Page 67 of Cruelest Contract
She scans the room again. “That’s the ranch brand,” she says, pointing to the metal shape hanging on the wall above my bed. “It looks like the sign by the entrance, only smaller.”
“This one hung by the front gate when my grandfather was alive.”
She continues her inspection and squints at my dresser. “Is that a picture of your mother?”
“Yes. My Uncle Sal gave me a bunch of old family photos when I visited him in New York last year.” I swipe the framed photo off the dresser and pass it to Cecilia.
In the photo, my mother had just turned twenty and she’s standing behind the counter of her father’s pizzeria. She had no idea that a few months later she’d meet Cassio Tempesta and marry him after a very short whirlwind romance.
Cecilia handles the photo with care and stares at my mother’s young face. “She had such a beautiful smile,” she says softly.
“She did,” I agree, very accustomed to the abrupt pang of a bottomless loss.
I watch while Cecilia gently, almost reverently, returns the photo to my dresser and reclaims her spot against the wall. She does her best to quit running her eyes over my chest.
“I must have caught you in the middle of getting dressed,” she says.
She’s eyeing my shorts. Pretending like she’s not tracing the shape of my cock.
“Nope. I was just about to jump into a hot shower. I stood out in the rain for too long.”
I hold her gaze, daring her to acknowledge what she did while she watched me at the window.
“I can come back,” she says and reaches for the doorknob. “We’ll do this later.”
I beat her to the door and flatten my palm on the wood, holding it shut. “No. We’re doing this now.”
She huffs and turns away, pauses to look at my neatly made bed, and then whirls around to face me, meeting my stare without blinking. I’ve seen these flashes of stubbornness in her eyes a few times and I can’t wait to hear what she says next.
“All right, Julian,” she says in a very clear, professional voice. “We’ll do this now. I’d like to have a very blunt conversation about your intentions.”
This is going to be fun.
“In that case, Cecilia, I’ll verybluntlytell you that I want you to be my wife.”
Her mouth falls open. She quickly shuts it. “I still don’t understand why.”
“Obvious reasons. You’re gorgeous and you’re intelligent and I’m extremely attracted to you. Our families have a longstanding connection. Plus, I don’t have time to date and I’m not interested in defending the life I lead.”
She mulls this over. “Hypothetically, what kind of marriage would we have?”
“A genuine one. There are far worse reasons to get married than the ones I’ve just listed. And you should know that while I’m often away on business, Storm’s Eye Ranch will always be home.Ourhome.”
That word makes an obvious impression on her.HOME.
But then her brows pinch together and she throws up her hands. “Look, I can’t imagine sitting here and doing nothing while you’re off running your kingdom. I have an accounting degree and I like working.”
“I thought of that. Between all of our operations we have plenty of accounting needs. We can set up an office for you and you will be included in the family business.”
She can’t conceal her surprise. She didn’t expect me to agree with her on that point.
Of course I agree. I appreciate that she’s smart and wants to be useful with her time.
“And you’ll always work for your family,” she says. “You’ll never leave the…” She stops short of uttering the word, like it’s a curse she doesn’t know if she should use.
“Mafia,” I finish. “You can say it out loud around here. And no, there’s no way to leave what runs through my blood, just as it runs through yours.”
She exhales and her shoulders sag. “That’s a fact I’ve tried to escape for a long time.”
