The Dare Collection May 2019 by JC Harroway & Cathryn Fox & Katee Robert & Dylan Rose

Author:JC Harroway & Cathryn Fox & Katee Robert & Dylan Rose
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2019-04-30T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Luca

IN MY LATE father’s study, I pace to the window and pull back the curtain to see my mother tending to the weeds in one of her many flower beds. Tall trees line the long driveway of our massive family estate, and bright flowers burst from the gardens throughout. But not even the vibrantly colored foliage, or the bright sunshine feeding them, can lighten my mood.

Brianna was playing a game with me?

I’ve been home for a little over ten days, and I still can’t wrap my brain around that truth, still can’t quite loosen the knot in my gut. While one part of me is angry, there is another part that tells me I have no right to be. I kept things from her, too, important things.

A dark car slowly crawls up the driveway, and my mom stands to wave to my uncle Gio. It shouldn’t have surprised me when he showed up at the wedding that night, begging me to come back sooner rather than later. After Marco’s latest antics, which were splashed in every newspaper, Gio needed me home, taking my rightful place at the head of the family so I could get things in order and prepare for his retirement.

I drop the curtain and pace around the room. I glance around, and my father’s presence hits like a physical blow. Grief presses down on me, heavy, suffocating, squeezing the air from my lungs. I miss him, goddammit. I miss my brother, too. As I catalogue the room, my throat tightens, and I fist my hands, shove them into my pants.

This office has been waiting for me to stand up and be the man everyone needs me to be. I want to live up to my dad’s expectations. Make him proud. But how the hell can I do it without the woman I love beside me? Dad was a free thinker, a man who stood up for what he believed in, even if it went against tradition. Putting a stipulation like marriage on his surviving son makes no sense to me, doesn’t seem like the sort of thing he’d do at all. None of this adds up.

As I think about that—and something niggles in the back of my mind, something just out of reach—Uncle Gio comes into the office. He’d been looking into the marriage clause, trying to find a way around it. Even if he does, the only woman I really want with me has been playing a revenge game, payback for something she thinks I did.

But was it really all a game to her?

There is a part of me that doesn’t believe that. How could a woman touch and kiss the way she did if deeper feelings weren’t involved? She even did special things to please me, like a day kiteboarding when she feared it herself. Something isn’t adding up there, either.

As Uncle Gio takes the chair on the other side of the desk, my thoughts once again wander to Brianna. My heart beats a little faster, pounds harder against my rib cage.

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