Page 33 of The Sicilian’s Deal For 'I Do'

‘Why?’ She met his eyes in the reflection, her heart lurching in a now-familiar response to looking directly at him—and being seen.

‘Because it suits you.’

‘I mean, why all of this?’ Her hand gestured towards the bed. ‘You didn’t have to—’

‘I wanted to.’

‘Okay, but why?’

‘So many questions.’

‘One question, that you haven’t answered.’

His lips compressed, showing, momentarily, his impatience, but then he gave a nonchalant shrug and put his hands on her hips, turning her to face him properly. ‘Because you deserve this. And because I am sorry. I have spent the last year convinced you were as bad as your parents, that you were as guilty as they, and now—’

‘Now?’ she whispered.

‘I know that’s not the case.’

She frowned. ‘Why?’

‘Another question?’

She nodded once.

‘I can tell. I was wrong about you. I treated you badly, and I regret it. Please, accept my apology.’

So the necklace was a guilt gift? She didn’t want it to take the shine off things, but it did, even when, on her fateful non-wedding day, she would have given anything for Luca to acknowledge his fault, to actually apologise to her.

‘Why do you hate them? Why did you disappear like that?’

‘That’s more questions,’ he said quietly.

‘Don’t I deserve to know, Luca? It’s part of the same history you were so desperate to understand, after all.’

‘Perhaps the greater question is how you don’t hate them,’ he said after a moment. ‘The things you’ve told me about your mother, even the fact they’re willing to trade you away with the company...’

‘It’s really not like that,’ she said defensively.

‘Isn’t it? Why not?’

‘The marriage thing is, I know, hard to understand. It’s the twenty-first century and I’m in my twenties. It must seem absurd to you.’

He dipped his head. ‘I had never heard of something like this, when your father mentioned it.’

‘Arranged marriages aren’t actually that uncommon,’ she said with a lift of her shoulders. ‘But nor are they regular. For my parents, this is one of the ways they show love.’

He lifted a brow.

‘They worry about me.’ She toyed with her fingers. ‘They tried to have kids for years. They couldn’t. Then, when my parents died—they were old friends—they knew they had to take me, to raise me. I had been sent to foster care, which I hated, and then Jennifer and Gianni appeared and took me in. They loved me so much, when I needed it most.’

He listened silently, but she felt the judgement emanating from him. ‘I was only a child and the gratitude I felt to them for saving me from foster care, at a time when I was grieving my parents, made me feel...makes me feel...indebted to them for life.’

‘That is not how adoption is meant to work.’

‘Perhaps not, but for me, that’s how it was. Is. I know they’re not perfect,’ she said on a sigh. ‘And our relationship is complicated. But they do love me, Luca.’

He compressed his lips.

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