Page 23 of Keeping My Bride

I frown as I think about my childhood. “Maybe that’s why my father sent me away,” I offer.

Dante shakes his head. “No, you know why you were sent away.”

He’s right; however, I don’t know if I ever understood the full reason. I was only told it wasn’t safe for me at home. It was not long after my mother died. I was shipped off to boarding school in another state with a suitcase full of my things.

“You were better off,” Dante tells me. “The things I saw and did as a kid…” His voice trails off as he stares off into the distance like a barrage of bad memories are hitting him.

“I wish we could have just run away together,” I whisper, coming closer to him. I wrap my arms around him and inhale his familiar scent of soap. “We spent so many years apart.” After I finished with boarding school, I went to live with my aunt. Dante and I kept more in touch then, and he even came to visit me every weekend. When I came home for my grandfather’s funeral, my father appointed Dante as my own personal bodyguard. I trust him with my life.

The mop falls from Dante’s hands as he wraps his arms around me. I feel him smelling my hair, and it makes me laugh.

“Do I stink?” I joke.

“No. You smell really good.”

The hug starts feeling too intimate…and awkward, so I pull away from his embrace. Dante and I have never had more than a friendship, even though I’ve suspected for years that he wanted more. My father would have never allowed it, though. And now that I’m married…well, that’s all off the table now. I could never be with Dante, not as long as I’m married to Luca Vitale.

I walk to the fridge and open it up, inspecting the contents. “How about I make us lunch?” I suggest.

He stares at me for a few seconds, and I can see the longing in his eyes that shouldn’t be there. “Sure,” he finally says before returning to mopping.

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