Page 36 of Marrying the Enemy

“You came,” he said, because he literally couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“I always do. Don’t I?” Her pretty mouth, painted scarlet, curled with self-contempt. She looked to the dark water where lights dotted the far shore.

A cold hand reached into his chest and gave his heart a quarter turn.

“You’ve spoken to your brother,” he surmised.

“I have.”

That’s why she was here, not because of him or them. Because she knew her family finances were in jeopardy. Why that disappointed him, he couldn’t say, since it was a lever he’d pulled to get her address and propose this marriage.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Ladies’ choice.” He kept the umbrella over her as they walked to the car. “I have a table booked at Il Gatto Nero, but it could stir speculation if we’re seen dining together.” The paparazzi knew that restaurant was popular with celebrities so cameras were always trained on the entrance. “If you’d rather dine privately at my hotel, we can do that.”

“Please don’t pander to me with the illusion of choice, Dom. We both know I don’t have one. The public option is fine.”

He waited until they were in the back of his car and his driver had them underway to ask, “What exactly did Nico say to you?” He was dying to reach for her, but he was pretty sure she’d snap in half if he did.

“It’s not what he said. It’s what he made me realize.” She pulled her attention from her side window. “I was very close to my grandmother. She was also the only girl in a family of headstrong boys. Her two eldest brothers had been drafted into World War II and didn’t come home. She knew what it meant to be treated as an asset, not a person.”

Dom’s grandparents had lost brothers to that war, too. It was the reason their great-grandparents had tried to shore up their partnership with the marriage between Michael and Maria, to solidify what they’d managed to hang onto through so many difficult times.

“Nonna didn’t want to be treated like a stock, traded and invested by her parents into an arranged marriage, so she defied them and eloped with the man she loved. That always seemed heroic to me. Aspirational. Even though the consequences continue to ripple into my life. I didn’t want to see that our family is still paying interest on a debt she incurred. I wanted to believe that her taking a stand meant I could and would be valued for my intelligence and ethics and dedication. That I was a person, not a vessel whose only purpose was to conceive and carry a strategic alliance. These aren’t childbearing hips, Dom.” She looked right at him as she said that. “Do factor that into your negotiations with my brother when you’re attaching a value to this marriage.”

Her tone was dripping with bitterness, but all he could think was, Children? He hadn’t considered what the reality of a family with her would look like. Some dark-eyed hellion planting her feet and closing her fists and saying a defiant, No, Daddy, most likely.

He smirked, entertained by that notion for absolutely no good reason at all.

He waited until they’d wound their way through a sea of glances and murmurs at the restaurant and were seated at a table by the window, wine in hand, before he spoke again.

“Was I your first?”

“What do you mean?” She played dumb, but her eyes flared in alarm.

“You know what I’m asking.” He had his answer in the mortified blush that stained her cheekbones and the way her mouth flattened to a pugnacious line while she turned her gaze to the candlelight reflected on the window.

Virginity was not something he prized or even considered much of a thing. By the time he’d hit his first home run, he’d rounded all the other bases dozens of times.

Being her first wasn’t gratifying in a possessive, ego-driven way. Well, maybe there was a little of that. He was growing more possessive of her by the minute, but he was doing his best not to be a barbarian about it. No, it was more about what being her only lover told him about her and them.

“You could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard that,” he said.

“From whom?”

“I put it together from bits of gossip.” He shrugged. “The first time I heard that you were saving yourself was in Budapest. To be completely frank, before that, I had never given you a thought. Your whole family was beneath my notice. The late arriving baby sister was never going to be a threat to me so your name was all I knew.”

Beneath my notice.

“This is turning into a great first date.” She took a hefty gulp of her wine and looked to the window again.

“After I left your room that morning, I caught up with the bachelor party, emerging from their hangover. I asked if anyone had recognized you as a Visconti. They hadn’t, but one said he’d heard you were saving yourself for marriage. He knew of a man who’d had his nose broken when your brother defended your honor.”

“Jax was demonstrating how it’s done,” she said with a flutter of her lashes. “So I could learn.”

“I dismissed it as urban legend. I had been with you that morning and knew that if I hadn’t stopped when I did, we would have had sex. There was no way you were saving yourself.”

She sobered and swallowed and frowned at the window. “Can we not do this here?”

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