“Why did you panic? What is happening?”
“You were the only name I could think of. The only name that was big enough. I had to protect myself, Dante. I had to protect Isabella! And I thought seeing as you are so close with my family, it was believable enough that you and I...that we...”
“Yes, well. The problem is, child, that the idea I would touch you in that way is laughable in the extreme.”
Minerva had never felt so small, or quite so dull.
Standing next to the brilliant Dante Fiori made her feel as plain and inadequate as she was.
He was right. The idea that he would touch her was laughable, though it seemed as if Maximus and her father were more than willing to believe it. So why wouldn’t the rest of the world?
She knew he’d only ever danced with her four years ago because he’d pitied her. Everyone knew it.
Still, she held her head high.
“Men are renowned for touching women that don’t make sense. It is common knowledge that the secret sexual fantasies of men are unknowable.” She leaned in and did her best to seem confident when she was very much not.
“Is it?” he asked. “Well, mine are fairly knowable. Often plastered on the front page of newspapers here and there. You are plainly not my fantasy.”
She thought of all the women he’d been seen with over the years. Sleek, polished and curvy. Brunette, blonde, pale or brown, didn’t seem to matter to him, but there was a sophistication to the women he enjoyed.
Quite like her sister, and not at all like her.
“Well, that is good to know,” she said.
“Why did you do it, Minerva?”
“I am sorry. I really didn’t do it to cause you trouble. But I’m being threatened, and so is Isabella, and in order to protect us both I needed to come up with an alternative paternity story.”
“An alternative paternity story?”
She winced. “Yes. Her father is after her.”
He eyed her with great skepticism. “I didn’t think you knew who her father was.”
She didn’t know whether to be shocked, offended or pleased that he thought her capable of having an anonymous interlude.
For heaven’s sake, she’d only ever been kissed one time in her life. A regrettable evening out with Katie in Rome where she’d tried to enjoy the pulsing music in the club, but had instead felt overheated and on the verge of a seizure.
She’d danced with a man in a shiny shirt—and she even knew his name because she wouldn’t even dance with a man without an introduction—and he’d kissed her on the dance floor. It had been wet and he’d tasted of liquor and she’d feigned a headache after and taken a cab back to the hostel they’d been staying in.
The idea of hooking up with someone, in a circumstance like that, made her want to peel her own skin off.
“Of course I know who he is. Unfortunately... The full implications of who he is did not become clear until later.”
“What does that mean?”
She could tell him the truth now, but something stopped her. Maybe it was admitting Isabella wasn’t her daughter, which always caught her in the chest and made her feel small. Like she’d stolen her and like what they had was potentially fragile, temporary and shaky.
Or maybe it was trust. Dante was a good man. Going off the fact he had rescued her from a fall, and helped her up when her knee was skinned, and bailed her out after her terrible humiliation in high school.
But to trust him with the truth was something she simply wasn’t brave enough to do.
Her life, Isabella’s life, was at risk, and she’d lied on livestream in front of the world.
Her bravery was tapped out.
“Her father is part of an organized crime family. Obviously something unknown to me at the time of her...you know. And he’s after her. He’s after us.”
“Are you telling me that you’re in actual danger?”
“Yes. And really, the only hope I have is convincing him that he isn’t actually the father.”
“And you think that will work?”
“It’s the only choice I have. I need your protection.”
He regarded her with dark, fathomless eyes, and yet again, she felt like he was peering at her as though she were a girl, and not a woman at all. A naughty child, in point of fact. Then something in his expression shifted.
It shamed her a little that this was so like when he’d come to her rescue at the party. That she was manipulating his pity for her. Her own pathetic nature being what called to him, yet again.
But she would lay down any and all pride for Isabella and she’d do it willingly.
“If she were in fact my child, then we would be family.”
“I... I suppose,” she said.
“There will need to be photographs of us together, as I would not be a neglectful father.”
“No indeed.”
“Of course, you know that if Isabella were really my child there would be only one thing for us to do.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.” He began to pace, like a caged tiger trying to find a weak spot in his cage. And suddenly he stopped, and she had the terrible feeling that the tiger had found what he’d been looking for. “Yes. Of course, there is only one option.”
“And that is?”
“You have to marry me.”
TWO THINGS HAD become clear to Dante as he’d stared down into Min’s green eyes.
The first was that if Minerva and Isabella were in real danger then he would have to protect them. There was no choice.
He could not uncover her lies, because no matter how convoluted it might be, his protection was perhaps the only thing standing between her and this man she claimed wanted to do her harm. Dante was not so foolish as to think he could simply involve law enforcement and make an issue like a man connected to a crime family go away.
But he had resources. Men at his disposal. And more important, he had money. If her plan didn’t work, he had other methods of being able to protect them.
And then, there was the second thing that
