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“Excuse me?”
“You are more willing to run from the possibility of happiness because it challenges some twisted belief you’ve got locked in your head than take a chance and face the unknown. That’s chickenshit.”
“Don’t tell me what I am,” I fired back. “You don’t have that right. You broke my heart. You are the one who ruined everything. Don’t sit there and condescend to me that I’m not the one willing to give people chances, because that’s not true. I gave you everything that was mine to give and I loved you, Luca, and you cheated on me!”
Crap! I bounded away from him, jerking on the ridiculous lingerie I’d worn into Malvagio. I felt more vulnerable and exposed than being completely nude. I didn’t want Luca knowing that my feelings for him went deeper than I was willing to admit.
“I want to go home,” I said, tears crowding my eyes. A mental breakdown felt imminent, or at the very least an ugly sobfest. Emotions, both good and bad, crashed into me like snowballs from every direction. “Luca, now!”
At the near-hysterical note in my voice, Luca sprang from the bed and pulled me into his arms. I wanted to push him away, but my arms had no strength. All I could do was allow him to fold me into his embrace and hold me so tight that all the broken pieces inside me had to knit back together, even as I struggled to keep them apart.
No, I wasn’t ready to love him again. I wasn’t ready to give him exactly what he wanted. He could not win!
Finding my strength, I pushed against him. “Stop. I want to go home.”
Luca let me go. “Home? And where is home? You have no home here in California. You left without any solid plans. You’re so goddamn hotheaded you didn’t think this through.”
Luca stalked away from me, striding naked to the bathroom. The slamming door echoed behind him. Alone in the room, I let the tears fall. He was right.
I was scared. I was hotheaded. I was reactionary.
And in that moment I felt like I’d gotten everything wrong—which I hated even more.
How could he possibly turn the argument around so that I was the one who felt terrible? As if I’d based my opinions on fake news and gossip.
There was nothing fake about the ache in my heart. The memory of seeing that woman perched on my boyfriend’s lap, immortalized in print for everyone to gawk at, was still very clear in my mind.
I could almost look back and say, You know what, we were both young and stupid. But that did nothing to ease the pain and the suffering I went through after he broke me!
I was damaged because of him, and it was hard for me to wrap my brain around the fact that the person who had damaged me the most was the one I still wanted.
Luca reappeared, a specimen of male perfection even as every muscle was rigid and taut with anger. No matter what, he still had the power to take my breath away. I supposed I could add that to the stack of crosses I had to bear when it came to Luca.
Seemed fitting, because the truth was pretty brutal.
No matter how far I ran, I would never escape the fact that Luca would always be in my heart.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Luca
THE RETURN RIDE to the hotel was silent. I’d lost all the ground I’d gained, and I was kicking myself for playing my hand too soon.
I could practically feel Katherine vibrating with anger and hurt, too many memories from the past standing between us.
If I tried to explain, it would come off as justifications, and that was the last thing she wanted to hear right now.
I wasn’t going to grovel over an incident that was so fucking stupid it was practically a nonissue. I hadn’t cheated on Katherine—I’d never even kissed that woman—but appearances were everything, and she’d been on my lap, topless.
What Katherine didn’t know was that immediately after the paparazzi took the picture, I removed the drunken starlet from my lap and went to unload the tequila I’d downed as I’d puked my guts out.
I’d tried to tell Katherine, but when she hadn’t believed me, I hadn’t tried very hard to fix the misunderstanding. Like I said, I’d been shamefully relieved.
Maybe I’d wanted to be free for a time before getting married.
Maybe subconsciously I’d wanted Katherine to experience more of life before tying herself to me for the rest of her life.
Hell, I could spend hours coming up with a dozen different scenarios that might justify why I hadn’t just tried a little bit harder to clear the air and heal the hurt.
But at the end of the day, my silence had been the loudest.
I half expected her to take a stand and demand that I take the pullout sofa in the living room of the suite rather than the sumptuous luxury king, but she didn’t, even if her glance did flick to the sofa before she trudged to the bedroom.
I supposed that was a good sign, right? Better not count your blessings just yet.
“Are we going to talk about this?” I ventured, removing my shirt and tossing it, peeling myself from the leather pants with equal disregard for where they ended up.
“Nope,” she answered, disappearing behind the bathroom door with her nightclothes. I much preferred her naked, but the chances of that happening were slim to none.
I sighed and removed my watch, setting it on the nightstand, and climbed into the bed. Katherine reappeared a few mome
nts later, her face scrubbed, her hair tied up in a bun. If she thought she was going to deter me by going with the schoolmarm look, she was sadly mistaken.
What my future bride didn’t realize was that she could be wearing a paper sack and I’d still find her the sexiest creature alive. Even if she wasn’t the friendliest at the moment.
“Kath—”
“I’m tired.”
I shut my mouth. Nothing was going to happen tonight. Tomorrow would be about damage control.
I had a plan. All I had to do was follow through and see it done. My eyes drifted shut, and I found sleep relatively quickly.
So quickly, in fact, that morning came within a blink.
I awoke to an empty bed, alarm chasing the sleep from my brain. Bounding from the bed, I called out for Katherine, only to find her at the table, sipping her tea and reading the delivered newspaper, fully dressed as if she’d risen hours before me.
The little vixen hadn’t wanted to leave anything to chance. She’d known if given a shot I would find a way to make love to her again, and this was her way of thwarting me.
Well, I wasn’t so easily deterred. “I never took you for an early bird. What happened to the girl who said she was a night owl?”
“She grew up.”
A short and sweet answer delivered with a perfunctory and bland smile.
“Good,” I said, surprising her when I didn’t engage as she’d hoped. “I have big plans for today.”
“As do I, seeing as it’s my turn to pick our activities,” she said with another smile, only this time there was an edge to the corners. “Today, we are going to volunteer at a local soup kitchen.”
No, today we were going to Sonoma County. “Yes, technically, it is your day,” I conceded, rubbing my chin at the dilemma. “I guess I overestimated how much you would enjoy spending the day at Coppola’s winery... We had so much fun last night at Cafe Zoetrope that I got ahead of myself and booked a private tour. But I can cancel. Volunteering at a soup kitchen sounds equally fun.”
