Page 122 of Casanova LLC

“It’s just a job, you know? It doesn’t have to be my whole life anymore. I can actually have a life. A life with you. Separate from it.”

She went completely still in my arms.

“I’m just spitballing here, but maybe I can cut back a little? Start painting again.”

Her silence let me know I’d lit the very bomb I’d been trying to defuse.

She unwound her legs.

Her feet slid to the dock.

Her eyes came to my throat. “Explain.”

Claire

He lifted my chin, forced me to look in his eyes. “I have a responsibility to everything that—you know, to everything you just mentioned, and?—”

“And what about your responsibility to me?” I eased out of his arms and stepped back. “In this just-spitballing scenario?”

“Our life would come first.”

“I get to come first? Jeez, I’m honored.” I knew the sarcasm made me sound petty and immature and whiny, but was he serious?

“Claire. No one in the history of my family has ever offered their Forever anything. Dalliances, sure. Illegitimate children, no doubt. But their love? Their heart? Never.”

“But you’re not. You’re offering me exactly what I had before: a man who sleeps with other women.”

“What? No. What? No, professionally. It’s completely different.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is.”

“For you, maybe. For me, no. You say it’s just a job to you and, you know what, you could be right. Porn stars get married. Who am I to say what compartmentalizing you can do in your brain.” I tapped my temple. “But I don’t have a bento box up here.”

“We can work on that!”

“Do you have any idea how humans actually work?” He opened his mouth to argue, but I cut him off. “Okay, fine, you want to spitball, let’s spitball. Would we live in your apartment in the palazzo?”

“If you wanted.”

“So would I wait upstairs every night for you to come home from work? Wait for you to shower? Wait for you to be able to get hard again?”

“Claire—”

“Would I be allowed out of the apartment when you have a guest?”

“You’re inventing obstacles?—”

“Do you want children? Because I do. How would that work? ‘Oh, honey, your son wanted to practice his kicks on Saturday, so text me if you’re gonna fuck your guest in the garden, just in case, that would be great.’”

“Why are you trying to sink us before we even get off the pier?” I opened my mouth to argue, but now he cut me off. “Do you want to be with me? Do you? Because I’d rather know now. Please. Before I upend my entire life.”

He was so vulnerable in this moment. He could be any man holding his heart out to any woman. Standing on the dock of his ancestral palazzo, we could just as easily be standing in a restaurant parking lot, or a movie theater lobby, or a closed-door office, or anywhere else these conversations between two people took place.

It softened me. “Of course I do. But I want to be with Alessandro Vianello, my favorite painter and the man I love. I don’t want to be with Casanova.”

He blinked at me. “You love me?”

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