Page 14 of Their One-Night Rio Reunion
‘When it patently wasn’t? No, thanks.’
‘You never wanted to get married for real, then?’ She’d always just assumed that once he had all his ambitions met he would settle down.
‘After what I’ve seen? No way. Happy marriages don’t exist. It’s fantasy.’
Ana agreed with Caio intellectually, but deep in her gut told another story. She wanted to ask him what he had seen, but reticence held her back.
He continued before she could work up the nerve to speak, saying, ‘That’s why a marriage of convenience worked so well for us.’
‘I can remember the tension between my parents after massive arguments,’ Ana observed. ‘Moments before a dinner party. And theirs was an arranged marriage.’
Caio took a sip of wine. ‘Ah, but children complicate things.’
She hid a dart of hurt to think of how she and her siblings obviously hadn’t complicated things enough to make her mother stay.
Ana pulled a knee up and rested her foot on the chair, wrapping her arms around her leg. She felt emboldened enough by Caio’s candour to ask, ‘You never wanted children?’
For a split-second Ana could have sworn she saw something like yearning cross Caio’s face, as if she’d caught him off guard. But then it was gone.
‘No. I didn’t see enough of good, positive parenting to be able to pass it on. It wouldn’t be fair.’
Not sure where her doggedness was coming from, Ana said, ‘But what’s the point, then, of building up a business in your own name, if you can’t leave it to anyone?’
Caio’s focus narrowed on her face. She grew warm.
He said, almost chidingly, ‘Having children is no guarantee that they’ll want to follow in your footsteps. Not one of my brothers is really interested in the family business but they had no choice. It was accept it or lose your inheritance.’
Ana murmured, ‘And you took the latter option?’
Caio said, ‘I was lucky to be able to. The pressure wasn’t on me.’
Ana had a sense, though, that even if the pressure had been on him he would have gone his own way. Nothing would have stopped him. He was too strong to be bent to anyone’s will.
‘Doyouwant children?’ Caio asked.
Ana’s insides clenched. Her dream was too secret and fragile to articulate. Instead, she prevaricated. ‘Like you, I didn’t exactly grow up with good role models.’ She looked around the kitchen area and said, ‘But I think this place, this island, is an example that it can exist for some people.’
Caio shrugged and took another sip of wine. ‘Who knows what Luca Fonseca’s marriage is like...? I’d bet it’s not as idyllic as you think.’
His persistent cynicism rubbed along Ana’s nerve-endings. ‘This place feelsreal. It’s not for show. It’s for them.’
Caio’s mouth quirked. ‘Don’t tell me you’re a closet romantic?’
CHAPTER EIGHT
ANA’SHEARTSTUTTERED. She was exposing herself.
She sprang up from the chair as if stung and started clearing the plates. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I know better than anyone that fairy tales don’t exist. That’s why I agreed to marry you—to extract as much leverage as I could.’
She took the plates over to the island and put them down with a clatter. She felt brittle all of a sudden.
‘So if your aim was to extract as much leverage as possible, why didn’t you fleece me for all that you could get?’
Ana turned around and put her hands behind her, wrapping her fingers around the edge of the marble countertop. Caio had angled his chair to face her, his big body sprawled with elegant insouciance, the wine glass between his fingers. He was enjoying this. Damn him.
‘Because I’m not mercenary. If I’ve learned anything about our lives, our world, it’s that money doesn’t buy happiness. Fulfilling personal dreams does. Finding your freedom does.’
‘So whatareyour personal dreams? You’ve facilitated your brother’s, but what about yours?’
