Page 14 of Under His Embrace

I shook my head. “My personal life isn’t your business.”Not anymore.

He huffed. “Yeah, you’ve madethatclear. How did you end up at A&J’s? Walk me through it, from the moment you left Beckson to now.”

I bristled. “I just told you that my life isn’t your business.”

“The sole surviving employee of a Constella-owned business is. The life of the eyewitness to an attack on a Constella-owned business is. So fill in the details, Chloe. Explain to me how you’re not involved with this shooting.”

You asshole.

“What happened since you told me that you ‘can’t do this’ all those years ago and left me?”

Oh, Franco.My heart softened at his hurt tone, but I couldn’t press rewind and undo the damage I’d done to him. “I went to college in New Mexico, on a scholarship. I dated a few guys. I ended up dropping out when my courses got too hard with maintaining other things.”

“What other things?”

I ground my teeth slightly, damning him for picking for details. “Hobbies. Family.”

He rolled his eyes at that mention. I didn’t mean family as in my judgmental parents I couldn’t stand, butmyfamily. The very small one I’d started.

“I mainly just worked hard at whatever jobs I could find and tried to avoid contact with my parents. They were too overbearing.”And still are.

“That’s it? That’s all that you’ve been up to since you left town? All that happened between when you left me in Beckson and your showing up to work at A&J’s?”

I nodded, praying he’d buy it.

He stared at me, seeming to search my face for any clues of deception. I wasn’t in the mood to tell him my biggest secret.The longer I kept that sliver of truth in my mouth, unspoken, the more he seemed to get angry.

There was no way this sexy man could be a mind reader and justknowthat I wasn’t telling him all of it.

“Was it worth it?”

“What?” I held my breath, suspended on the edge of nervousness and confusion.

“Was it worth it? All those years that we were apart. Was it worth it?” His lips stayed pressed in a firm line. As he leaned over, his blond hair shaded his brow. Slanted closer, he seemed stuck in a struggle not to reach out to me. He refrained, but the tension between us grew and grew.

I stared at him, refusing to answer. “It’s not fair of you to put me on the spot like that. Now? After I was chased and nearly shot down and…” I growled, shaking my head. “You can’t ask me that out of the blue. You wouldn’t have understood my reasoning. Not then or now.” I stood, too upset and intimidated to sit here and take this line of questioning that had nothing to do with what his Mafia family could care about. My reasons to leave him had nothing to do with the deli shooting.

“It’s not fair of you to still be so mad now,” I insisted.

“No.” He shot to his feet and stepped closer. “No, Chloe. It’s not fair that I’ve spent half of my life missing you.”

I frowned, bothered about his troubled expression and stormy gaze because I was the cause of it. I’d caused him all this pain and heartache.

“Nothing’s fucking fair about how you left me.”

Tears burned behind my lids, but before I could will them back, he closed the distance between us and kissed me hard.

7

FRANCO

The second I crushed my lips against hers, I was consumed with deeper longing than I’d ever felt before. I thought I'd yearned for her before, all those years I couldn’t get over her. I assumed I was at the bottom of despair in recalling all the memories of her when I lay in bed at night unable to sleep.

That was nothing. Now that I had a chance to savor her warm lips, parting in a gasp against mine, all my desire and grief coalesced into something so potent and intense that I was immediately sucked into such lust that I could barely breathe.

She couldn’t, either. Not with how firmly I held her to me. Inhaling through my nose, I struggled against the need for air as I smashed our mouths together in wet, hot perfection.

Just like before. She wasjustlike before, and the familiarity of kissing the one woman I’d always wanted left me shaken and busted apart.

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