Page 34 of Rise

Her breath paused. He missed feeling it against his open shirt. “It could just be a nice dream.”

He held her more tightly. Would she slip back into that Megan who did everything for everyone else, and this Megan, the soft, sexy, selfish Megan—hisMegan, and now who was being selfish?— disappear?

“I never want to come between you and your family,” he said. “But Megan… Ach, I am going to say this wrong. When are you going to start living your own life?”

“Oof.” He’d done it now. She put space between them.

Alessandro hated himself. “I knew I would say it wrong.”

“To be honest,” she said, “until this past year, I thought I was.”

He noticed she hadn’t taken her hand away and took heart. “Do you think your siblings want you to give up everything for them?”

“Of course not. And I’m not giving up everything. Or anything!” she corrected herself at once. “I love learning about the company. I love writing Kane’s speeches. I love meeting everyone and working with the different departments.”

“Which is all good. But you said this past year has made you question that.”

“Not question, just…”

“Megan.”

She laughed, thank God. “I don’t know. Don’t you have any family you owe something to?”

He should have seen that coming. He should have just dropped it. Enjoyed her kisses, held her for as long as she’d allow it, then let her go.

“No.”

“Oh. No one you left in Italy?”

She was looking at him, her hand on his chest. So open and caring. He could trust her with this, what he wanted to remove himself from in the media. “I’ve been on my own since I was seventeen. They threw me out when I told them I wanted to be an actor.”

“That’s—” Her eyes widened and she searched his face. “That’s—positively Victorian!”

He smiled at her. “They live in a world of high culture. My father is a conductor; my mother is a world-class cellist. My brothers play instruments in orchestras around the world. My kind of art did not… did not live up to their standards.”

“Alessandro,” she said. “That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”

Oh hell. Her eyes were wet. “No, no, no, no,” he said quickly. “I am used to it. Do not cry. Now I wish I had not told you.”

“Don’t wish that.” She smiled and pressed her fingers to her eyes. “I’m glad you told me. It explains… well, it explains that darkness I’ve seen in you.”

“The ‘darkness’ is for the cameras.”

“Some of it.”

He looked away, to the far end of the conference room with its large black screen reflecting their images to them. “Sometimes, I do not know how much of me is the actor and how much the boy from Rome.”

“You said you were from Sicily.”

“I was born there, but we moved to Rome for my parents’ careers when I was very young.”

“Don’t they know who you are now? Don’t they watch your movies? No one can say what you do isn’t high art.”

He looked back at her. Compliments came so easily to her. Perhaps for this one minute, he would believe her. “I do not know if they watch them or not. We have not spoken in years.”

“Not even your brothers?”

“Not even them.”

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