Chapter Fourteen
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
T HEY DID NOT avoid complication. They reveled in it. They did not have another serious conversation about what they were doing. They went forward with business plans and wedding plans in full force.
They spent too much time together. Every night. Mostly at her place, but sometimes at his if their business meetings went late.
Serena recognized this was too much—especially without a serious, adult conversation on what it meant. She always told herself, when she was alone, that she would do something about it. That they would sit down and discuss what they were really doing. She’d never been in a relationship before, but she knew a conversation was needed, and she would need to be the one to instigate it.
But she never did.
She kept waiting for him to do something about it. To reject her. To distance himself. Surely he’d get bored.
But he never did.
Being around him was…she hesitated to use the word addicting , but it was certainly something similar. Because she had never realized just how lonely she’d been. Even when her grandfather had been alive. He had been so much to her, but he had been an old man. In some ways, his wisdom and his acceptance of her quirks served as almost everything good in the foundation of her life.
But that didn’t mean she hadn’t been starved for companionship her own age. Her own stage in life. Someone to grow…with. And that’s what this felt like. As she and Luciano tackled business problems together. As they went out to business dinners or just to be seen. As they spent every night together. To the point where she had begun ruminating on her choice of whether or not to get a house dog out loud to him.
She didn’t think he actually listened , and she didn’t think she needed him to. It was just nice to have a living and breathing sounding board, even when it was silent.
But he didn’t remain silent.
“Why do you not just buy the damn dog then?” he demanded one sunny weekend afternoon as they drank lemonade on her balcony. She was on her computer, looking at pictures on the breeder’s website. She’d though he was taking a nap.
But his gaze was on her now. Frustration mixed with amusement in his gaze. And since there was some amusement, she posed her concern.
“What if he doesn’t get along with Kate and Leopold?”
“ Mio Dio , Serena. This is madness. Buy the dog or do not. You must make a decision and move on .”
Somewhat stung, she sniffed. “I only started considering the dog because Pierro said no to the bird.”
“The man has sense. You? I am not so sure about. Can’t you go…meet the furry creature with your demon spawn in tow to find out if they get along?”
“I suppose I could ask,” she murmured thoughtfully. Both because it was a good idea and because for all his bristle, he didn’t seem opposed to another demon spawn traipsing about.
She made the appointment for the next day and was shocked when he insisted on driving her out to the breeder’s estate. He grumbled the entire way, warily eyeing the cats in their carrier in the back of his car. But he went.
And he was kind and charming to the breeder. He even let the puppy chew on his laces without any complaint. And when he knelt down and stroked the puppy’s soft, silky ears, and a small smile appeared on his face, she couldn’t help but tease him a little.
“It’s official,” she’d said as the dog tried to climb up Luciano’s leg.
He lifted his gaze, sobered his expression and raised an eyebrow at her. “What is?”
“You don’t hate animals. You’re just a dog person more than a cat person.”
His mouth turned downward, though not into an all-out frown. He looked down at the dog. Then he simply grunted.
When she put down a deposit to bring home the puppy when he was old enough in a few weeks, he offered no approval or disapproval, but Serena couldn’t help but believe he was pleased. That he would enjoy having a dog around.
When they returned to the castle, he hefted the cat carrier himself, all the way upstairs, and even undid the door to let Kate and Leopold free.
Something strange battered her chest then, but she did not fully realize what it was. Or maybe she didn’t let herself put a name to it then and there. Perhaps it was too big or too scary and her brain needed time to wake up.
Because one morning she woke, tangled up in him as she usually was, and realized it was the week of their wedding.
Joy spurred through her. Anticipation and excitement. Not for the event itself, but for the fact they would be husband and wife.
And she finally realized she’d made a serious mistake.
Because she had been humming over the last-minute alterations to her dress the week before. She’d been dreaming of the way he’d look at her when she walked down the aisle of the historic church they’d picked out together. She was thinking about giving him a small say in the naming of her puppy when she was able to bring him home.
She was not daydreaming about mergers or ways she would push him out once she had some sway in Ascione. She was dreaming about romantic things, just as he’d once accused her of.
So it dawned on her, as he slept soundly with his arms wrapped tight around her, that she’d fallen in love with him. His humor. The way he buried all his caretaker tendencies under a sharp edge. Like he was protecting himself from something, and it made her desperate to find out what.
She would need to find out what, she supposed, but for right now she was so startled by how foolish she could be—and how wonderful it felt—that she spent a few days weighing this feeling. She continued watching him and tried to determine if he might feel the same.
They had not discussed anything of weight since their first morning after, but they still spent time together. They still worked on business together. He supported her, in small ways, at work. She tried her hand at homemaking for someone and thought…maybe, just maybe, he enjoyed it.
They all but lived together. In every single way, they behaved as a real couple. In public. In private.
Except one very important thing. They did not discuss what was happening. Where it could lead. They did not acknowledge the truth of what was happening between them. In some ways, they both pretended like it was still a fiction, even though it was the most real relationship she’d ever had.
Still, it was missing something important. She did not know his feelings on love. Futures. Real futures—the kind with commitment and children. She was not opposed to asking him, but she supposed there was a selfish part of her that wanted to be sure they were married first.
So Valli-Ascione wouldn’t suffer.
So he couldn’t run away that easily.
If she felt any guilt over this, she refused to give it the time of day. A woman had to protect herself and her legacy in whatever ways she could. Loving him did not mean she should put herself at risk.
She had to remind herself of this too often. Their wedding was in three days. She would keep it to herself for three more days.
“What do you suppose I should name the puppy when we get him?” Serena asked one night, curled up on the couch together. She dropped the casual we and wondered if he would stiffen.
He didn’t.
He acted as though the casual intimacy was nothing, but to her it was…everything. Everything she never considered she might have. Her head in his lap, his fingers trailing through her hair as he read e-mails on his phone.
“Perhaps another name from that terrible movie you made me watch,” he said, surprising her with any suggestion at all, let alone one so…perfect. “Keep it all on theme.”
The movie was not terrible. It was her favorite. But he had watched it last night and put together that the cats were named after the main characters. It was the silliest thing to want to cry over him understanding that themed names would appeal to her. Tears pricked her eyes anyway.
“I…” The words were ready to erupt, but they stuck there in her throat before she could utter them. She couldn’t say it once his gaze moved from his phone to her.
She saw the wariness creep into his eyes, clear as day, like he could see the love in her eyes clear as day as well. So she didn’t say it. She swallowed the words down. Where they belonged. At least until they were married and the businesses were fully merged.
Once she was protected, maybe…just maybe, she could let it all out. But she couldn’t do it now. Still, it didn’t mean she wanted to shut him out. No, she wanted him any way she could get him, and she didn’t really care if it was pathetic.
“Take me to bed,” she murmured.
And he did. No wariness involved.
* * *
Luciano felt nothing but unsettled the closer it got to their wedding day. Because what had once felt like it could be nothing but a farce now felt…too real. He had been avoiding that reality for days now, but the closer the actual ceremony became, the less he could seem to hold it at bay.
They seemed to spend every second together, and when they weren’t together, he wanted to be with her. He found himself obsessed , and not just with her body, but also with her mind, with her strange quirks.
The joy she’d exuded the day she’d put money down on that ridiculous dog. How she had almost cried when he’d created a silly little countdown to Stuart the dog’s pickup day. How she teased him for being as excited as she was.
He could not quite understand the appeal of cats with their slinky eyes and snooty attitudes, but when he’d told Serena that, she’d said that it was simply because he was too much like them to like them. He’d wanted to be affronted.
He hadn’t quite managed, because he knew in Serena’s world, any comparison to an animal she loved was a great compliment. He lived for a compliment from her. They were never lies, never superficial.
She did not have either in her.
And the horrible truth was that he did feel some excitement about bringing a puppy home. He had never been able to have animals before. His parents did not enjoy them, and then he’d assumed himself too adult, too busy to keep them.
Serena had showed him otherwise, and there was something…just something about the idea of walking an animal around, enjoying its exuberance in their home— her home—as he’d enjoyed it on their visit.
But it wasn’t just her softness he was obsessed with. The real Serena she let out only at home. He also appreciated the business side of her. The icy, curt way she’d cut one of her managers down to size the very next morning when he dared suggest the merger was a mistake.
She was alarmingly amazing, and he recognized this feeling growing inside of him as an old, dangerous one he’d put away. He’d stopped yearning for his parents’ affection and learned to do without. Because he was strong. Because he was purposeful. Because he did not need those people who had refused to see him.
Love him.
But the need winding its way around his heart when it came to Serena was too much. He couldn’t seem to cut it off.
And he didn’t know which prospect was worse. That the soft light in her hazel eyes—the way she sighed his name, the way she looked at him sometimes, seriously and intently—might mean she felt the same.
Or that he was delusional. That it was an act. That he was desperate for any affection and reading into things. That everything his father had once said about his intelligence about business and people was true. That one day Serena would look at him with tears in her eyes and turn him away, because there was nothing he could do right.
He didn’t stop this though. Because they were getting married tomorrow. Because this was business. Because this wasn’t real .
Not real, no matter how soft her gaze seemed to be. No matter how much taking her to bed each and every night was a glorious and never ending source of enjoyment. No matter how much the past few weeks had begun to feel like a life he’d never known he’d wanted.
Calm. Cozy. Serene. Real .
Because the want was insidious and deep inside him—the want to make it real. To be her husband. To love her. To build a life.
The knowledge he could not. Because he did not know what a real marriage looked like. What a real husband did. He wouldn’t be good enough. It was impossible .
He remembered all too well what it was like to want something out of his control. His father’s approval, his mother’s love. Other people’s feelings were not concrete, and they could change with the whims of time. He had no control over them.
And so he’d gone along these last few weeks, waiting for his own whim. Waiting for something to change. To feel suffocated. To find some flaw in her.
For her to finally, finally realize that all of the many flaws in him were not charming or acceptable at all.
But nothing changed. She simply got her hooks deeper and deeper into him. She simply settled into a life in which they were in each other’s space constantly. Drowning in each other. With neither of them sensible enough to escape to shore.
Maybe she had even convinced herself that she was in love with him. He saw the way she looked at him sometimes. The way she opened her mouth to say something, then closed it as if she was afraid to say the words.
When she was never afraid. Which meant it was all wrong. Wrong. How could he exist in a place where Serena Valli was afraid? It had to be his fault somehow.
He glanced over at where she stood over the stove, humming as she cooked them dinner. Something she apparently liked to do. She was more than adept at it, and he enjoyed watching the pleasure in her expression when he enjoyed what she’d made.
Her hair was piled up on her head, and she wore casual sweats he knew would be almost as soft as she was under his hands.
The desire to touch her—to lose himself in her rather than the way the anxious, horrible dread kept drifting over him and pulling him under this strange wave of…fear—was overpowering.
He never considered himself afraid, but she made him so. She made everything so . But if he lost himself in her now, they would be married tomorrow.
Married .
He wanted to believe it could be like this. The past few weeks. The ease of it. But didn’t he know better?
He had watched what his parents had done to one another. He had heard Serena’s own mother berate a dead man. What were they doing? What made them think they could do this?
It isn’t real .
But it was. It was real, and there was no more time to pretend it hadn’t become so. So, he had two choices.
He could forget every lesson he’d ever learned and try to make something work. He could believe and be crushed. He could let this destroy them both, as it no doubt would.
Or he could find his wits, his smarts, and do the right thing.
The thing that would save them both.
She was the only person he’d ever successfully saved. He could not continue on this path without saving her one last time.
And suddenly, watching her hum as she cooked them dinner, he realized what must be done. It was reckless. Shortsighted.
Necessary.
He stood from the chair he’d been sitting in abruptly. “I’m going to my club tonight,” he announced, perhaps a bit overloud and out of the blue. “I have business to attend to.”
“Would you like me to join you?” she asked, still focusing on whatever she was making in the skillet in front of her.
For a moment, he stared at her back. Join you . Yes, that was what he would like . Her. By his side. In his bed. Forever and ever. Smiling at him, cooking for him, crooning over her animals and making her incessant lists. He wanted her lavender scent surrounding him for all his days.
A want so bone deep he knew he would never have it. Something would change. Something would break. He would turn her away, or she would turn him away.
They would destroy each other, just as their fathers once had.
He could not live under the fear of it. Maybe fear made him a coward, but he saw it differently. He was saving her. He would save her . Once and for all.
So, he would not be touching her. Not tonight. Not again. If she would not be the one to call it, he had to be.
“No.” The refusal was harsh and sharp. Enough that he saw the way she subtly flinched at his blunt response. “It would be a distraction,” he said, though he should have left it at sharp and harsh. “I have some things that must be done before the wedding and honeymoon.”
Her shoulders were stiff, and he waited for some argument. Something cutting. He waited, perhaps even hoped for, some kind of fight . A fight would be clear cut. A fight would be easy.
But all she said was, “All right.”
It stabbed like a knife all the same. Her easy acceptance. The understanding in her eyes that she refused to acknowledge there between them.
Then again, so did he.
So they stood staring at each other, both afraid to say the things that needed to be said. Because they were alike, and maybe too much so.
“Are you going to eat before you go?” she asked blandly, some of that old ice he hadn’t seen in weeks now seeping into her tone.
Guilt tried to take root inside his chest, but he refused to let it. “No. Thank you.” He moved away from the kitchen, toward the exit. He had to get out. He had to change the trajectory of all of this.
And he knew… He knew just how he could do it. What would be best for all of them. He would save her.
“Luciano.” Her voice was firm, chilly and it brooked no argument.
He stopped at the exit. He didn’t want to look at her, but when she said nothing, he felt like he had to.
Her gaze was direct, but not icy. There was that softness he hadn’t imagined Serena Valli capable of before , though now he realized that was the real core of her. Under all that frigid perfection was this gloriously sweet and caring woman. How she could be both the harsh businesswoman and the softhearted animal lover, completely unafraid to be herself in private, made zero sense to him.
It twisted him into a million knots, and a man could not live with these knots choking him. He could not live with the expectation of a woman like her upon him.
He would never, ever meet it.
So he would save her. He would save her from this. It became a mantra in his head, repeating. If he ran. If he broke it all, she would be free and saved.
“We’re getting married tomorrow,” she said, very seriously.
He looked at her. She was beautiful. Wonderful. Soft and lovely. So damn smart it hurt. He wanted her. Every night. Every day.
And he could not think of a single positive thing that could come from this. She would betray him, and he would be a fool. He would fail her, and she would be destroyed.
He would drive her from that dinner table in tears someday, like his father had done to his mother.
She would send him away someday, like his mother had done to him.
She would see him for what he really was, because it was certainly not worthy of her , whatever he was, whoever he was.
It wasn’t good enough for this .
Besides, there were no forevers in this world, and he would rather ensure now that he did not believe in any, rather than make this worse.
For the both of them.
Still, he managed to respond. “Yes, we are getting married tomorrow,” he said hoarsely. “Perhaps I will stay at the club tonight. Is it not bad luck to spend the night together before a wedding?”
She was very still and quiet for a long few moments. Her eyes were steady on his but he saw…too many things in their dark depths. “I suppose I’ve heard that. Then I will just…see you at the wedding tomorrow? Our wedding.”
He didn’t miss the way she clarified that, the way she watched him, as if she could see inside his tangled brain and make sense of what he couldn’t.
It made him desperate to run, but he didn’t. Because she did not call him on it. If he was a coward, so was she.
Still, he answered her. “Yes.”
Then he walked away. Walked . Purposefully, and perhaps with some speed, but it was not a run. He did not run away.
When it’s important, you do .
He shoved that thought away, the disturbing fact it sounded like Serena’s voice in his head. An accusation that buried deep and sharp but proved to him he was doing this right.
I will save you .
He called his lawyer on the way. He arrived at his club, but ignored all greetings and went straight to his office. When his lawyer arrived, he said it plain. “I would like to change our arrangement.”
“I knew the marriage part of this was ridiculous,” the man muttered unwisely. “I can meet with the Valli lawyers tomorrow and—”
“No. I want everything signed over to Serena Valli now. No marriage necessary.”
“Mr. Ascione, you can’t just…”
“I can. I will. Whatever it costs, it must be done by tomorrow.”
“Mr. Ascione…”
“Is there a problem? Should I call someone else who can handle the task?” he demanded.
The lawyer shook his head, began to back out of the room. “O-of course not. You will need Ms. Valli to sign off on it as well.”
“She will.”
The lawyer swallowed and nodded. “All right. It shouldn’t require overmuch. Would you like me to deliver the papers to her when they are done?”
It was tempting. So damn tempting. She could sign the papers with this man, and no doubt her team of lawyers, and he would not need to be involved. He would never have to see her again. He would not have to deal with the fallout.
He could fly off to London tomorrow. Tokyo. New York. Anywhere but in the same country as her .
But he was too much of a businessman to think that would work. To end this, to truly stop what had spiraled out of control, he could not let someone else do his dirty work.
“No. I will deliver them.”
And then he would say good-bye to whatever strange interlude this had been and go back to the man he had to be.
The caricature only Serena had ever seen behind.
But she would be saved, and that was all that could matter.