“We had the Carandini name to redeem. It was our duty,” he said with a mixture of pride and self-deprecating humor.
Massimo was the third-generation holder of the Carandini family legacy, and though his father had done plenty to ruin it, he and his brother had so quickly and thoroughly rebuilt it. It was why Catarina was being offered up to him, the prize her father so readily turned over: because he would protect her with his name. Marrying into this family would ensure her future. And yet, she sensed that his efforts were about more than a duty to the Carandini name.
She couldn’t help but notice that when he laughed, he looked almost…younger, like a different person, one who had been taken away at birth and lived a much more comfortable life. It was a strange thought.
She lifted her glass and met his gaze, and she could feel the humor in his eyes shift into something different, something that stirred the want bubbling inside her.
“Your mother’s death must have been difficult,” he said, watching her carefully. “I saw the photo of the two of you together in my room.”
She looked away. Her pain was something private, something that no one, not even her father, could understand. And yet, she felt strangely soothed by his tone. “It was. I traveled with her quite a bit. My father occasionally met up with us, but often it was just my mother and me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
“Thank you,” she said, taking a drink of her wine, busying herself with anything besides meeting his gaze. She didn’t want him to see the rawness in this topic. Still, after four years.
In many ways, the man across from her was who she had hoped to find when Massimo had walked into the library. That day, she had decided that man was an illusion, a figment of her imagination. But today, in the glow of the candlelight, she felt the tempting stirrings of hope.
She took a bite of the exquisite fish, decorated with herbs and lemons and asked, “Where does your grandmother live?”
“In her country home in the mountains near Lake Como, though she still stays in Milan from time to time.”
“And this country home is where you learned to cook?”
“Among other skills,” he said. Then his gaze turned darker. “Neither of my parents could be called anything close to practical, but my grandparents enjoyed running an estate of that size, even as their health declined. My grandfather passed away a few years ago, but running the estate is still a part of my grandmother’s daily life. They want Alessandro or me to take it over someday.”
He took a drink of his wine and continued. “When the two of us were kicked out of our boarding school in Montreux and our parents were away on one of their many reconciliation vacations to Seychelles, we were shipped back to Lake Como. Our grandparents decided that a practical connection to the world was in order. They felt that they had spoiled and corrupted their only son, and they were determined not to let the same happen to the two of us. The result is that I can cook and tend to animals and an orchard, build fences and make fires, to name a few. In retrospect, that summer was the happiest of my childhood.”
There was a warning in his tone that told her not to ask more, but she ignored it. This was her chance to learn about him.
“I would not have guessed that you were the type to be kicked out of school,” she mused. “Though you did mention trouble with Alessandro…”
“I took away a lot from the experience that summer, including that serious, hard work soothed a lot of my anger,” he said. Then, unexpectedly, he laughed. “My brother seemed to have taken an entirely different lesson from it.”
Alessandro Carandini was as well-known as Massimo, which was why her father would never have considered him as a candidate for marriage. He was, in crass terms, a playboy, someone with a charm that had drawn in princesses and commoners alike. But none of his attachments lasted for longer than a few weeks. Massimo’s reputation was the opposite of charm, though she was starting to understand that he was perfectly capable of it. Instead, he seemed to have made a deliberate decision not to use it.
But she was listening closely to the tone that Massimo’s voice had taken when he doled out these little hints of his background. He loved his grandmother, that much was clear, and maybe Catarina had expected that, but what she hadn’t expected was the depth of emotion she could hear he had for his brother. If one were to read the tabloids, one might assume that the two brothers were at odds, their warring personalities pulling them in different directions.
But most notable was the icy bite he reserved for his parents and the warning she sensed as he moved the conversation away from the topic. She knew the basics of his parents’ very public excesses, but now she wished she had probed further at these stories. She wanted to ask more but was almost sure her questions would be shut down. She needed to take a subtle approach.
Catarina had intended to quickly eat and then withdraw to her suite, but he was keeping her here, not with coercion but with the intensity that seemed to radiate from him, sprinkled with unexpected humor. At times, his eyes sparkled with amusement as he spoke, but under his smile she felt there was something carnal lurking, something her body seemed particularly attuned to. Those moments reverberated inside her, leaving a tingling sensation running through her limbs.
As the white landscape darkened, she could feel the lure of this man across from her grow stronger. But if she were to marry him, she needed more, she reminded herself. Would he lower his guard for her even further? It was hard to be strategic when she wanted to run her hands through the silky waves of his hair. To trace the sharp angles of his cheekbones, of his jaw, the hard planes of his chest that had tempted her the night before.
She reminded herself that Massimo had arrived so unceremoniously at the bottom of her driveway determined to take her back to Milan. He had been so sure he could bend her to his will and make her do something she didn’t want to do, and the only thing that stopped his plan was a literal force of nature. Catarina knew she was still the bird in this arrangement and Massimo held the cage. Even if he gave her the illusion of flying right now, he could just as easily show her the bars, gilded or ironclad. Not once had heaskedabout what she wanted, which suggested that either he hadn’t considered this angle or he didn’t care. She wasn’t sure which was worse.
That first day, he had shattered her imaginings of him as a sort of fairy-tale prince, someone she had seen across the room and projected her own ideas and dreams onto. Why had she been surprised when he made it so unmistakably clear that he was not the person she had invented on that first day? And yet, despite the fact that she knew better, Catarina could feel her dreams come to life again. This conversation was a glimpse beneath his harder exterior to a man vulnerable and hurt by the past in a way that resonated deep inside her. She had no idea what to do about it.
But whether or not she chose to marry Massimo, she knew she wanted him. She wanted to know what it was like to give in to the desire that had been building all day, just to see what it felt like to be free to follow what her body begged her to do. All day, she had told herself that the growing want inside was simply physical attraction and curiosity, natural for someone with as little experience as she had but also something easily disrupted with distance. But as she watched Massimo across the table, she had the growing suspicion that this feeling inside was more complicated.
It felt like music.
Every comment was a prelude to something distinctly intimate, each exchange a crescendo. But unlike the scores that she had listened to and played countless times, this piece was unwritten. She could not simply choose an etude from the shelf, depending on her mood. She could not use a concerto to invite particular feelings to wash over her and then let them come to their predictable end. This time, she had no idea where the music would lead her. She had no idea which emotions it would expose, and there was no way to preview the score before she sat down on the bench to gauge whether the piece suited her. Too late, she found that this concerto was playing faster than she could keep up with and, too late, she was realizing that this was no longer her score alone to play. It was Massimo’s, too. She felt the crescendo between them growing.Give in, it sang.Give in.
Maybe she would. As long as she remembered not to mistake the desire that reverberated inside her for anything more.
He found Catarina far too intriguing. Her dark eyes were so soft as she’d listened to stories about his family, and there was empathy in her voice when she responded. That was the only explanation for why he found himself offering too many details about the past he had worked so hard to leave behind. It was the only explanation for the overwhelming need to know more about her, to understand her. The knowledge was strategic, he told himself to calm the unease stirring inside. These were details he could leverage to craft their marriage.
“What would make you happy, Catarina?” This was a different version of the question that he had thrown at her since he’d set foot in this house, a question she had dodged and answered with what he was certain were half-truths. But this version seemed to get through. Her eyes widened in surprise, and then she tilted her head, as if she was truly considering it.
