Chapter Two
CATARINA HAD SEEN Massimo before. It was in a lush ballroom somewhere in Milan, lit by sparkling chandeliers.
She remembered a chocolate fountain, a black Steinway piano in a corner that she’d admired and an army of waitstaff, dressed in all black and buzzing around with bottles of champagne.
She remembered the silk of her gown, blue and whisper-soft against her skin.
She remembered the stylist’s expert hands in her hair, testing one updo after another as her mother sat beside her, blue eyes warm and so very alive.
Her mother had always been the sun of the family, lighting it up, and Catarina was content to be an outer planet, kept in close by gravity, deferring to larger planets as long as her mother’s steady warmth and energy were near.
She remembered the hall with its red velvet curtains and the murmur of the crowd over the hum of the string quartet.
And she remembered Massimo, at the center of it all.
At least, he’d seemed to be the center to her at the time.
Massimo Carandini didn’t notice her, of course.
At sixteen, she had been a shy, wide-eyed girl in a demure gown, all but hiding in the shadow of her mother’s glowing presence.
But she’d noticed him. How could anyone not be drawn to this tall man with captivating brown eyes, a bespoke suit and silky black hair that she’d inexplicably wanted to touch.
In a room full of men in elegant suits just like his, Massimo Carandini shouldn’t have stood out, but he did.
There was a hardness about him, something distant and forbidding that made her sixteen-year-old self feel things she hadn’t recognized at the time.
What made someone hard like that? she had wondered.
Why was she struck by the strange desire to run her hand over the hard line of his jaw, the stark planes of his cheeks, searching for hints of softness?
But that was years ago, back when her life had been a series of questions, girlish and ultimately inconsequential.
Would she rather attend an all-girls boarding school in England or in the Alps, closer to home?
Would she rather spend the fall in Taipei learning Mandarin, or did she want to work for her mother?
Back then, gaining freedom from her father’s controlling hand hadn’t crossed her mind, and her mother was still around to temper his tendency to turn concerns into rigid rules.
So each time, she had chosen to stay closer to home.
She had chosen with her heart, and now, in the devastating aftermath of her mother’s death, she was grateful that she had.
At sixteen, Catarina had known that the choices she had been given were privileges and that life was unfair that way, but her life simply was.
She hadn’t questioned it, much less considered how she would feel if her life were to upend, suddenly and irrevocably.
Now, every day, she lived with the bone-deep understanding of what the loss of her mother meant for her.
Catarina was alone. At first, she hadn’t quite noticed the narrowing of her independence, or if she did, she attributed it to her loss, her solitude.
It had taken a long time before she was aware of the way her father’s worries had turned into restrictions.
Still, when her father came to her with a proposal for marriage, she hadn’t contemplated any deeper questions, such as: Should her father even be involved in her plans for marriage?
Catarina had focused instead on the freedom she would gain when she escaped her father’s watchful gaze.
When he’d floated the name Massimo Carandini specifically, she’d asked herself a second question: How had this man made her feel back in that ballroom when she was sixteen?
He had made her shiver with what she now understood was desire.
From across the room, no less. That feeling had been private, unattached from her famous mother.
And it had felt like the opposite of being alone.
Then there was the fact that, despite his oppressive impulses, she trusted her father implicitly, so why wouldn’t she comply with his wishes?
Why wouldn’t she do her best to make her father happy?
She’d promised that much to her mother in her final days, that she would look after her father’s happiness.
Now, in her favorite room of the house, surrounded by books that had buoyed her through darker times, Catarina stared at the stranger in front of her, reminding herself of all the rationales for this arrangement that had floated through her mind.
She thought she had prepared herself for the moment she’d face the object of her teenage crush, for the inevitable conclusion of her mother’s last wish and her father’s relentless determination to fulfil it.
It was a decision that would bring to rest the uncertainty of the past few years since her mother’s death.
But nothing inside her was at ease. Instead, it was as if the hum of an electric current ran through her, unexpected and shockingly intimate.
As she gazed at the man in front of her, she could see she had made a grave miscalculation.
Her father had always treated her as if he was a little baffled by her, like she was another species, a favorite dog, perhaps, content with pats on the head and endless treats.
So although her best interests were always at the forefront of her father’s mind, why had she assumed that Giuseppe d’Avalos would know who would make a good marriage partner for her?
How could her father possibly know what she needed in a husband, what she could handle?
Because the man in front of her was far too much to handle.
Just the sensation of being close to Massimo threatened to overwhelm her.
Up close, it was clear that her memories didn’t do justice to this man.
His lean, muscular frame was starker than she remembered, more imposing, more everything.
She could see the outline of the well-defined muscles of his shoulders under the crisp white of his shirt.
The top button was undone, showing a hint of dusky hair against bare skin, so shockingly intimate, so sexual and not at all in line with the inscrutable expression on his face.
That perfectly fitted shirt followed his broad chest, his tapered waist and disappeared into charcoal-gray wool pants.
Was she really focusing on this man’s pants?
Her gaze flicked back to his face as her cheeks flushed.
She was not ready to identify all the feelings that were running through her.
Instead, she met his eyes. But none of her memories captured the piercing intensity of his dark brown eyes as he watched her.
They drew her in, pulling her toward him.
She wanted to touch him. She wanted to test the softness of his inky hair between her fingers, the smooth line of his jaw.
She inhaled, and his scent filled her, spicy, masculine with a hint of pine that sent her thoughts to her house deep in a remote Norwegian fjord.
This was the scent of freedom, and she wanted more.
Catarina couldn’t help herself. She lifted up onto her tiptoes and brought her lips to one cheek, pressing them against his soft skin.
Just a greeting, she told herself as she took another breath of his scent.
Nothing more. But her heart slammed in her chest, beating out its message, liar, liar, liar.
Still, she moved to the other cheek, greedy for more.
When her lips met his skin again, she heard the quietest of groans from somewhere deep inside him.
It was electric. Magical. The word resonated inside her, as part of her battered heart opened up in what felt very much like hope.
Catarina was scared to move. She was scared to breathe.
If she did, she might disturb this feeling inside her, the feeling that there was hope, that maybe she didn’t have to spend the rest of her life alone.
Maybe her mother wasn’t the only person she would ever grow close to, who would understand her.
Maybe this marriage wouldn’t simply be a compromise she was forced to make, her father’s satisfaction for fulfilling her mother’s dying wish in exchange for the freedom of a life out from under her father’s scrutiny, not dictated by his misguided maneuvers.
Maybe this marriage could be more than a business arrangement.
No one would ever replace her mother, and that was the last thing she wanted, but maybe there was a chance that Catarina had found another connection.
Then something shifted. Massimo’s expression seemed to shutter, leaving only a distant stillness.
She stared at the man in front of her, so remote, searching for the connection she had felt just moments before.
It had to be there, somewhere inside him, because it was still bubbling inside her.
It had been there before, and she would find it again.
Catarina could feel her determination grow.
She had spent too much of her life buffeted by her mother’s awful twist of fate, by her father’s autocratic decisions.
This man in front of her was an opening in her future.
Clinging to that electric pull she’d felt, that groan of pleasure she swore she’d heard, she took a deep breath and squared her shoulders at this imposing man. Just a man, she reminded herself.
“Massimo?”
Just his name, nothing else, as she tried to capture into words the questions that reverberated inside her. What is this overwhelming pull between us? Don’t you feel what I feel right now?