Just him, looking at her with those dark eyes that had an entire ocean's worth of depth, and her heart doing something it had never, ever done before, and the smartwatch confirming with its calm little numbers that she was, medically speaking, fine.
Which meant this wasn't a cardiac event.
But instead...
Gulp.
The truth was far more shameless, and it was that she was crushing on a total stranger—-no, wait, it was worse, actually. She was crushing on a man whom she had mistaken for a total stranger, only to realize that he was the man she was legally married to...by means of a proxy wedding that had been arranged without her knowing.
Chelsea cast one last look at her smartwatch. Heart still beating faster than normal, but because there were no other red flags—-
Oh gosh.
This really was nothing but a full-fledged crush, and the thought had her swallowing hard.
Play it cool, Chels.
She mustered the courage to slowly lift her head, and the first thing she saw was him.
Watching her.
But she had no time to think about this, with Edgar coming up to them, and her godfather being his usual blunt self, he simply went straight to the point.
"Are introductions still needed...or should we continue somewhere private?"
Chapter Two
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS AGO, life was exactly as Olivio Cannizzaro knew it to be.
He'd arrived back in Toronto yesterday evening, having spent two weeks in Sicily for Selena's birthday. The annual gathering had quietly become the thing his father looked forward to most, which was something Olivio found both unexpected and, if he was honest with himself, something close to relieving.
Miguel had mellowed. Not softened—-a Cannizzaro man didn't soften, it simply wasn't in the bloodline—-but mellowed was more than enough, the way good stone mellowed, becoming more itself with time rather than less. The years of friction between him and Aivan, Olivio's older brother, had finally found their resolution, and Sienah had done what Selena had always believed she would do, which was to simply love his brother steadily until Aivan remembered that he, too, possessed the capability to love.
Those two weeks were good. But Olivio still chose to take the red-eye back because even for such occasions, he had a schedule he strictly observed, and he was not, by nature, a man who lingered.
Now moreso than ever actually, with how both Miguel and Selena had been attempting to matchmake him with a rotating cast of daughters belonging to this friend and that. A senator's daughter in Palermo one afternoon, then a hotel heiress summoned to dinner under transparent pretenses, and with every instance, Selena's eyes would find his across the table that he knew she earnestly believed was subtle but was actually not.
