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“A style choice,” she said, knowing it wasn’t the truth but not exactly sure what was. “I wanted a change,” she said, closer to the real reason. “After the divorce.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Married to Xavier, I felt pleasantly invisible.” She smiled at the memory. “He’s an incredibly dynamic man, the kind of man who takes over a room. When he’s there, no one looks at anyone else.” She lifted her eyes to Vitalo, and felt a little shy as she added, “Kind of like you.”
He arched a brow. “I do not know if your aim is to make me jealous or to flatter me?”
She laughed softly. “Neither. I’m just being honest. You’re very similar, in some ways. I think you’d like him.”
He flicked her a sidelong glance.
“Xavier and I had known one another so long, and I’d never felt like I was an object of interest to men. I mean, I had no interest in meeting anyone, and then we were married. But once we divorced, I hated the way men would approach me. I loathed it.”
“So you thought dying your hair would make you less attractive, somehow?”
“Yes,” she bit the word out, knowing how ridiculous it was. “Or more invisible. Less…I don’t know.”
He reached for another orange blossom and this time, slowed to a stop so she stopped with him, and he tucked it into her hair. “Blonde, brunette, or bald, I think you would always be the most beautiful woman in any room, anywhere.”
Pleasure and warmth spread through her at his praise, but she honed in on the meaning of what she’d been saying. “It’s not so simple as that. It wasn’t about looks. It was… I wanted a change. I wanted to not be me, for a while. I wanted to be someone else.”
“Did it work?”
She pulled a face. “It turns out,” she drawled with self-directed sarcasm, “changing your hair colour really only changes your hair colour, not your fundamental personality type.” Her sigh was muted. “No matter what happens, I’ll never be the girl who climbs out onto the roof in defiance of her captor.”
“And that’s bad?”
“It’s limiting,” she admitted. “And can lead to a lifetime of regrets.” She said it lightly, with a wink to underscore the fact she was joking, but he didn’t smile.
“You have regrets?” His words were hoarse, and the intensity of his attention eroded her lightness. So too did his nearness; he’d closed the distance between them and stood hip to hip with her, his powerful frame brushing against hers, making
her want to soften and lean into him, to bring her body hard to his. His question buzzed around her brain, like a moth circling a flame. You have regrets?
“Doesn’t everybody?”
His smile was noncommittal.
“My mother liked to celebrate Christmas,” he said, changing the subject – and she was grateful for that. “She would, no doubt, have loved to see your father in action. For her, it was all about the Hallmark movies and American traditions. She had stockings made for us, and would play carols while she decorated the tree. She would shop until no more presents could squeeze under the tree, buying gifts for my father and me, but also for every domestic in the house. She loved to give.”
“She sounds like an incredible person,” Bella said quietly. “I wish I could have met her.”
Another smile, this one tight, and confined to his lips. “I do, too.”
The mood around them was somber, despite the lovely winter’s morning. And then, he shifted a little, and his body brushed closer to hers, and flames danced beneath her skin right as the sun beamed from behind his head. “I’m sure there’s a box of decorations somewhere. Shall we look for them?”
Something like happiness soared in her chest, and she smiled at him, her eyes lighting up. “I think that’s the best suggestion I’ve heard all day.”
*
“Darling, it’s been an age. Where have you been?”
Vitalo stared at the view from his office window, his phone held too-tight in his hand as Kat’s voice filled his mind, her breathy tones so familiar, so flirtatious. So wrong.
Everything inside of him clenched. He held the phone to his ear and immediately wished he hadn’t answered it.
A week after marrying Bella and he had no damned idea how he was going to navigate the Kat situation. His new mother-in-law also happened to be the woman he’d been coveting for a decade, the woman he would have said he’d fallen completely in love with as a twenty five year old man. The woman he’d denied himself, for love and loyalty of a dead friend.
A woman he could have any time, if he snapped his fingers.
