Mills & Boon Stars Collection: Shocking Scandals: Castelli's Virgin Widow / Expecting a Royal Scandal / The Guardian's Virgin Ward

She swallowed, and he saw that her eyes had changed color again, to that slate green that meant she was aroused. Good, he thought. He didn’t imagine he’d ever be anything but aroused in her presence again. He wasn’t sure he ever had been anything else, come to that.

But she blinked it away and took in a shuddering sort of breath.

“He said he could help,” she said.

She moved away from him, and the sight of her in his shirt did things to Luca that he couldn’t explain. He didn’t want to explain them. They simply settled inside him, like light.

“Why did you need help?”

Kathryn worried her lower lip with her teeth, which he felt like her mouth against his sex, but he held himself in check.

“My mother was single when she had me,” she said, and Luca blinked. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t that. Something so...mundane. “She’d never expected or even wanted to have a baby at all, but there she was, pregnant. Her partner made it clear he couldn’t be bothered, and in case she’d any doubts about that, moved out of the country straightaway, so no one could expect him to contribute in any way to the life of a child he didn’t want.”

“He sounds charming.”

Kathryn smiled, very slightly. “I wouldn’t know. We’ve never met.”

Luca watched as she moved to the bed and climbed onto the mattress, settling herself near the foot with her legs crossed beneath her and his shirt billowing around her slender form. It only made her look that much more fragile.

And made him want to protect her, somehow—even against this story she was telling him.

“My mother had huge dreams,” she said after a moment. “She’d worked so hard to get where she was. She wanted a whole, rich life, and what she got instead was a daughter to raise right when she really could have made something of herself.”

Something in the way she said that scraped at him. Luca frowned. “Surely raising a child is merely a different rich life. Not the lack of one altogether.”

Kathryn’s gaze met his for a moment then dropped.

“She’d worked so hard to succeed in finance, but couldn’t keep up with the hours required once she had me. And once she left the job she loved, at an investment bank, she couldn’t afford child care, so she had to manage it all on her own.” She threaded her hands together in front of her. “All of my memories of her were of her working. She usually had more than one job, in fact, so I wouldn’t want for anything. She wasn’t too proud to do the things others refused to do. She cleaned houses on her hands and knees, anything to make my life better, and despite all of that, I was a terrible disappointment.”

Luca had the sense that if he disputed this story, if he questioned it at all—and he couldn’t understand why there was that thing in him that insisted this was a story that needed disputing when until hours ago he’d been Kathryn’s biggest critic—she would stop talking. It was something in the set of her mouth, the line of her jaw. The stormy gray color of her eyes. So he said nothing. He merely exchanged his towel for a pair of exercise trousers and then crossed his arms over his chest. He waited.

Kathryn let out a breath that was more like a sigh.

“She wanted me to be an investment banker, too. That was always her preference, because she could teach me everything I needed to know and because her experience meant she could direct me.”

“I believe that is called living through one’s child. Not the best form of parenting, I think.”

She frowned at him. “Not in this case. I could never get my head around the math. My mother tried to tutor me herself, but it was a waste of time. I can’t think the way she can. My brain simply won’t work the way hers does.”

“My brain does not work the way my brother’s does,” Luca pointed out mildly, “and yet we’ve muddled along, running a rather successful company together for some time.”

“That’s different.” Kathryn lifted a shoulder then dropped it. “I nearly killed myself getting a First in economics. I spent hours and hours torturing myself with the coursework. But I did it. Then I went on to an MBA course because that was what my mother thought was the best path toward the brightest future.” She blew out a breath that made her fringe dance above her brow. “But the MBA was beyond torture. I was used to putting the hours in, but it wasn’t enough. No matter what I did, it wasn’t enough.”

She shook her head, frowning down at her hands, and Luca had never wanted to touch another person more than he did then. She looked too small and something like defeated, and it lodged in his chest like a bullet.

It occurred to him that he’d never seen her look like this. That she’d fought him every step of the way, if sometimes only with a straight spine and a head held high. But defeat was not a word he’d ever associated with her before.

He found he hated it.

Kathryn met his gaze again then. “And that was when I met your father.”

He shifted position and realized he was holding himself back as much as anything else. As if he didn’t know what he might do if he stopped—as if he still had that little control, when it still involved Kathryn yet wasn’t about sex. He couldn’t say he much enjoyed the sensation.

But one great mess at a time, he thought darkly.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “In that mythic waiting room, the birthplace of your epic friendship. The only friendship the old man ever had, as far as I am aware.”

“You asked me to tell you this story,” she pointed out. “You keep asking.”

Luca couldn’t trust himself to speak, one more novel experience where this woman was concerned—and one he knew he would have to think about later. He inclined his head, silently bidding her to continue.

“It happened just as I told you,” Kathryn said, her gaze reproving. “We started talking. Your father was charming. Funny.”

Luca snorted. “Old.”

“Maybe everyone is not as ageist as you are,” she snapped at him.

He raked his hand through his hair then, annoyed and frustrated in equal measure.

“It is time for the truth, cucciola mia,” he said then, roughly.

He moved before he knew he meant to, crossing over to place himself directly in front of her, at the foot of the high bed. She tilted up that chin of hers, as if she expected him to take a swing, and Luca was obviously deeply perverse, that such a thing should excite him. Or maybe it was simply that he liked it when she fought. When she stood up for herself, even against him. When she was nothing remotely like defeated.

“I’m telling you the truth. I can’t help it if it’s not the truth you want to hear.” She eyed him, as if his proximity bothered her. Luca hoped it did. It would make them even. “I think we’ve already established that you have a history of believing what you want to believe, no matter what the actual truth might be.”

He felt his mouth curve in acknowledgment. “But this is not a question of innocence. This is a question of how a young woman meets a much older man in a medical facility, so she could have no fantasy that there was anything virile about him at all, and decides to marry him anyway. I have no doubt that he proposed to you. That was what he did, always. But what made you agree?”

Kathryn held his gaze, and Luca didn’t move. He didn’t even blink, aware somehow that she was making a momentous decision. And he needed it to be the right one. He needed it—and he wasn’t sure he wanted to investigate why that need was so intense. After a long while, she let out a sigh.

“My mother has crippling arthritis,” Kathryn explained. “When it flares up she can hardly move. It had become very difficult for her to take care of herself.” She shook her head, more as if she was shaking off a wave of emotion than negating anything. “I should have been there to help her, but between the classes for my degree and all the studying I had to do to barely keep up, I couldn’t even do that well. I lived with her, which was one thing, but it was all beginning to feel a lot like drowning.” She sucked in a breath. “But when my mother came out of her appointment, she recognized your father at a glance. One thing led to another, and we all went out for a meal.”

Luca waited.

“Your father is very easy to talk to, actually.”

“That was not a common sentiment.”

“My mother told him everything. My struggles with my degree. Her battle with her arthritis. He was very kind.” Her gray eyes grew distant, and he thought she tipped her chin up that much farther. “And at the end of the evening, he asked if he could see me—just me—again.”

“This is where I think I need some clarification,” Luca murmured. “Did you date a great deal?”

“I didn’t date at all,” she retorted, and he almost didn’t recognize that fierce thing that soared in him at that, possessiveness mixed with a kind of triumph.

“But you dated my father.”

For the first time she looked uncomfortable. “I didn’t necessarily want to date him,” she said softly. “But he’d been so nice, and so sweet, and I didn’t see the harm in having another dinner with him. I thought I was doing a good deed.”

“What did your mother think?”