12. Mira
MIRA
“T hank you for doing this.” Clay pulled me a little closer, his arm around my waist. Even with a caftan between his skin and mine, I couldn’t ignore the tingling sensation that raced through me at his touch.
I leaned closer, resting the side of my head against his bare shoulder while widening my smile. “It’s excellent PR,” I muttered through my teeth as the photographer’s camera clicked away.
The feature in Money Magazine about the crown prince of the hospitality world buying out one of America’s most respected brands was set to publish in next month’s issue, bumping another story aside in favor of getting the word out while the story was fresh.
Clay’s press manager knew how to get things done.
“Just make sure we sell the fantasy, princess.”
If there was anywhere we could sell a fantasy, it was here, standing beside the pool at our Santa Barbara resort, the last stop on our three-week honeymoon. I could hardly believe it was almost over. That after this, we would head home and settle into… what?
“Is everything all right, Mrs. Manning?” The photographer peered at me from over the top of his camera. I didn’t realize my smile slipped until he mentioned it.
“It’s still Rinaldi,” I replied without thinking.
“Of course. Sorry.” He was probably used to people snapping or behaving badly, or so I wanted to tell myself to keep from feeling like a slug for my reaction. But he shouldn’t have made the assumption, either.
“Easy there,” Clay murmured, looking down at me.
He was every inch the powerful mogul, the man on top of the world.
The way he looked in a pair of swim trunks, he could have been doing a spread for a men’s health magazine.
The spray-on sunscreen one of the photographer’s assistants had applied made his skin glisten, but the muscles were all him. No need to airbrush a six-pack.
“Terrific.” Lowering his camera, the photographer looked toward the lounge chairs nearby. “Now, just… you know, relax together. We want a few of you lounging around the pool.”
“This feels extremely disingenuous,” I whispered to Clay. Two executives lazing around the pool, looking like bored models in a perfume ad. This wasn’t our life.
“Remember. We’re selling the fantasy.” He was all too happy to walk down the steps leading into the pool. “This feels fantastic,” he announced, wearing a wide grin as he descended until the water was waist-high.
“I think I’ll sit over here,” I decided, perching at the edge of the pool and letting my legs dangle in the water once I pulled the caftan up around my knees.
I wore a two-piece suit underneath but wasn’t trying to show off for the press the way my husband did.
“I didn’t spend all that time getting my hair done just to get it wet. ”
“That’s terrific,” the photographer announced, snapping one shot after another of Clay taking slow strokes through the water while I leaned on my palms, tipping my head back, letting the sun warm my face.
I realized this was as close as we had come to relaxing throughout our entire trip.
It wasn’t half bad, even if it came with a photographer.
PR was not my job, not that I didn’t understand how important it was, but it wasn’t something I had ever spent much time on.
I didn’t give interviews or pose for photos.
That was Papa’s deal. I was the behind-the-scenes person.
Not anymore.
Marrying Clay meant a bunch of minor complications I had never considered. Like this. Selling the fantasy, as he put it. Giving the public a glimpse of our supposedly fabulous lives.
What would our so-called fabulous lives look like after this?
When there wasn’t a fantasy to sell anymore?
The funny thing was, if it hadn’t been for this trip, I would have been more than satisfied keeping to my part of the house, avoiding him when possible, and going on with my life.
Everything was different now. We were still strangers in a lot of ways, but I knew him better than I had.
And no matter how I tried, I couldn’t hate him the way I did at first. Nobody could’ve been more surprised by that than I was.
A sudden blast of cold water across my chest and face made me sit straight up, gasping. Clay was smirking as he started a slow backstroke away from me. “Whoops,” he called out.
“Get back over here,” I warned, kicking a wave of water in his direction. “Don’t you dare chicken out.” That was nowhere near what I wanted to say, but I had to keep it friendly in mixed company.
“Who says I’m chickening out?” There was something wicked in his smile. “Do you want to fight about it? Get in the water.” One of the photographer’s assistants giggled from across the pool. I ignored her.
“I already told you I don’t want to.”
“Too bad. I guess you’ll have to take it, then.” He splashed me again, harder this time, and I sputtered and kicked while the photographer snapped away, and both assistants chuckled.
“This is your last warning,” I gritted out through a smile. “You’re going to wish you hadn’t started this.”
“So far, all I’ve heard is a lot of words.”
He knew just what to say to wake up my competitive spirit. Once I hit the water, caftan, and blown-out hair and all, he found out I could only be pushed so far.
Afterward, while we laid out on lounge chairs after the photoshoot was finished, Clay snickered. “So you didn’t spend all of your time in the kitchen when you were visiting the properties. You did some swimming too.”
“Don’t be sore just because I almost drowned you,” I murmured, adjusting my sunglasses, soaking in the rays that dried my hair and my clothes.
It had been too long since I had taken the time to do this.
So what if it was barely ten in the morning, and I was already on my second mimosa?
We didn’t have any meetings scheduled. This was the one day I was truly able to relax.
If only real relaxation was possible while both looking forward to getting home and dreading it.
“The spread will look great, anyway.” Clay stretched, throwing an arm over his head. “That’s exactly the kind of thing the public wants to see. The two of us looking normal, playing in the pool.”
“What about you?” I turned my head to look at him, and my heart forgot to beat for a second. It was damn unfair for a man to look that good like chiseled perfection.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Did you enjoy yourself when we were fighting in the water?” He always seemed to enjoy it when we were fighting, sparring, bantering.
So did I. This time around, it didn’t result in us tearing each other’s clothes off the way we did in Napa and all the other times we’d done it in the ten days since.
“You know, that was actually fun.” His lips twitched. “Even if I don’t appreciate being bested.”
“Why can’t it be enough that we had fun?”
He clicked his tongue. “Having fun wasn’t the point.”
“When is it the point? Does that time ever come?”
He lifted his sunglasses, turning his head and quirking an eyebrow at me. “Since when does it matter?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it should. I work like hell, but I also try to enjoy myself when I can. Not everything is about ‘optics.’” I made finger quotes around the word.
His eyes rolled. “It’s cute you think that, but you’re also mistaken.”
The man was a mystery. The kind that left me hanging between wanting to roll my eyes back and forget he existed, wanting to solve him. If we were to spend the rest of our lives in each other’s path, it only made sense that I would want to understand the man. What made him tick?
“You got what you wanted. Right? The properties, your empire. Can you relax a little bit now?” I asked. “Try to enjoy it a little?”
“Who are you, and what did you do with Mirabella?”
It was sort of sad how desperate he was to change the subject. God forbid he be human. “This is me asking you a serious question.”
He shifted a little on the chair, then released a deep sigh. “The therapy session is over.”
I shouldn’t have tried. There was nothing that set my teeth on edge like being dismissed, and he was the king of dismissal.
Why wasn’t it enough for me that we had great sex and actually saw eye to eye on a lot of issues revolving around the company?
It should have been enough. It needed to be enough.
“The thing is, you wouldn’t understand.” He said it so quietly I almost didn’t realize he was talking to me until he turned his head again, propping the sunglasses on top of his head. “This has always been yours. This life. You were born into it.”
“Am I supposed to apologize for that?”
He snickered, shaking his head. “Down, girl. Put the claws away. I was making an observation, not a judgment.”
“Anyway, what difference does it make?”
“It makes a damn big difference. You can tell yourself to sit back and relax and enjoy it. And you’re right, I should try.
But have you ever worked for something, really worked for it, pinned all your hopes on it, and lost it?
” He snapped his fingers. “Let me tell you, it’s the kind of thing that changes a person. ”
I could barely keep up with him, combing back through everything I had learned about this man. Papa had compiled that whole dossier on him. What did it say?
Finally, it hit me. “Are you talking about when you were playing football?” I guessed.
“Yeah.” He blew out a sigh, shaking his head while his jaw twitched.
“You don’t understand. It was my ticket out.
I was going to be a star. I had scouts from all over the country showing up at practices and games, reporting to their coaches on their phones while I worked.
I could see the whole future laid out in front of me.
A career. Money, finally. I was going to retire my mom so she could enjoy her life, and I would make it so she would never have to worry about anything.
No more sitting up late at night, crying over a stack of bills.
No having to decide between buying a new pair of work shoes or making sure I had decent cleats. And then…”
I held my breath while he cleared his throat.
“Everything changed in a heartbeat. I got hit, I went down… felt pain like I had never felt. I knew it was over. The whole plan had to be scrapped, reworked. And once I got over the pain, I started moving forward. But there were those moments, lying on the field and wanting to puke from the pain, when I thought to myself… this is it. It’s all over.
Everything I wanted gone in the blink of an eye. ”
My heart ached for the kid he used to be. He had spoken so little about his past, almost not at all. It was like opening a big, thick book whose pages resisted being turned. “But look at what you created,” I reminded him.
“Sure, over the course of years. Try being seventeen and finding out your future is over. So no,” he concluded. “I don’t find it easy to sit back and relax because I know it can go away. There’s always room to improve.”
There was being driven, and there was being obsessed. I used to think I fell into the latter category, but I had nothing on the man lounging beside me. It struck me as sort of sad that he couldn’t take any time to enjoy the results of his work.
“Where is your mom now? You’ve never mentioned her.” And she hadn’t come to the wedding. At the time, it made perfect sense since the whole thing was a sham.
“She lives in Dallas now to be closer to her sister. It’s been a while since I’ve made it out to see her.” If that bothered him, he didn’t show it. “I usually try to make a point of it around the holidays. But she has everything she’ll ever want or need. That’s something I’m always on top of.”
I wondered if it was enough for her. If she wouldn’t rather have him around once in a while. It was safer to keep my thoughts to myself, closing my eyes and letting myself drift away while endless questions rattled around in my head.
Those same questions were still torturing me by the time we were getting ready to land in LA. I gazed out the window, admiring the lights in the distance. I was almost home.
Why the hell did it feel so much like I was heading toward the electric chair?
I was starting to crave normalcy, even if it meant finding a way to coexist with the man sitting opposite me in the jet’s cabin.
As always, he was on his phone, something I could count on no matter what was happening.
Where was I going to sleep tonight? In my bed? In his? What did he expect?
For that matter, what did I want?
If anything, that was the question that paralyzed me because I didn’t know.
Did I want to share his bed now that we were back in the real world?
Were we supposed to forget everything that happened?
It was what I told myself we should do, leaving Lake Tahoe and heading to Napa, but I couldn’t bring myself to stay away from him.
I sat up straighter, clearing my throat to break the silence. “So here’s a completely random thought.” Yes, that was definitely the way to lead into it. Very smooth.
His only response was a grunt, letting me know he’d heard me.
I could’ve slapped myself for being a coward.
What the hell was my problem? I could face down a boardroom full of stuffed shirts or a handful of disappointed customers without blinking an eye.
Yet I couldn’t seem to find the words to have a discussion with my own husband.
I had to do this or else stand around feel like a smacked ass when it came time to go to bed.
My phone rang, and I didn’t know whether to be annoyed or grateful for the interruption. Clay’s head snapped up, his eyes glittering, and I knew exactly what he was thinking. He was not hard to read at all.
At least I got his attention, though when I checked to see who was calling, my heart seized. It wasn’t Matteo this time. “Hello?” I almost barked on answering the call from somewhere at Cedars-Sinai Hospital.
“Is this Mirabella Rinaldi?” a woman asked.
I looked at Clay, who was confused but concerned, leaning closer. “Speaking,” I managed to choke out.
“I’m calling from the intensive care unit at Cedars-Sinai. You’re down as your father’s contact.” Before I had the chance to scream out my fear, the woman on the other end said, “I’m sorry to tell you this, but he’s had a heart attack.”