired with carnations, but the two are actually meant to be together.”
“How so?” I asked.
“They give support to one another. The head of a carnation flower is heavy, so it leans against the rose and it provides support. And also protection, because of a rose’s thorny stem.”
“What does the carnation provide the rose?”
“Shelter. Carnations grow out, not up. Roses are the opposite. Carnations fill in all the empty spaces of a rosebush and provide a strong foundation for the roses to grow as tall as they can. It’s a beautiful metaphor. My favorite in the flower world.”
“How do you know so much about flowers?” I asked.
The two of us paused by a fountain as she drew in a deep breath.
“The school I went to when I was younger had a very large garden. As students, we were expected to help tend to it and educate ourselves on the different flowers and cultivation tactics and their relationship with other foliage around them.”
“Sounds like an interesting school.”
“I have a lot of fond memories from it,” she said.
“Did your school have a mascot of some sort?”
“No.”
“What school doesn’t have a mascot? All schools have a mascot.”