Page 115 of Ache for You (Slow Burn 3)
That rocks me back on my heels. “They were together?”
“When they were very young. Before she met my father.”
I have a flashback to the marchesa’s reaction when I mentioned Dominic’s name the afternoon at the house when I first found out Matteo was her son. She was upset but tried to hide it.
Whenever I cried as a child, I’d get a beating, she’d told me the day of my father’s funeral. I was too distracted to think much of it at the time, but now that simple phrase seems to reveal so much about her personality.
Or is he making this up on the fly?
“What happened?”
He exhales a heavy breath. “Honestly, I don’t know the details. The only reason I know at all is because I overheard a discussion between her and your father, shortly before they were married.”
I jerk forward several steps, my heart beating faster. “And? What did they say?”
Matteo’s jaw works. He’s angry, obviously uncomfortable, disheveled from our incredible dressing room interlude, and so handsome it hurts.
It physically, painfully hurts to look at him.
“Your father wanted to lend Dominic money. Apparently it was a regular thing, but my mother insisted he’d been generous enough and should say no. When he asked why she didn’t like Dominic, she said it wasn’t that she didn’t like him, but that she knew his character. After your father pressed her, she admitted they had a brief ‘entanglement,’ as she called it, before she married my father. My grandfather didn’t approve of Dominic, so he intervened and separated them. Dominic never believed that it was her father. He blamed her. From then on he made it his mission to discredit her name whenever he could. He spread awful rumors. He never forgave her for breaking his heart.”
I digest all that for a moment, my mind spinning. Dominic and the marchesa? I try to picture them as young people, in love, but can’t.
“Dominic never married,” I say, thinking hard, sifting through memories. “I remember he used to tell my father he found the only woman in Italy who didn’t care about money.”
“Yes,” says Matteo sourly. “Dominic always makes a big deal about money. Who has it, who doesn’t, why he doesn’t have enough. Personally, I think the man never had feelings for my mother. I think he saw a paycheck. I think my grandfather realized it, too. My mother was his only child, and the light of his life. If he thought Dominic was a good man, he never would’ve separated them, no matter how small Dominic’s fortune.”
I stand staring at Matteo, feeling helpless and overwhelmed, unsure what to believe. “What about Castello di Moretti? Does the government really have a lien on it?”
Matteo doesn’t flinch or break eye contact when he answers. “No.”
I’m not sure if that’s true, either, but I can probably look it up on the internet. There has to be some kind of government property portal where you can research outstanding liens and such.
“Miss Kimber.” Clara stands in the doorway to the back room.
“Yes, Clara?”
“If you have a moment”—she sends Matteo a disgruntled glance—“we need you on look six.” She turns and disappears again, muttering under her breath, leaving Matteo and I gazing at each other in painful silence.
Finally he says, “Well. I tried.”
He crosses the room in a few long strides and winds his arms around me, giving me a hard squeeze. He kisses me on the temple, whispers gruffly, “I meant everything I said in the dressing room. At least believe that.” Then he releases me and walks out the door without looking back.
Twenty minutes later I’m sitting on the stool, staring into space and trying to untangle the knots of my thoughts, when a courier drops off a paper bag from a nearby drug store. Inside are antacids, a travel toothbrush and toothpaste kit, and a big bottle of water, along with a note that reads You didn’t ask Dominic why he called me vicious. Ask.
I groan. “My life is a Shakespearean drama!”
From behind me, Clara says, “Hopefully not the kind where everyone dies at the end. Are you coming, or should we all go home? We’re getting old back here. My husband wants stromboli for dinner tonight, and it’s not going to make itself.”
I turn and look at her. “You know my father’s friend, Dominic, right?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think of him?”
She snorts. “He’s a man. What’s there to think? They’re nothing but overgrown babies. If they don’t have a woman around to cook for them and coo at them and tell them what to do, they’re lost. But I don’t think it’s Dominic you need advice about.” She drills me with a look.
I suddenly feel like a kid caught sneaking out of the house at midnight or ditching school.
