Chapter Seven #2
“The far-flung schools were in Switzerland, but the last one we attended was in Milan.” He chuckled. “Our grandparents wanted to keep a closer eye on us.”
Catarina was intrigued by this emerging sketch of Massimo’s background. Multiple boarding schools suggested a teen who exercised far less of his current iron control.
“It must have been a comfort to have your brother with you,” she said a little wistfully, thinking back to that strange feeling of isolation at a new school.
Massimo laughed. “Alessandro was often more trouble than comfort.”
And yet, the warmth in his voice suggested a closeness to his brother.
“All those years at boarding school, and yet you cook? I must say it’s a little unexpected,” she said. “Even for a man of all your accomplishments.”
Massimo flashed her a devastatingly handsome smile, threatening her last defenses. “You may want to reserve your praise until after you try it.”
She gestured to the bandage on his forehead, just barely visible under his thick locks of hair.
“I have heard many strange reports of survivors of car crashes, people speaking with ghosts or waking up with full novels in their head that they had to write down. But I have never heard of a crash that left someone with professional-level cooking skills. Truly, it’s a miracle. ”
Massimo’s stark features lightened, and he laughed, his eyes crinkling in the corners in a way that made her heart stutter.
He had been called a lot of things in the press—driven, obstinate, demanding—and their first meeting had more than confirmed those descriptions.
But right now, Massimo looked almost…at ease.
She was wary of the way she felt herself softening toward him.
“I am afraid the explanation is rather prosaic,” he said, the humor still dancing in his voice. “My grandparents did not grow up wealthy. When my grandmother saw the direction my father was taking the business, she decided to arm her grandchildren with more practical skills.”
“How very sensible of her,” she said. “I wish I could give her my compliments.”
“She would be delighted to know her efforts were not wasted,” he said, though Catarina doubted his grandmother had worried about Massimo’s determination to master whatever the lesson had been.
Even in the little time Catarina had known him, she had gleaned that anything that Massimo did, he would relentlessly pursue excellence.
Massimo looked out the window and added, “Her lessons have proved useful in many ways.”
“Indeed. My father tells me that you and your brother rebuilt your family’s business from the ground up.”
“We had the Carandini name to redeem. It was our duty,” he said with a mixture of pride and self-deprecating humor.
Massimo was the third-generation holder of the Carandini family legacy, and though his father had done plenty to ruin it, he and his brother had so quickly and thoroughly rebuilt it.
It was why Catarina was being offered up to him, the prize her father so readily turned over: because he would protect her with his name.
Marrying into this family would ensure her future.
And yet, she sensed that his efforts were about more than a duty to the Carandini name.
She couldn’t help but notice that when he laughed, he looked almost…younger, like a different person, one who had been taken away at birth and lived a much more comfortable life. It was a strange thought.
She lifted her glass and met his gaze, and she could feel the humor in his eyes shift into something different, something that stirred the want bubbling inside her.
“Your mother’s death must have been difficult,” he said, watching her carefully. “I saw the photo of the two of you together in my room.”
She looked away. Her pain was something private, something that no one, not even her father, could understand. And yet, she felt strangely soothed by his tone. “It was. I traveled with her quite a bit. My father occasionally met up with us, but often it was just my mother and me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
“Thank you,” she said, taking a drink of her wine, busying herself with anything besides meeting his gaze. She didn’t want him to see the rawness in this topic. Still, after four years.
In many ways, the man across from her was who she had hoped to find when Massimo had walked into the library. That day, she had decided that man was an illusion, a figment of her imagination. But today, in the glow of the candlelight, she felt the tempting stirrings of hope.
She took a bite of the exquisite fish, decorated with herbs and lemons and asked, “Where does your grandmother live?”
“In her country home in the mountains near Lake Como, though she still stays in Milan from time to time.”
“And this country home is where you learned to cook?”
“Among other skills,” he said. Then his gaze turned darker.
“Neither of my parents could be called anything close to practical, but my grandparents enjoyed running an estate of that size, even as their health declined. My grandfather passed away a few years ago, but running the estate is still a part of my grandmother’s daily life.
They want Alessandro or me to take it over someday. ”
He took a drink of his wine and continued.
“When the two of us were kicked out of our boarding school in Montreux and our parents were away on one of their many reconciliation vacations to Seychelles, we were shipped back to Lake Como. Our grandparents decided that a practical connection to the world was in order. They felt that they had spoiled and corrupted their only son, and they were determined not to let the same happen to the two of us. The result is that I can cook and tend to animals and an orchard, build fences and make fires, to name a few. In retrospect, that summer was the happiest of my childhood.”
There was a warning in his tone that told her not to ask more, but she ignored it. This was her chance to learn about him.
“I would not have guessed that you were the type to be kicked out of school,” she mused. “Though you did mention trouble with Alessandro…”
“I took away a lot from the experience that summer, including that serious, hard work soothed a lot of my anger,” he said. Then, unexpectedly, he laughed. “My brother seemed to have taken an entirely different lesson from it.”
Alessandro Carandini was as well-known as Massimo, which was why her father would never have considered him as a candidate for marriage.
He was, in crass terms, a playboy, someone with a charm that had drawn in princesses and commoners alike.
But none of his attachments lasted for longer than a few weeks.
Massimo’s reputation was the opposite of charm, though she was starting to understand that he was perfectly capable of it.
Instead, he seemed to have made a deliberate decision not to use it.
But she was listening closely to the tone that Massimo’s voice had taken when he doled out these little hints of his background.
He loved his grandmother, that much was clear, and maybe Catarina had expected that, but what she hadn’t expected was the depth of emotion she could hear he had for his brother.
If one were to read the tabloids, one might assume that the two brothers were at odds, their warring personalities pulling them in different directions.
But most notable was the icy bite he reserved for his parents and the warning she sensed as he moved the conversation away from the topic.
She knew the basics of his parents’ very public excesses, but now she wished she had probed further at these stories.
She wanted to ask more but was almost sure her questions would be shut down. She needed to take a subtle approach.
Catarina had intended to quickly eat and then withdraw to her suite, but he was keeping her here, not with coercion but with the intensity that seemed to radiate from him, sprinkled with unexpected humor.
At times, his eyes sparkled with amusement as he spoke, but under his smile she felt there was something carnal lurking, something her body seemed particularly attuned to.
Those moments reverberated inside her, leaving a tingling sensation running through her limbs.
As the white landscape darkened, she could feel the lure of this man across from her grow stronger.
But if she were to marry him, she needed more, she reminded herself.
Would he lower his guard for her even further?
It was hard to be strategic when she wanted to run her hands through the silky waves of his hair.
To trace the sharp angles of his cheekbones, of his jaw, the hard planes of his chest that had tempted her the night before.
She reminded herself that Massimo had arrived so unceremoniously at the bottom of her driveway determined to take her back to Milan.
He had been so sure he could bend her to his will and make her do something she didn’t want to do, and the only thing that stopped his plan was a literal force of nature.
Catarina knew she was still the bird in this arrangement and Massimo held the cage.
Even if he gave her the illusion of flying right now, he could just as easily show her the bars, gilded or ironclad.
Not once had he asked about what she wanted, which suggested that either he hadn’t considered this angle or he didn’t care. She wasn’t sure which was worse.