Page 33 of Marrying the Enemy

“Is that why you’re here?” A humorless laugh scraped the back of her throat. “You could have called.”

“I don’t have your number.” He moved to hold a chair for her before taking one for himself. “Why did you leave Visconti Group?”

“Reasons.” She shrugged that off.

“Me?”

“No. Family stuff.” She frowned pensively at the water. “I didn’t tell anyone, if that’s what you’re asking. We agreed,” she reminded him with a sidelong look.

“They might have made assumptions.”

“They might have. I didn’t stick around to find out. Did your family? Make assumptions?”

“Probably.” His mouth curled slightly. “My situation is different. My sisters are from my father’s second marriage. We’re not as close as you seem to be with your brothers.”

“I’m not that close to them. They’re a lot older than me. Well,” she allowed with a tilt of her head. “I’m close with my middle brother, Jackson. He’s here in Italy. I used to stay with him on long weekends when I was at boarding school, only flying home for the longer breaks. He’s the one I feel most similar to. Nico is driven and ambitious. Bossy,” she summed up with a grimace. “Christo is very laid-back and fun to be around, but kind of impossible because he does what he wants. Jax and I are middle of the road. Sensible. Mostly,” she added ironically.

Dom hadn’t asked for her to tell him all that, but he seemed to listen intently, then said, “My sisters are all younger. Five of them.” He splayed his fingers. “I didn’t spend much time with them growing up so I don’t really know them.”

“Is your mother still alive?” She realized she didn’t know.

“She is.” He nodded absently. “She’s in New York and lives with her partner, but never remarried. It would have affected her support payments. My relationship with her is distant for a lot of reasons.”

“Such as?”

“I never fought to see any more of her than my father allowed, which was only a few weekends a year. We don’t really know each other.”

“Do you wish she’d fought for you?”

“No,” he dismissed easily. “We both knew to pick our battles with him. And sometimes I wonder if she saw too much of him in me to make it worth it for her.”

“The fact you’re here tells me you’re not that much like him,” she said with an ironic tilt of her mouth. “In what ways are you like him?”

“I’m practical. Determined. I can be ruthless. Like the way I left you in Australia, not looking back. Not even thinking until later that there might be someone else to worry about.”

“There isn’t,” she murmured, stomach doing somersaults above her empty womb. “This is probably the longest personal conversation we’ve ever had. Did you come all this way for that?”

“No.”

“What then?” Her voice became a ghost of itself.

The indent at the corner of his lips deepened with humor.

“Oh, don’t.” Her breath shortened. All of her nerve pathways contracted with anticipation.

“I don’t know what you’re thinking,” he mocked. “But I came to propose we marry.”

If the entire mountainside had fallen down upon her, she couldn’t have been more caught off guard.

“We can’t. Why would you even want to?” Did he have feelings for her after all? That thought sent her own thoughts scattering. Her heart tripped and thumped, trying to take flight. Adrenaline zinged through her system, urging her to flee because she didn’t want to have this conversation. She didn’t want to examine how she felt about him.

“The feud doesn’t serve anyone. It has to end,” he said simply.

All her ballooning thoughts condensed into a wet sack and fell back to earth. This had nothing to do with her, then. Nothing to do with emotion or attraction or even sex.

A sting of scorn rose beneath her skin. She fought to keep her reaction off her face, but felt as though she wore a stiff mask.

“What makes you think our marrying would end it?” she asked.

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