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“That monster,” Cassidy commented.
“I have not told you about them. And I won’t start now. But I hope you believe me when I say I did not need to see them again. Or anyone in my family. I did not need to.”
Why had he repeated that?
“And Megan pushed you to?” Cassidy asked.
“Yes.”
“Because she and her siblings are famously close, and she wants that for you.”
“Yes. She did not understand that I don’t need that.”
“No. He doesn’t need anybody. That’s what we’ve always said, isn’t it, Cole?”
Alessandro heard the sarcasm in her voice, and he definitely couldn’t miss how it dripped from Colson’s reply. “Right. Darn tootin’. No one better help that island of manly broodiness, Alessandro Rosselli.”
“Now you are misunderstanding me,” he protested.
“You’re misunderstanding yourself,” Cassidy said. “It sounds like your brothers hurt you a whole lot, and I get that it’ll take a while to forgive them, if you ever do. But you shot the messenger. Lemme ask you a question: has anyone ever understood your drive for excellence in your job like Megan has? Or made your professional life better the way she has?”
“That was two questions.”
“Two questions, then.” Cassidy bit into her bagel.
He thought back to their early morning conversations, to their strategies, which seemed to come naturally to Megan while never dimming her enthusiasm for the moment. She lit him up. He could do his job better because she’d helped him do so.
“This would not have made my life better,” he tried, although his muscles shook with missing her. “Now I would have to always wonder if she would make another decision like this without me.”
“Oh God, no,” Cassidy said, her perfectly made-up eyes wide. “A woman who thinks for herself. The horror.”
Colson laughed, but Alessandro was in agony. “That is not what I meant. I love that she thinks for herself.”
“Until it was inconvenient for you.”
“Inconvenient!” The fear, anger, betrayal, and rejection that had swamped him when Leo and Massimo had walked through that door was a little more than inconvenient.
“Don’t get mad.” Cassidy handed him a plate of eggs Benedict. “Eat.”
Before his mouth started saying things he’d regret in front of these people he used to think of as his good friends, he filled it with egg.Gesù, the damn thing was so good, he could cry.
“I get it, ’Sandro,” Cassidy said. “You’re frightened. No, don’t interrupt. Keep eating. I’ve never seen a man more in need of a sandwich. I’m gonna guess this is the first time since you left home that you’ve been in love?” He choked, and his eyes began watering. Colson hit him on the back—kinda hard—but otherwise didn’t come to his rescue.
“’Sandro?” Cassidy went on relentlessly. “You love her, right?”
Fuck. He almost dropped the plate. The heat that pulsed through his whole body at the words, heat not only from how completely Megan had taken over his life but from how frightened he was to commit to her, should have sizzled the sweat right off him.
Was he going to ignore that feeling? Was he going to turn his back on the best thing that had ever come into his life, because of one surprise action?
“Si,” he said. Now he was exhausted.
After a pause, Colson spoke. “When I met Cass and found myself incapable of looking at her without hearing wedding bells, I took a job in New Zealand to get away from her. Never been so scared in all my life. Could have played Orcs until Doomsday, never have known any of this.” He looked around them and then back to Cassidy.
“And you let him go?” Alessandro asked with a painful smile to Cassidy.
“You think I wasn’t afraid, too? And for me it was worse because I was worried about my career. What a stupid-ass reason not to be in love.”
“That is not why—”
