Page 20 of Dating the Don

I head inside, attempting to ignore her but the weight of her disapproval is heavy on my shoulders.

She’s sitting at the tea table in her room when I arrive. Waiting for me. She’s got her arms folded over her chest and her legs crossed at the knee. Her perfectly plucked brow is lifted in accusation as she glowers at me.

“Weren’t you the oneinsistingthat I settle down as soon as possible?!” I practically bark at her. Somewhere behind me the door that I slammed open taps shut again.

“I expected you to have more sense in your head.”

My eye twitches. I wasn’t able to react the way that I wanted to in front of Maeve. She would have taken my anger poorly or thought that it implied something that it didn’t. Ourbargainis too precarious as it is. I cannot allow her to get the wrong impression or doubt me, not even for a second.

“I don’t understand why it is that you’ve suddenly turned on Maeve when you are the one who brought her into this house in the first place. What is your problem?”

“You just act without thinking sometimes, Cristiano, and it will be your downfall. Mark my words, you are going to regret pulling this string.”

“Will you stop being so damned cryptic?! There’s nobody else here! Speak plainly or control your face when there are witnesses,” I hiss.

Family business and dirty laundry are never to be aired in public. I would have thought she knew that as she was the one who taught me that very same lesson. The hard way.

When she doesn't answer, I take a step back. I have to. I can’t allow myself to lose control. I rake my hands down my face and decide to try a slightly different approach. I move across the room and sit, uninvited, at her tea table. Mother makes a small noise of chastisement that I choose to ignore.

“You cannot truly sit there and pretend to ignore my interest in her.” I hold her gaze so directly that she has no choice but to look me in the eye. “You know that ever since I was old enough to know what these feelings meant…” I gesture to my chest as I speak, “that my heart has only ever beat for her, long before she had any idea that I felt this way.”

Annalisa’s lips purse. “You mean to tell me that this… this abomination of a union is real?”

She is reluctant to allow me to be head of the family due to my age, as if she had any choice. That role will always and only go to a man, and she knows it. She might not like taking orders from her son, but she better get used to it.

I could tell her of my hopes for what might come of this bargain but everybody must buy its validity. Including my own mother. So, my only answer—the obvious one—is to simply nod.

Annalisa sinks back into her chair and heaves a long, suffering sigh.

“Of course, I remember,” she finally admits reluctantly. “I used to find you in here rifling through my jewelry to give that girl a present. Every year on Valentine’s. I still do not know if you ever plucked up the courage to actually give her any of it.”

Even I had forgotten that. The habit had faded well before middle school, having begun when I was quite young. I handed them to Maeve's mother instead of giving them to her personally since I never had the guts to do it. I have no idea what became of the stuff after that, and I couldn't care less. Whether sheactually wore them or whether her mother pawned them, I suppose it doesn't really matter in the long run because Maeve would ultimately profit from everything. That was what truly mattered to me.

“What a monster you must think that I am,” Annalisa says when she finally speaks again.

No, not a monster. Never that.

“What sort of mother wishes to actively step between her child and their happiness? What right do I have to tell you who to love or how?”

All rhetorical questions that I know better than to answer. So, I go another route. “I think that you need to trust that I know well enough to know what is best for me.”

“You need to be careful, Cristiano,” Annalisa warns as she leans forward, her thin hand lifting to cup the corner of my jaw and brush her thumb over my cheek as she has done since I was a child. “I know that nothing I say can stop you from something that you’ve set your mind to. That has always been the case with you, my dear. But I urge you to listen to your mother and use caution.”

I wait for a moment before moving again, hoping that she’s going to offer up some sort of explanation, anything really.

“There are things that you do not know, that I hope you never uncover. But, believe me when I say that Maeve means trouble.”

Minutes later when I’m standing outside of her bedroom with my back pressed into her closed door, I don’t feel like I’ve come to any more sort of clarity on the situation than I had before.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

MAEVE

One Week Later

I don’t think I’m ever going to truly get used to seeing Cristiano just walking around in the same space as me. I keep waking up in bed next to him and expecting it to start to feel more normal somehow but I guess when somebody looks that good every second of the day, it’s not something that’s easy to get used to.

I can’t stop looking at him. Somehow, he makes putting on cufflinks look sexy.

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