Page 36 of Married to the SEAL
She skirted around him in the small room. “I was thinking, since I can’t feed the baby and I still have to pump, what’s to stop me from having a drink or two?”
“What’s your poison?”
“I like wine. And tequila. But not together.”
The wine was no surprise, but he wouldn’t have taken her for a tequila girl. She was full of surprises, and the idea of spending the evening with her was more appealing than he wanted to admit, though the last thing they needed was to let go of their inhibitions around each other.
“Sounds good to me. Chinese food and a Riesling?”
Her blue eyes sparkled. “Make it champagne and you’ve got a deal.”
Three hours later they were sitting at a table in the darkened corner of a Chinese restaurant, a half-empty bottle of champagne sitting in an ice-filled metal bucket.
“It felt good to be up there tonight,” she said.
“You were amazing.”
“Amazing?” She laughed. “I don’t know about that. It’s been a long time since I stood behind a podium.”
“Yet it looks like you belong there.”
She took a sip of her champagne. “You should have told me you weren’t drinking. I wouldn’t have ordered the whole bottle.”
“I’m here to keep you safe. Besides, I wanted you to relax. You’ve earned it.”
“Thanks.”
“Do you see yourself in politics one day?”
Her eyes went wide. “Me? I guess I never really thought about it. That was always my father’s thing.”
“Then what was your thing?”
She laughed. “I was the one who always screwed everything up. You wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for me and the noticeable absence of my baby’s father.”
“Tell me about him.” He should’ve been sorry that he’d spoken the words, but he wasn’t. He wanted to know. Hell, he’d wanted to know since he first set eyes on her.
She cocked her head and stared at her glass. “Et tu, Matteo?”
“Yes, me, too.” He sensed the question caused her pain, but he couldn’t stop himself from wanting the answer. “You don’t have to tell me, of course.”
“I already did. I thought we were in love. It sounds stupid now because I know it wasn’t true, but then it was the only truth in the whole wide world.” She shook her head as if to clear it. “Listen to me. I sound like a foolish young girl.”
“Relationships are always changing. Just because you are not in love at the end doesn’t mean you weren’t in love at the beginning.”
“He told me he wanted to marry me months before I got pregnant. I had no doubt in my mind that’s what would happen. We would get married, I would have the baby, and we would be a family. We’d live in Switzerland away from politics and my father and everything that was wrong in the world.” She took a deep breath and exhaled. “And then he left me.”
“Do you wish he’d come back?”
There it was, the question he really wanted answered, and his stomach clenched in anticipation of her response. She had already told him about her lover, but she’d left this part out.
They were alone in a strange town, stuck here for the night and sharing a bedroom. They’d already come very close to making love. Her answer had the potential to change everything between them.
The words of the priest who married them came to mind.
God works in mysterious ways to bring us the people we are meant to have in our lives.
Was he meant to have Grace in his life forever? In the short time he’d been here, he’d already come to care for her and Nico deeply.
