“To what do I owe this visit? It’s been what—a year? Two years, since I’ve seen you?” Not since the opening of a restaurant by mutual friends, and he knew exactly how long ago that had been.
“A year, but it went by so fast. I guess that’s what happens when you enjoy your freedom and have fun,” she said.
Her cutting remark only made him smile. “You wouldn’t know what fun is if it jumped up and bit you on the nose.”
They both shunned the typical trappings of entertainment that bludgeoned less focused people. He and Daniella were both goal-oriented and driven. Those characteristics should have helped their marriage work, but the cracks in their union had widened into valleys they couldn’t bridge.
He gestured at the guest chair. “Have a seat.”
“I’d rather stand.”
“Suit yourself.”
Cyrus settled into the high-backed chair behind his desk and observed her in more detail. She’d always been thin, although she appeared to be even more so now, and he wondered if she was taking care of herself. Whenever she worked hard, she tended to forego meals, grabbing a snack here and there, which he’d told her on numerous occasions was not healthy. At the pace she kept, it was important to fuel her body.
What she lacked in curves she made up for with breasts the size of cantaloupes. They were magnificent—the only word he could think of to describe them—and large enough to seem out of place on her slender body. His gaze dipped to them and he suffered the expected consequences. His groin tightened and his mouth watered. No doubt about it, they were his favorite part of her anatomy.
“I wouldn’t be here, except you won’t accept my calls,” she explained.
He lifted his gaze to her face. Her hair was parted in the middle but pulled back with gold clips. He’d always felt the hairstyle made her look too severe because of her pointy chin and high cheekbones. He preferred when she wore it straight or wavy and allowed the lustrous strands to soften her face and frame her delicate features.
“What could you possibly want to talk to me about?” He crossed his legs and leaned back in the chair, pretending to be relaxed when in fact her appearance had made him more tense than he was before. “You were the one who said everything we needed to say could be communicated between our lawyers.”
“That’s what I prefer.”
“Well then, what’s the problem? I take it you’ve changed your mind?”
“Obviously, Cyrus, but as usual, you have to be difficult.” She walked forward, carefully, as if approaching an undomesticated animal and she didn’t know how it would respond to her overtures. “I came because I want a divorce.”
“That would be obvious from the divorce papers you served me with. I haven’t forgotten.” His gaze shifted to the purse she held in front of her. She wasn’t wearing her rings, and the sight of her bare finger pissed him off.
“It’s been three years. Now you’ve petitioned the court to dismiss the divorce completely. You’re unnecessarily dragging out the process.”
“Unnecessary for you, but necessary for me.”
“Cyrus, it’s time we end this.”
“End what?”
“End this. The back and forth, this marriage neither of us wants.”
“Where is this coming from?” he asked. To his knowledge, nothing had changed recently.
“I’m tired of fighting you. What you really want is to win, so I’ve come to make you an offer. Tell me what you need to be crowned the victor. Whatever it is, I’ll give it to you.” She took small steps forward, and despite her outward calm, the harsh grip on her purse betrayed her agitation. Had it been a neck she would have snapped it for sure. “I’ll leave with whatever I came into the marriage with and you can have everything else, even what’s due me in the prenup. I’ll walk away with nothing I didn’t earn myself.”
Any other man would be ecstatic his wife made divorce so easy, but her words pushed another button and brought him that much closer to anger. His neck muscles tightened.
Cyrus rested his elbow on the arm of the chair. “You don’t want anything else?”