‘I ‘ll need a copy of the guest list and those who have agreed to attend.”
‘You have stopped fighting me.”
She opened her door before he had a chance to come around and do so.
‘What’s the point? The auction is in less than two weeks. When it’s over you’ll be gone.”
She slid out of the car and did not hear his muttered,
‘Do not bet on it.”
Several hours later Elisa seriously questioned her assumption that there was no point in arguing with Salvatore. She had thought that her best defense against the feelings he engendered lay in ignoring him. It hadn’t worked. She felt as if her life had been taken ove
r by a steamroller and she was getting flattened in the process.
She and Salvatore were alone in the shop. It was close to closing time and di Adamo had already left. So had Salvatore’s men who were installing the new security system. It was not finished.
They’d run into a snafu with the old wiring and it would be tomorrow before it could be fixed.
Salvatore had been furious but there had been nothing anyone could do.
Which had given her a perverse, if silent satisfaction. He could not order the entire universe to suit his pleasure, no matter how much he might like to or what kind of kick he got out of bossing her around.
Keeping to her plan of least resistance therefore least interaction with him she had ignored or at least pretended to ignore, his constant presence. When he and di Adamo discussed her as if she were not there she acted as if that were the case. She refused to be drawn into his discussions with di Adamo regarding security measures.
She had kept her mouth shut when he dictated that he and she would stay behind to close the store. Alone. She had pretended not to notice him making reservations for dinner that night for the two of them at a restaurant they had frequented during their brief affair. Even though he’d made them right in front of her.
But this latest was just too much. She smacked the hand away that was offering her the small golden rose pin and glared up at him.
‘I am not wearing a tracking device.”
Salvatore’s brows rose but his mouth curved in satisfaction.
‘I thought you did not want to argue with me ” She felt like a tea kettle ready to boil over.
‘I don’t want to be with you at all. I thought if I didn’t argue with you, I could ignore you, but you’re determined to make that impossible aren’t you?” His dark brown eyes narrowed and his mouth set grimly. ‘Yes.”
That stopped her in the process of turning around and walking away. She spun back to face him frustration making her so tense her muscles ached.
‘Why, Salvatore? Why torment me?”
‘I have no desire to torment you. You belong to me. I will not allow you to pretend I do not exist in your life.”
She did not believe he had just said that. ‘You cannot be real. No way did you say that.”
‘I said it. Accept it.”
‘I don’t belong to you.” The very idea was obscene. ‘you rejected our child and now you want to lay claim to me.” No way. Not in a thousand years.
She hardly realized she’d been saying the words out loud until he responded.
‘I did not reject our child.”
‘How do you work that one out?” she asked, her voice ridiculing him. ‘ooh, I’ve got it.”
Then she touched her finger to her temple and pursed her lips, nodding.
‘you didn’t believe the baby was yours, therefore you did not reject your own child. How convenient for you.”