Page 22 of The Forbidden Bride He Stole

“I know. I just want to.”

And that was her last good feeling for the next several hours. Because after that she was forced to parade herself through the most awkward reception anyone could’ve ever had, where they ended up skipping cutting the cake, and leaving early.

When she was shut into the limousine that she had arranged for herself and Rocco, with an unsmiling Apollo sitting to her left, she let her head fall back against the seat. “Now what?”

She tried to ignore his closeness. The heat coming off his body. All of it mixing with what Mariana had said to her earlier.

Get it out of your system...

“We go back home. We must live together, and we will do so here. It is the easiest thing.”

“We just... Go home? We just act like that didn’t happen?”

“No. I’m not suggesting that at all. Of course it will be like it happened. You will now take your position at your father’s company. Your day-to-day is going to change drastically. And I will be here to offer support.”

“But we won’t go on a honeymoon or...”

He looked at her, his dark eyes unreadable.

“I wouldn’t think so,” he said.

“How come you don’t have to make it look legitimate to the board.”

“Because I’m me,” he said.

“That’s not fair. They’re just letting you do it because... Because what? Oh,” she said. “Because secretly they would rather like it if you were in charge. And that’s what they think is happening. They think that you are having a hostile takeover.”

“Probably.”

“That is horrendously insulting.”

“It is. But it is not what I’m doing. You have total control of your father’s company. I’m not trying to take anything from you.”

“Well, what a boon for me,” she said. “Misogyny and classicism are really powering this whole thing.”

“Everybody does what they think will be the most advantageous for them,” he said. “We all do it. Your friend Rocco was doing it. It seems to me that he had a hard life in Rome. It also seems to me that he might’ve been trying to make something new for himself.”

“You were willing to threaten that.”

“Yet again,agape. Everyone does what they must. I do not judge anyone for it. But neither will I let them simply get away with it. Not if my needs are different.”

“That is a very cynical way of looking at the world.”

“Has any part of your life given you a different perspective?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“I’m not a cynic. But I have lived. I had lived more life by the time I was your age than you would possibly believe. I had no optimism left in me about people.”

“What happened to you?”

Because she had seen it. A kind of hollow desolate sadness in his eyes that she couldn’t quite pin down. But she had never asked about his life. She had thought earlier that he had never shared, that he didn’t see her as a person. Did she see him as one? For all her feelings about him, had she ever asked him about his life? What his experiences were before she’d known him?

No. Because she’d been so young when she’d met him she’d imagined he existed the moment he’d first appeared in her life and not a minute before. And even as she’d grown older she hadn’t challenged that.

“Don’t worry yourself about what happened to me. It is the kind of thing you don’t want to infect your own thoughts. You did not have to live through it, and therefore you should not have to live with those images in your mind.”

“You make it sound terrible,” she said softly.

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