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I added my signature. “Anything else?” Signing paperwork was boring.
“One more.” He pushed another paper toward me. “In the event of termination of a marriage by death or divorce, you’re waiving your right to Cato Marino’s personal assets. Everything will fall to Martina Marino when she’s of age.”
“How is this any different from what I already signed?” I asked.
Cato sat beside me, his legs crossed and his face stoic.
The lawyer explained. “This relates to his personal assets, such as his home, the money in his bank account, and his investments.”
I understood we were doing this to protect Bates, but this was a personal clause Cato had specifically asked for. I didn’t care about his money, but I thought it was in poor taste that a husband would make sure his wife didn’t get a penny if he were hit by a bus. But since it didn’t matter anyway, especially since he wouldn’t tell me he loved me, I signed it and handed it back. “Anything else?”
“No, that’s it.” The lawyer gathered all the papers and then walked to the copy machine. “Once I give you a copy, the two of you can be on your way.” He quickly made them and handed the folder to Cato before he shook his hand. “Until next time, Mr. Marino.”
“Thank you.” Cato moved his arm around my waist and walked with me down the hallway. Once we were back on the street, we got into the car. The car headed for his office a few blocks away.
I didn’t know I would be spending the day with him at work again. I was hoping we could go home and have some privacy to talk.
The car pulled up to the sidewalk.
Cato didn’t get out right away. “The car is going to drop you off at the house before it returns to pick me up. I’ll be home at the usual time. No bar stops, I promise.” He smiled like the last twelve hours had been perfectly normal, like I didn’t tell him I loved him and signed off on everything that kept his money out of my hands.
“So…are we just going to pretend that didn’t happen?”
His smile fell, the light slowly leaving his eyes.
“Because you don’t strike me as the kind of man to ignore problems. I thought you were a man who faced them head on.”
He looked out the window for a few moments as he considered what he might say. He eventually turned back to me, his blue eyes cold as the sea. “What do you want me to say, baby?”
“You know what I want you to say.” It was pretty obvious what I wanted, to tell him I loved him and hear him say it back.
He looked out the window again. “Well, I can’t.”
“But you enjoyed it when I said it to you.”
“Why wouldn’t I? The beautiful woman who’s having my baby is in love with me. Yes, it fucking turned me on. But that’s it.” He released a quiet sigh when he finished speaking, as if this conversation was a nuisance.
“You would take a bullet for me, Cato.”
“Because you’re carrying my daughter—”
“That’s not the only reason. You can pretend burying my father was just a humane act of kindness. You can pretend that stopping Bates from hurting me was just instinct. You can pretend that the only reason you don’t want to fuck other women is because you don’t want to wear a condom. But when you came to France to get me, you would have done anything to get me back. You were distraught without me, just as much as I was without you. So you can say you don’t love me all you want. Because I know that’s bullshit. I know you do, Cato. And I can be patient until you grow the balls to say it.”
24
Cato
I got out of the car without looking back and stepped into my building. The folder was gripped tightly in my hand, the paperwork I needed to get Bates to calm the fuck down. Instead of riding the elevator to the fifth floor, I took the stairs just so I had extra time to cool off.
When I was deep inside Siena, she’d said the sexiest words I’d ever heard a woman speak.
I love you, Cato.
Those words would have been a nightmare coming from anyone else. I would have stopped what I was doing then and there and gotten rid of her.
But from Siena, the words were the trigger to the best orgasm of my life.
My entire body was set on fire. I didn’t even let her finish first. As if she’d pressed an invisible button, I was forced to climax, like my body needed to do it, otherwise, it would shut down.
It wasn’t just the words that she whispered to me, but the passion that fueled them, the sexy look in those green eyes. It was everything, including the baby growing inside her, the baby I put there.
