Page 50 of The Scandal Behind The Italian’s Wedding

“Really? And tell me, Minerva, in your healthy family, how is your sense of who you are? How is your sense of self when compared to everyone else?”

“I can’t help it I was born into a family of overachievers,” she said.

“I suppose not. But I’m just saying. Your family is among the most loving I’ve ever known, and can you honestly tell me they haven’t given you issues of some kind? Love doesn’t erase all of the issues out there in the world.”

“I never said it did,” she said.

“No, but on some level I think you believe it might.”

“Wouldn’t it be a nice thing to believe?”

“I’m not sure where that would leave my life.”

She nodded slowly. Then she rose up from where she was sitting and crossed to him, pressing her hand to his bare chest and stretching up on her toes, kissing him slowly. Usually when they came together, there was an urgency to it. He was extremely conscious of her inexperience, and it had taken her a while to figure out how she felt about that.

Because the first time he had been considerate, but he had treated her like she knew what she was doing.

He had a tendency now to treat her like glass.

But still, they didn’t linger over these sorts of kisses.

He braced his hand against her hip and held her as they did, and she felt warmth flood her body. An ache. A need that went beyond sexual. And when they parted she looked into his eyes, and she tried to see something. Anything. Caring. A connection.

She couldn’t read it. She couldn’t read him.

“Dante, you can have whatever life you want. You’re a billionaire.”

A small smile touched his lips and he brushed his thumb over her cheekbone. “Do you get all your ideas from books, Minerva? Or have you lived any of your own life at all?”

The words were said softly enough, but they were designed to pierce her chest.

They were designed to reinforce the fact that she was younger. That whatever she thought or felt, it would never be right, not in his eyes, because he knew more, had experienced more.

It wasn’t fair.

And he knew it.

She turned away from him and went back and picked Isabella up. “It’s fine,” she said. “And yes, Dante, I have experienced things in life. You know, the death threats. Making the choice to be a mother to Isabella. And when I made that choice, by the way, I didn’t make it thinking that it would be temporary. Thinking that all he would do was offer her base protection over her life. I knew that I was giving myself to her. To this. Maybe I understand more things than you think.”

It was only when she had reached the relative safety and sanity of the house that she realized he had succeeded in derailing the conversation, even if she was the one who had left it on a good parting shot.

He was uncomfortable talking about family.

And given what his mother had done to him, she did understand. But it had nothing to do with her or Isabella. And none of it did anything to soothe the longing inside her. For this to be real. He’d said that she was going to be his wife in truth, but he didn’t mean it. Not in the way that she recognized it. He meant sex.

And the sex was lovely, she wouldn’t pretend that it wasn’t. But for her all it had done was open up a deeper desire inside her. It satisfied nothing.

Because there was only one aspect of them that was engaged in it. Or rather, one aspect of him. His body. Not his heart.

And she wanted...

She wanted it. His heart.

She was perilously close to being in love with her husband.

He saw her. Whether clothed or naked, on the beach or in the kitchen, their bedroom, he saw her. And she had spent a lifetime feeling very unseen.

He wanted her.

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