Beautiful Revenge (A Good Wife #1) - Sienna Blake Page 0,77
showing respect. I’d never been one for conforming. Besides, I couldn’t seem to help it. He was mesmerizing, dark power rolling off him. This was a man who knew what he wanted and would not take no for an answer. This was a man who demanded the world and always got it.
As I watched him watching me, something foreign pricked at my lower belly.
“Call Mike. Ask him where that damn preliminary report for the Forrest takeover is. If he doesn’t have it ready, fire him.”
I frowned. We’d been driving for at least twenty minutes now. Was he going to talk on the phone the whole damn time?
I crossed my arms over my chest. His eyes dropped blatantly and unapologetically to my breasts. Small yet perky, they were being pushed together by my crossed arms. Something flashed in his eyes. My chest tingled at his heavy assessment. I wanted to uncross my arms but I was paralyzed, like he’d somehow pinned me with his stare.
“I don’t give a shit. It was supposed to be on my desk by the end of last fucking week.”
His cursing caused me to flinch. I’d never heard such blatant swearing. So foul. So rude. The prickling in my stomach turned…warm. Liquid. How strange.
His eyes snapped back up to my face, his voice growing more aggressive at the unknown person on the other end of the line.
I wanted to snatch that stupid earpiece from his head.
Instead I pressed my lips together, tilted my head and raised an eyebrow at him. I knew I shouldn’t be displaying my disapproval—this was not the action of a good wife—but dammit I was jet-lagged, I hadn’t slept for almost twenty-four hours, and I’d ripped myself from my family and married a stranger who lived on the other side of the world. It might as well have been another planet.
I felt like I might cry. I didn’t want to. Especially not in front of him.
Instead I channeled all of this flurry of emotion into my glare.
“Roger, I’m going to have to call you back.” Without waiting a beat, he ripped the earpiece from his ear and tossed it onto the seat beside him.
His eyes assessed me, his perfect lips pulling into a half smile. I was sure my hair was a mess and I had bags under my eyes, but he seemed pleased with what he saw.
“Noriko.” His voice moving across my name was seductive like bassy jazz.
“Mr. Blackwell, I presume,” I replied in English.
“Please, call me Drake.”
“Drake,” I repeated his name. It felt like power on my tongue. “How good of you to notice I’m here,” I couldn’t help adding.
His dark eyebrow raised in response. “I came to pick you up at the airport.”
“Well, that certainly compensates for not being present at our wedding ceremony.” My lips dripped with sarcasm.
“I had something important arise that I had to deal with personally.”
“So you sent an assistant in your place to pretend to be you in front of the celebrant?”
He gave me an odd look, like he was trying to decipher me. I imagined that it wasn’t often that he was met with such blatant disapproval. “My signature on the contracts are real, I can assure you.”
I almost snorted. “Will you be sending an assistant to perform in your place on our wedding night?”
His lip twitched. Now I’d really pissed him off. “That will not be happening,” he growled out between clenched teeth.
“Good to know that you will be present for some things.”
“I’m a very busy and important man,” he said as if he was telling me a truth, not bragging at all.
“And so humble, too.”
“I’m just telling you how it is.”
“I’m not surprised you think so. You seem to surround yourself with people who are all at your beck and call.”
His lip lifted into a scowl. “Do you even know how much that telephone call that I cut off for you was making me? Do you even realize how much my time is worth?”
“I’m sure you’re going to tell me,” I muttered.
His eyes flared. Before I could react, he reached across the divide with his long arms, grabbing me by the wrist. His grip was firm, on the verge of hurting me, but not quite. He yanked me across to where he was sitting. I landed, sprawled across his lap. I let out a yelp and stiffened.
He was close. He radiated heat even through his suit; I felt my own body growing hot. He smelled heavenly, of expensive cologne, fresh and clean