Page 21 of The Scandal Behind The Italian’s Wedding

The very strange thing was that Minerva’s reaction was...unreadable.

She had been angry with him at some point during the evening.

She had not gone pliant, she had not melted against him, she had not responded at all.

Quite the opposite, she had been stiff. She had been still against his mouth, behaving like a woman who didn’t know what to do.

He had done his best to seize control of it, to change the tenor of things, but she had not allowed it.

And he could not for the life of him figure out if it had been inexperience or disgust that caused her to react in such a way.

Mostly because he had never kissed a woman who found him disgusting.

But then, he had never kissed a woman for show.

What made him most irritated was the fact that he was not disgusted by her.

Minerva wasn’t beautiful.

There was a prettiness to her. It was simply that she was also a bit plain, and he preferred something a bit gaudier. He had been raised, after all, with a prostitute for a mother. For the years when she’d been well, she’d been all hair, perfume and jewels, and it had been the same with her friends who had passed through their run-down apartment. His concept of beauty was a bit more bedecked.

She was also young. The younger sister of his friends, and because of that she’d been firmly off-limits from moment one.

The fact that she had the power to effect a response was irritating in the extreme.

The bridal party began to come down the aisle, though it was a simple bridal party. Violet walking arm in arm with Maximus, who came to stand next to Dante. He flashed his friend a smile.

“I will kill you,” he whispered, never breaking that smile. “I did mean it.”

Dante said nothing. But a grin tugged at the corner of his mouth as he turned to face the doorway of the cathedral.

And suddenly there she was.

Her hair had been twisted and gathered up into a complicated style that was loose and sparkling, thanks to jewelry of some kind that had been woven in.

The dress itself was simple, soft, flowing fabric that seemed only barely there. It rested over her curves like a fine mist. With each step she took, the long billowing lilac fabric swirled around her.

Something had been applied to her cheeks that made them glow in the candlelight, her lips, pale and shimmering.

She had been made up, but it was still very much her. Even more so than it had been the night of their engagement party. And somehow it was as if it had uncovered the essential beauty that Minerva possessed. A beauty he had never seen before.

She was ethereal. Like a creature of the earth transformed into one of the sky.

A treasure that had been hiding only to be brought out and polished now.

When she looked up at him, her green eyes shone bright, and he could see that it was her. And suddenly, the Minerva that he knew every day blended with this one, and he knew that he would never be able to unsee the beauty, even if she were to revert back to the way she’d been before.

When they joined hands, a sly smile crossed her face. Anyone watching would be forgiven for mistaking it for intimacy.

“I’m glad you decided to follow through,” she whispered.

“I would not abandon you,” he said, offended by the assessment he might.

“No,” she said, frowning. “Of course you wouldn’t.”

The priest began his solemn intonations and there was something about the way Minerva held herself, about the strange expression on her face that caused a response in the vicinity of Dante’s heart.

He had to wonder if for Minerva, this was somewhat conflicting.

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