She absorbed that for later analysis. She didn’t know the situation well enough, but she still thought her first read might have been more accurate.
“I wanted to talk to you about something,” he said, changing both subject and demeanour with apparent ease.
She blinked quickly. “Yes?”
“Your past.”
Her brows shot up. “Meaning?”
“That photo of us was just the beginning. In America, our marriage is a bit of gossip online, or perhaps a few of the business pages may run with it. But in Italy, this will be news.”
Her throat seemed to thicken, as though she were having an allergic reaction. She could hardly breathe. Reaching for her water, Ally drank quickly in an attempt to clear it.
His expression was grim as he regarded her. “Front page news.”
She almost spluttered her water.
“Because you’re a Di Santis.”
He dipped his head once.
Her heart seemed to be hammering way too fast to be contained. “So…you need to know I don’t have some secret scandalous history.”
The man opposite her was sexy all the time, but when his lips flickered into that sardonic smile, he was molten-lava-scorching. “Among other things.”
She couldn’t help but return his smile. Their eyes latched and held for a beat too long and her whole body seemed to hum with an invisible electrical current.
“Such as?” she prompted, carefully placing her water glass on the table. “A penchant for getting married to secret billionaires in Vegas?”
“Do you?”
She shook her head. “You’re the first guy I’ve drunkenly stumbled down the aisle with.”
His expression was taut, something flashing in his eyes before he glanced away, so she could only see his face in profile.
“I should not have let it happen.”
“I think you were pretty drunk, too. The chapel shouldn’t have let it happen.”
He made a gruff noise. “I think that might disrupt their business model.”
“Right.”
He turned back to face her, his expression once again a mask of control. “The media can be…invasive.” He spat the wordwith distaste. “When I returned from The Middle East, it felt as though my entire life was an open book.”
She shook her head angrily at the thought of that. “The last thing you needed, I’m sure.”
His eyes narrowed slightly and she could tell that he didn’t want her sympathy. “They will leave no stone unturned in their research.” His eyes swept her face. “And their research will revolve around you.”
The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. She looked at him for a beat, her stomach twisting anxiously. “And you waited until now to tell me this because it’s too late to back out?”
Was that regret in his eyes? A look of apology? It was gone too fast to be sure. “You didn’t ask.”
She pressed her lips together, holding back from pointing out that this was the first time she’d been in this kind of situation. “Yeah, well, it was all a bit of a juggernaut.”
“Si.” He traced the base of his water glass. “The easiest way to protect you from whatever the press might find is to do my own research.”
Confusion swirled inside of her. “Like…what do you mean?”
