“So,” he said, “there’s a method to my madness, Ms Evans.”
I yelped when he whacked my pinkie.
“Sherry. Schooner.”
I swatted irritably at the pointer, but Ronan easily pulled it back like a fishing reel. He raised a pointed eyebrow as he held the pointer out of reach from me.
“Any strong emotion will do according to my studies,” he said. “We could try arousal if you aren’t particularly inclined toward anger.”
He couldn’t hold back his grin as he eyed the crumbled mini uniform behind me. His attention moved back to me.
“But I know how easily anger comes for you, love.”
I shifted in my chair so I was fully facing the table and said, “I imagine most women who come into any type of contact with you find anger comes quite easily.”
Ronan chuckled. “It is strange, is it not?”
I rolled my eyes.
Ronan began to go through each of the glasses and plates and napkins and forks and knives and spoons and shakers and place cards and saucers in front of me. He went through when you use, when you don’t use, how you use it, how you don’t use it, where it goes, where it doesn’t go, what you call it, what you never call it unless you want the whole goddamn world to implode.
It would have been mind-numbingly boring and irritatingly useless information to learn had it not been for the scattered pricks and prods, smacks and whips, slaps and pats of Ronan’s pointer. He did it just intermittently enough to keep me from saying fuck it all to hell, upending the table, and stalking out to take a dip in the pool after asking for a margarita from Benson. My anger would threaten to boil over and Ronan would promise to stop only long enough for me to cool off enough to start up all over again. He was the worst kind of fly: a strategic, intelligent, cunning fly.
He hovered around me, darting this way and that when I lashed my arm out at him. His laughter buzzed in one ear, then the other. Ronan seemed to have trained his whole life in the subtle art of being a constant pest and getting away with it.
I finally burst after an hour of Ronan drilling me with pompous, ridiculous, snobby extraneous terms like demitasse and fish fork and goddamn mother fucking schooner.
Throwing my hands up into the air in frustration, I moaned, “Why do I need to know any of this? What is the point?”
Ronan grinned mischievously. “Oh, you want to know the point?”
The tip of his pointer nudged my ass again and that was it, that was fucking it. The legs of my chair screeched horribly against the dark panelled floors of the library as I stood.
“Give me that,” I growled through gritted teeth and wrenched the pointer from Ronan’s loosened grip.
“I am sick and tired of you acting like you’re better than me just because you call this a champagne ‘flute’ instead of just a funny-looking cup,” I shouted before whacking the flute.
It shattered as Ronan watched with an amused grin. He leaned lazily against his lectern as my tirade stormed on.
“Oh, look at me,” I said in my most offensive posh accent possible, “I’m so rich and powerful because I know a teaspoon from a dessert spoon.”
I sent the teaspoon and dessert spoon flying across the library, respectively. Ronan smiled and sipped from his World’s Greatest Teacher mug as he watched me destroy the table arrangement, making a complete mess of things as I went through plate after plate, glass after glass, spoon after spoon.
By the time I was done I was winded and red-cheeked and the pointer was hanging limply by my side. Ronan lifted his mug once more and then smacked his lips.
“Finished?” he asked, observing the wide radius of my tornado’s wreckage.
I looked around at the shattered glass and scattered forks myself and then nodded.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m good.”
Ronan clapped his hands. “Good.”
I stared at him as he then moved from behind his lectern, plopped down on one of the big leather chairs in front of the cold stone fireplace, and picked up one of his books. My anger, which I thought I’d fully depleted, flared again as he randomly flipped through the pages with a big victorious smile on his face.
“What?” I growled, my grip on the pointer tightening till my knuckles shone white through my tanned skin. “What the hell are you still grinning at?”
Ronan brushed a sprinkling of glass he suddenly noticed from