Page 46 of Unveiled As The Italian's Bride
‘I’m not unhappy, Dante, and I’m not the sort of person who has feminine wiles! Which is very sexist, as it happens.’
‘You’re disappointed that your parents like me?’
‘I’m disappointed that they’ve obviously been desperate to see me married off. I always thought they’d want me to be as free-spirited as they’d been.’
‘They said so?’
‘Not in so many words.’
‘You’re not your parents, Kate. Their dream was to see the world. Was that your dream?’
‘No.’ She sighed with frustration, half-resenting his kind voice, which was getting on her nerves the more she heard it. ‘It was never my dream. Why are you being so nice to be, Dante?’
‘I like you. I like your parents.’ He shrugged. ‘Is there a problem with that?’
‘No problem.’
‘Talk to me.’
‘Isn’t that what I’m doing?’
‘I’m not your type,’ Dante heard himself say in a roughened undertone. ‘And what’s the big deal if I’m being nice? Since when was being nice a crime?’
He raked his fingers through his hair and felt the silence pulse between them like a heartbeat. It was cold inside, even though the portable oil heaters were still doing their duty. This was the most basic place he had ever stayed in in his life, and yet the love that had obviously gone into preparing it for them had managed to turn it into one of the best.
He had anticipated a day or two of making a polite effort to advance the fiction of their love story but he hadn’t anticipated the feeling of utter relaxation that had overwhelmed him in this small, back-of-beyond place where the bad weather never seemed to end.
This was the feeling he’d used to get as a kid when Antonio had breezed in from one of his adventures—a feeling of playing truant from the daily grind of doing his duty.
‘Well?’ he challenged. ‘If you don’t like me being nice, then what would you rather?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Would you like me to fit into the category you feel safest with—maybe be cold and remote, robot-like? Isn’t that a description you once used?’
‘Dante...’
‘If I stop beingnice,’ he ground out in a driven undertone, ‘then you might not like the person you end up having to deal with.’
‘What person is that?’
‘A man who can’t get you out of his head. A man who still finds you incredibly attractive and is finding it harder and harder not to touch you.’
‘You—you don’t mean that,’ Kate stammered. She rested her hand flat on his chest. He was still wearing his jumper and jeans, and she was fully clothed in her thick pyjamas, but she could still feel the hot burn of his skin against her hand. He covered her hand with his. Somehow he was lying next to her and they were facing one another. She wasn’t too sure how they had reached that position, but it felt natural, a feeling of calm after turbulence.
‘Trust me. I never say anything I don’t mean.’
‘But you’re not my type.’ Kate clung desperately to a familiar mantra. ‘And I’m just a novelty to you. You said that! This is just something that suits us both.’
‘You’re right on all those counts.’
Kate caught her breath in sharp, gut-wrenching disappointment.
‘But...?’ She found that she was hoping for a ‘but’.
‘What would you like me to say? And you still haven’t answered my question. If you don’t wantnice, then what would you rather?’
‘But being attracted to one another...that’s not what this is about.’
