I was the devil. “Jesus, Katherine, I thought I’d given you plenty of space to do your own thing so we could make this work when the time came to marry.”
She stared me down, shaking her head as if I were an idiot. “That right there is why I could never marry you, Luca. You gave me space? We broke up because you were caught messing around, and to add insult to injury, your actions were plastered all over one of those stupid paparazzi rags. You broke my heart and humiliated me.”
“I told you that was a misunderstanding.”
“And I told you, you’re full of shit. I won’t be one of those women who simper at your feet and believe whatever nonsense you happen to be dishing out.”
I bit my tongue. Arguing with her about the past wasn’t going to solve anything, but I did point out, “I never asked you to be that woman,” because it was true. A simple and vapid woman would bore me to tears. In all the years I’d known Katherine, boring was never a word I’d use to describe her.
That photo had been unfortunate, but I’d learned a valuable lesson. Don’t let cute starlets sit on your lap when you’ve had too many whiskeys and not enough food. The paparazzi had snapped the pic because of the girl, not because of me, but it’d sold quite a few tabloids. It was pretty condemning, considering she’d been kissing me...and she was topless.
My father had been outraged, my mother had been mortified and I’d lost the woman of my dreams.
In all, it’d been a shit day.
“Why’d you wait until now to call off the wedding?” I asked. “Seems if you were still pissed about that incident, you would’ve called it all off before this dramatic exit.”
Katherine’s blue eyes flashed with ire at being called dramatic. She couldn’t help it—it was the red hair. The Scottish heritage was hard to tamp down. “Because you aren’t the only one with obligations. I wanted to call it off then, but my father interceded.”
By interceded, it was a fair guess he threatened to cut her off if she didn’t go through with the wedding. Bernard believed in brute force to get what he wanted. When our households were joined together, the connections in the business world would grow exponentially. An arranged marriage today wasn’t all that different from an arranged marriage back in medieval times.
It was all about the power exchange, the advancement of a family’s reach and influence.
“I wasn’t given much of a choice. I was a semester away from getting my degree, and I wasn’t going to let everything I’d worked for go down the drain because you chose to be a jackass.” She drew a breath and blew it out, adding with a shake of her head, “Honestly, I thought I could go through with it, have a marriage in name only, but these last six months... I realized I can’t. And I won’t. I’m not going to live my life to someone else’s standards. So...I’m out.”
“It won’t be that simple,” I told her, distracted by a whiff of her hair as she purposefully turned away and a wash of memories hit me hard.
Hemlock trees and sage, the heat of summer, coconut-scented sunscreen mingling with her signature white-citrus-and-cucumber body spray and the feel of her beneath me as I took her virginity.
I could still feel her tight wetness clasped around me, the way she shuddered and gasped as I gently pushed myself deep inside, breaching her lithe body for the first time.
She’d been eighteen; I’d been twenty-two.
The way she’d cried out, her teeth worrying the full pink flesh of her bottom lip, seconds before she came on my cock, her sweet sex clenching around me, greedy for more.
In spite of the slight chill of first class, sweat dampened my forehead as I took a deep swallow of my champagne.
Jesus, now was not the time to think of that memory if I wanted to keep my head on my shoulders.
“I’m not looking for an easy way out. I just want out,” she said.
Time to move the subject to safer ground. “If I were going to run away, I’d at least pick someplace warm with a secluded beach and a well-stocked bar,” I shared, clearing my throat and my head of the pornographic things I wanted to do to my not-so-sweet bride-to-be. “I mean, San Francisco in winter...kinda crappy.”
“Perhaps if things don’t work out for you being CEO of the Donato empire, you can start a travel agency,” she quipped with a dismissive glance before adding, “I picked San Francisco because I wanted to experience the cultural vibe of a liberal city. Not because I wanted to get a tan on some beach.”
I smothered a grin. She’d always been curious and artsy—a big film buff, Coppola to be specific—so I could understand why the city appealed to her. “Well, that’s good, because the San Francisco beaches smell like dead fish and they’re barely nice to look at, much less lie around on the sand. The homeless are particularly fond of the beaches, as well.”
“I know what you’re doing,” she said, bored. “Trying to scare me off with all your negative press, but I don’t care. It’s time for me to live life on my own terms, and I want to see the West Coast.”
“You could’ve asked me. I would’ve made it happen.”
“I don’t want to ask you or anyone for anything.” She turned to me. “Do you realize it was never my choice where to go to school or even what I would study in college? Your family made all my choices based on what would benefit the Donato name when we married.” She huffed out a breath. “I am more than a doll you can dress up and prop in the corner, waving and smiling as the perfect, uselessly educated housewife. I never even wanted to go into marketing. I wanted to be a veterinarian, remember? But your father deemed my choice of profession inappropriate for a Donato. So the decision was made for me.”
I remembered Katherine’s desire to work with animals. I also remembered my father’s disdain for such a career choice. I should’ve stuck up for her, but I’d remained silent. At the time, I’d had my hands full finishing up my own degree and learning the business at my father’s side. I hadn’t had the spare brain space to fight Katherine’s battle, too.
But still, I regretted not saying something.
Everything she said was true, but it didn’t mean I’d had any say, either. I couldn’t give a shit what degree she had or what career she pursued. Maybe it was my misfortune to have fallen in love with my arranged bride, unlike others in similarly wealthy families that treated marriage alliances as business transactions.
“So, you quit Franklin and Dodd. What’s your plan? Become a vet?”
“Maybe. I don’t know, but when I decide, it’ll be my choice.”
God only knew it would’ve been so much easier if I’d felt nothing for the troublesome redhead. If I’d felt nothing but obligation to produce a kid, I would’ve written off Katherine a long time ago, selected any of the numerous women trying to get that gaudy ring on their finger, put a kid in her belly and moved on with my life.
But I loved her. That was the inescapable truth that made it impossible for me to walk away without one hell of a fight.
“So...did you pack appropriately?”
“Of course I did,” Katherine said, adding sardonically,
