“It is what a fiancée would do.”
“I suppose it is,” she agreed. Her hazel gaze remained on the darkening world outside the large windows.
Luciano had the rare experience of not knowing what to say. So he stood next to her and said nothing. He stiffly told Eduardo he was dismissed with the kitchen staff, and that Luciano would handle everything at the apartment for the rest of the night.
Which left just Luciano and Serena and her silence.
When Serena finally broke it, it was with that careful, detached tone he knew so well. This was the one she’d always used on him in the rare occurrences their paths had overlapped over the years before she’d approached him with this plan of hers.
“Even with you standing up to her, she will never believe this is genuine, and I worry…” She swallowed, then carefully turned to face him, her gaze meeting his. He saw courage hiding something in the brown and green depths. Something like vulnerability. “I worry she won’t be the only one.”
Something reared inside of him. And much like the entirety of the dinner had whirled up familiar feelings in an unfamiliar setting, this did the same. Because the hint of vulnerability incited a long-buried need to fix, tosave. When he’d been a child, he’d wanted to protect. When he’d become a teen, he’d given it up.
You could not protect those who did not wish to be protected.
No doubt Serena fell into that category. And he’d be damned if he twisted himself in all those old knots to make the same mistake twice.
That was one thing Luciano refused to do. So, he took her words at face value, and ignored the hurt underneath.
“We don’t need people to believe. In fact, doubts might help. People will be watching us. They will be intrigued. We need attention. Our names out in the ether.”
“Perhaps,” she agreed on a sigh. She turned her attention back to the window. “But we also need to appear like a united business front if we’re hoping to woo any of our lost customers back. We want them to take the meetings because they’re intrigued, but we need to close the deals because we’re the best.”
“Then let us be the best.”
She nodded at that. No doubt a foregone conclusion for the both of them. Another heavy silence settled, though her expression was less detached and more…intense. Her lips pressed together and her eyebrows furrowed.
“Everything she said is true, you know. Or not said, but hinted at. I am dull. I like animals better than people. This ring would better suit someone like her.” Serena said all these things with a certainty that irritated him. “She is notwrong.”
Luciano could only stare at her. He didn’t even fully disagree with what she was saying. But it stillgrated. Because yes, she liked animals perhaps too much. She had quirks the size of the entire country, and yes, that ring was maybe not suited to Serena’s personality, but…
But Angelica Valliwaswrong. About everything. It was clear as day to him, and it was shocking and just…wrong for that not to be clear to Serena.
It wasn’t his business. None of this was an area he should insert himself into. He did not need to protect her. Serena Valli protected herself.
But she waswrong, and something that had broken free during that dinner whirled around inside of him, ruining his good sense to keep his mouth shut.
“Ithink she is wrong,” Luciano said, too intently, no doubt. “Because in the long space of time I have known you, Serena Valli, I have never once considered youdull.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SERENA HATED THEfeelings battering around in her chest. Hated that she couldn’t seem to ice them away.
His fault. Half her mother’s. Half his. Had to be, because she was better at dealing with the way her mother was when she was alone. When she was in her own space.
He added a new element and shehatedit. She so desperately wanted to hate it and him and everything inside of her she couldn’t control, organize or perfect.
I have never once considered you dull.
“You do not need to stand up for me,” she insisted. It seemed imperative, even if she couldn’t understand why, to get that through to him. Though she couldn’t meet his gaze. Or even the gentle waves of the ocean as dark began to fall. She turned away from both.
She’d planned on staying, but maybe she could go and that would be okay. Maybe…
“I thought you understood,cara, I do not do what anyone else needs. I do what suits me. I say this because it is the truth.”
The truth. When the truth never mattered. And something about the way he was acting, like he was some noble person, and not the reprobate she’d always known him to be. Like the facade of his was a lie, and underneath it all was this man who was not vapid or frivolous or careless.
How in this moment sheneededhim to be all those things she’d once thought him. She didn’t understand why, but she absolutely needed the old Luciano to be the true Luciano. So she lashed out, pretending he hadn’t upended everything she’d thought about him.
