Page 122 of Claimed At First Sight

“How about you explain to me what this is all about?”

Chapter Thirty-Five

Maximo

Mia’s eyes are riveted to the black album in my hand. I’ve never seen her look so horrified.

She takes a startled step back.

She knows exactly what this is. Good, that saves time.

“Give me that,” she hisses, reaching for it.

I lift it higher. She’d have to come closer and jump, risking a collision with me to get it. But she’s too dignified to do that.

“No.”

Her eyes shoot daggers at me. If stubborn Sicilian women could kill through force of will alone, I’d already be a cautionary tale.

“This clearly doesn’t belong to you.”

I purse my lips as if considering her words, then shake my head.

“That’s debatable.”

She just stares at me.

“How could this possibly be debatable?” She lets out a long, strangled breath. “It has my name written right across the cover.”

“It has, but as my future wife, this belongs to me.”

She blinks a few times as if to make sure she heard me correctly. Then she throws back her head, staring at the ceiling and letting out a long, tortured groan.

Some small part of me is satisfied by her reaction. The rest remains thoroughly irritated.

“Oh God, please give me strength,” she mutters toward the ceiling.

For what? Patience?

Judging by the look she levels at me a second later, she’s asking for the restraint not to commit murder.

“You are completely insane, insufferable, infuriating, and I genuinely don’t know how you’ve survived this long.”

She rubs her temples as though I’m personally responsible for the headache forming behind her eyes. Looks like I’m not the only one suffering.

“How can I make this any clearer?” She flings her hands into the air. “I have no intention, desire, or inclination whatsoever to marry you. None. Zero.”

She points emphatically at the floor between us.

“I would rather go swimming in Lake Michigan in the middle of winter than spend the rest of my life bound to someone as controlling, overbearing, and tyrannical as you.”

Her eyes flash. “Frankly, hypothermia sounds preferable.”

The denial should irritate me. Instead, it sharpens my determination. Because if Mia felt nothing, she wouldn’t react to me with such intensity.

Every time she insists she wants nothing to do with me, she somehow manages to convince me of the opposite.

I sit down in an armchair, setting the album on the small table beside me and placing my hand on top of it. Mia’s eyes follow my movement.