Page 41 of Marriage Bargain With Her Brazilian Boss (Billion-Dollar Fairy Tales)

When they’d settled into the chairs, he poured himself a glass of wine and produced sparkling water for her. “I’d like wine too,” she said, forking a piece of the flat noodles into her mouth.

“I thought you couldn’t mix alcohol with your meds.”

“It’s one glass, Caio. And I’m not really planning to drive myself anywhere.”

Nush took a sip after he poured and made a face. The dry bitterness drew a caustic trail down her throat. “That tastes...awful.”

“That’s a ten-thousand-dollar bottle, Princesa,” Caio said, looking suitably horrified by her comment even as his mouth twitched. “Maybe you need a discerning palate to enjoy it.”

She stuck her tongue out at him. “I think my dad took care of our palate when it comes to enjoying alcohol one way or the other. After seeing him in one of his binges, none of us can stomach alcohol in any form.”

He stared at her. “Then why did you insist I pour you some?”

“Because you decided I couldn’t have any,” Nush said, biting her lip.

“Stubborn minx.”

“Arrogant, high-handed stud.”

His laughter provoked her own and they busied themselves with the cutlery.

“I didn’t realize how it must affect you, or Yana or Mira, to see him like that.”

Nush shrugged. “Mira’s the one who’s seen him at his worst, who’s terrified that that kind of addiction runs in her veins.”

“You?”

She shivered and instantly, Caio placed a jacket over her shoulders. “My fears lie in a different place.”

His fork clattered to the plate with a loud clank in the silence. “Where?”

“It’s not a big deal. Neither is it something you can immediately fix for me.”

His brows tied together in a dark scowl. Breath hitching in her chest, Nush watched him.

The wineglass turned round and round in his large hand. “But you know that I’d try anyway, don’t you? To fix them for you?”

She swallowed, an overwhelming sense of affection surging through her. Turning away, she took a bite of her food, knowing that any of her attempts to hide from him were only half-hearted. She couldn’t play games like him, couldn’t control her thoughts and feelings around him in some kind of transaction. A sigh left her. “Promise me you won’t think me less for it?”

His golden-brown gaze held hers in a solemn promise. “There’s nothing in the world you could tell me that would make me think less of you.”

“Mama’s mental health problems...are hereditary.” She touched his wrist when he’d have spoken up. “I know it’s not a guarantee that I’ll get them, only that there’s a probability higher than...yours, for example. My fear is not even that I’ll inherit them. But more irrational...”

“Like what?”

“My recurring nightmare is that I’ll be left alone in some clinic, forgotten, with no one to visit me, that I’ll just fade away under the kindness of strangers.”

With a soft curse, Caio gathered her to him, his arms a steel band around her. “It’s never going to come to that, Nush. You’re never going to be alone like that. Never.”

“I loathe the idea of becoming some kind of burden on you.”

“Is that how you think of your mother?”

“Of course not,” she said, recoiling at the very thought. “I just... I have a hard time, still, believing that this is all real, Caio. That you want to spend your life with me. That it’s not a...”

An angry growl escaped from his mouth, making her pull back from the pit of her own insecurities. “What do I do to prove to you that I want this?”

“You don’t have to prove anything to me,” she said, alarmed by the hard edge of anger and something more in his voice. “Proofs and transactions and contracts...those won’t bind us.”

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