Page 104 of The Scandal You Started
Maybe he was still breaking Rayna’s trust a bit by confiding in her uncle, but right then, he was in desperate need of a father’s guidance.
Dominic adjusted his hands around the broomstick as he muttered, “Would you have known had you not heard what I said?”
“Are you asking if I already knew?” Dominic nodded. “Yes. I did.” The man took a second to voice his thoughts. “Rayna has…changed recently. Not obviously, but she seems less…guarded. But I noticed how you looked at her time ago. During that first dinner, in fact.”
Oh.
Perhaps hedidneed to work harder to hide his feelings. But his pride and hope swelled at the thought that Rayna’s family had noticed a change in her because of him, squashing his desire to hide his feelings into an even smaller ball. He wouldn’t go against what Rayna had asked of him, but it would damn near kill him.
“I have spent many hours here with you,” Dominic said, walking to stand beside the man. “But you did not once suggest you knew how I felt for her.”
“I was waiting for some indication that Rayna liked you too, because, well…” Declan puffed out an amused breath as he rested his forearms against the flat of the stall door. “I take it from your complaints to Beast that you’ve discovered what she thinks of relationships.”
Dominic chuckled tiredly as he rested the broomstick to the side of the door. “It was somewhat more of a discourse on the pitfalls of love and marriage.”
Declan Griffin laughed. “Ah, yes. There probably isn’t anyone she knows who hasn’t heard that speech at least once.”
“I’m struggling with the fact I can see reason in many of her objections. Yet I do not think she is correct.”
“That’s because she isn’t. Not entirely.”
“How do I make her see that?”
“Dominic…” Declan’s lips formed his next words, but then they flooded out as a sigh. “They won’t let you stay. You know that, don’t you?”
“I am aware of this rule, yes.”
“So you know you can’t be with her.”
Dominic fortified his shoulders. “I will find a way. There has to be one. Some sort of compromise where I can remain with her without abandoning my own time and family.”
“It’s a path that will likely lead to heartbreak.”
“I will not be deterred off this path. I love her. And I would rather tear out my own heart than be without her. But I will find a way to make it possible.”
Declan searched Dominic’s face, then a teasing smile tugged at the older man’s mouth. “She has to want to marry you first.”
The playful jab made Dominic drop his head, his shoulders shaking on a self-deprecating laugh. “Yes. There is that issue.”
“But,” Declan continued. “You can’t make her see that she’s wrong.”
All amusement vanished from him. “Whyever not?”
“She’s too stubborn to be reasoned with when it comes to the topic of marriage. And it’s probably because of the things that have happened in her life.”
Dominic let his silence ask Declan to elaborate.
“She was only little when her parents got divorced—”
“Wait,” Dominic interrupted in surprise. “She knew her parents? I had thought—well, I had assumed…she never revealed she knew them.”
He’d thought Victor had raised her from a young age, and that she didn’t remember or had never met her mother and father.He hadn’t considered she’d spent a portion of her life with them before Victor had adopted her and George.
But then again, had he ever asked her?
“I can’t say that surprises me,” Declan said as he stole a glance at Beast, nibbling on a hanging salt lick. “It’s not something she finds easy discussing. I’ll let her tell you the details herself, but yes, she knew her parents. They divorced several years before Victor adopted her. That, and a few other difficult moments in her life, probably triggered her skewed view on relationships.
“Love and marriage—they’re not things that guarantee happiness, and she’s already seen and experienced a lot of the heartbreak that comes with that. I don’t doubt that’s why she doesn’t want anything to do with either of them.
