“I didn’t pack anything. Whatever I need, I’ll buy new.”
“Of course.” Katherine’s gaze returned to me, accusatory. “I preferred my original seat.”
“No one prefers coach over first class.”
“I do.”
“Was this the entirety of your strategy?” I asked, drawing attention to how poorly she’d planned her getaway. “Liquefy your accounts and then melt into the bohemian life of a hipster on the West Coast?”
“Maybe. As long as whatever I planned was on my own terms, the details were irrelevant.”
“I beg to differ. My family has a significant investment in your welfare. Did you think that if you breached the contract, it would go without some sort of compensation or penalty? My father isn’t going to let this insult pass without consequence.”
Katherine fell silent. I knew she’d given this possibility thought, but she was resolved to follow through. “I’ll have to take the risk,” she finally said.
“You really hate me that much?” I asked, all levity fading from my voice.
It was the minute hesitation that gave her away and filled me with hope—maybe misplaced and wildly irresponsible hope, but hope nonetheless.
Before Katherine could answer, the flight attendant returned with a refill of the champagne. I preferred scotch, but since I’d already started with champagne, I figured it was best not to mix. I needed my head on straight if I was going to find a way to get Katherine to love me again.
“I don’t hate you, Luca,” she said, glancing away. “I just don’t love you any longer.”
I didn’t believe her. One thing I’d learned about human nature was that strong emotion betrayed vulnerabilities. In the last six months, she’d done everything in her power to avoid being alone with me. If there weren’t residual feelings messing with her judgment, she wouldn’t have needed to avoid me.
Maybe I was basing my opinion on my own wild hope, but I believed she still loved me. Somewhere deep down she loved me like I loved her, but she was afraid to trust me again.
I could sense her agitation with her sitting so close to me; her fidgeting fingers gave her away. Memories of growing up around each other, falling in love, having sex...they were all in there, rubbing against the memories that hurt. It was my guess that Katherine was running from every memory between us.
“I know you remember how good it was between us.”
“I try not to live in the past.”
Ouch. “It could be that way again,” I told her. “If you’d just give us a chance.”
She answered with heavy silence.
I tried again. “Katherine—”
“I want out of my contract,” she blurted.
“Excuse me?”
“I didn’t stutter and you have perfect hearing. Let me out of our marriage contract or I’ll spend the rest of my life embarrassing your family, starting with an exposé on your family that begins with how I was essentially purchased to be your bride.”
She’d thrown down a goddamn gauntlet.
“If you do that, you’d ruin your own family, as well,” I pointed out, narrowing my gaze, trying to gauge if she was bluffing.
“I owe no allegiance to my father. He made this mess—he can deal with the fallout. I was never asked if I wanted to marry into the Donato family, but then, I was only a kid. Who cared what my feelings were, right?”
I knew Katherine had as strained a relationship with her father as I had with mine, but unlike me, Katherine seemed uninterested in gaining her father’s approval.
Resolve shone in her eyes, and I understood the hard line she was willing to draw to be free of anything remotely connected to the Donato name.
Her demand was like a punch to the gut. I’d never expected her to go that far. I could give her the world on a silver platter if she’d only let me, but no, she wanted fucking out.
“You’re willing to go that far to satisfy a bruised ego?”
She shook her head, obviously seeing things differently than me. “You’ll never understand, Luca. That, above all else, is why I can’t marry you. When people show their true colors, it’s best to believe them. And I don’t like your colors.”
My mother would fall over in a perfumed faint if a scandal of this proportion reached her little social circle. My father would lose his temper and bring all the attorneys under our employ down on Katherine’s head for breach of contract. He would ruin her. She had no idea the fire she was playing with.
I’d done this.
I’d turned a sweet, loving girl into a Donato-hating shrew who found me to be the devil.
I couldn’t let Katherine’s broken heart ruin our second chance before we even got started.
It would be ugly.
That blue-eyed gaze slivered, sending spikes through my heart as it raced. In business I was known as a boardroom shark. I could sense the tiniest drop of blood before my opponent even knew he was in trouble. Nothing scared me.
Except the thought of losing Katherine for good.
“Give me a week to change your mind,” I proposed, my gaze pinning hers, willing her to agree to my deal. I needed this to work. “If by the end of the week, you still want to be free...I’ll do what I need to release you from your obligations to the Donato family without penalty, as long as you promise to keep the details of our contract confidential.”
Katherine stared with suspicion, clearly believing my offer was pure crap. “You’re lying. I don’t believe for a second that your family would walk away from an investment.”
She was right, but I planned to win, so the consequence of failure was a nonissue. However, I couldn’t exactly say that without sounding like an arrogant ass. Instead, I said, “This isn’t about an investment—it’s about me and you. Give me a chance to change your mind.”
“I’m serious, Luca. I don’t want to marry you.”
“You’ve made yourself perfectly clear.”
“Then let’s skip the experiment and just call it done. You go your way, I’ll go mine.”
Never. “If you’re so sure your feelings won’t
