Falling for Her Billionaire Boss

She shook her head.

“A boyfriend, then.”

Mari shook her head again. “No, nothing like that.” She could trust Luca; she knew that in her heart. They could deny their feelings all they wanted but the way he’d rushed to her rescue ensured it. He had earned the right to the truth. To know why she’d acted the way she had all these weeks. “It was my stepfather.”

Luca said a word in Italian she didn’t understand but the meaning was clear enough. “He beat you?”

“Yes. Me and…and my mother.”

Luca stood, went to the bar, poured himself a drink far more generous than the one he’d given her, and tossed it back.

“And where is he now?”

Mari folded her hands in her lap. It helped with the trembling. She tried not to think about the beatings. About how Robert would turn to her after he’d gotten tired of pushing her mother around. “He-he was in jail, but he’s out now. He made parole the day before you and I went…” She had to stop, breathe, swallow. “The day in the attic.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

She looked up from her lap then. What she saw in Luca’s eyes she knew she’d remember to her dying day. He wasn’t angry with her, he was angry for her. Ready to stand between her and whatever, whoever, would dare to hurt her.

“He’s on parole, you said. Would he come after you? Dammit Mari, I could have protected you! You should have said something, rather than go through this alone!”

“What would I have said, Luca?”

He put down his glass. “If I had known you were scared, if I’d known the reason you didn’t like contact, I swear Mari, I wouldn’t have pushed. I’m not cruel.”

“And said what? ‘Hey, Mr. New Boss! Please don’t mind me, I just don’t like any physical contact because my stepfather was a sadistic freak that beat me for the hell of it?’ Nice ice breaker, don’t you think?”

His eyes closed for the smallest of moments.

“All the times I held you, all the times I could feel you trembling. Dio, Mari, I’m so sorry.”

He was blaming himself now and Mari was sick and tired of Robert Langston having all the power. Could she be honest with Luca? Could she tell him how she felt?

In the end she knew she couldn’t reveal it all, yet she also felt he deserved a partial truth.

“I wasn’t shaking with fear, Luca. Not with you. Don’t you realize how much it means to me that you stood up for me today? No one’s ever done that for me before. I…I…” But she stopped. She couldn’t tell him how she felt, it was too new, to tenuous. “Please, don’t ever think I was afraid of you. I never felt like I was in physical danger.”

Only in danger of what I feel for you, she thought. That was the part she couldn’t tell him. That was the one thing she couldn’t let him know. She had known from the beginning that

there would never be anything serious between them. He was Luca Fiori, based in Florence, heir to the empire. They were from two different worlds and were simply in the same place at a particular time.

He couldn’t know that with each passing day, with each gesture, she was falling deeper in love with him. What was she to do with those feelings? She certainly didn’t feel equipped to handle them, let alone share them. The one thing that she was sure of was that it wouldn’t turn out well. And she valued him too much to let things turn bitter and angry.

“Are you afraid now? Of your stepfather? What about your mother? Where is she?”

She wasn’t sure how much to tell him, how much he could handle. It wasn’t a pretty story. She paused too long, and he backed away.

“I apologize. I’ve overstepped. You don’t want to talk about it, and I respect that.”

“No!” Mari got up from the sofa. “I’m not trying to shut you out, Luca…you must understand. No one here knows about this. I started a new life, built it from scratch. And I thought I’d left it all behind me. I did therapy. I thought it was all okay. Only I have just realized I can’t leave it behind—Reilly showed me that—and right now…”

She needed him. Luca, complicated, arrogant, temporary Luca, and she needed him. Wasn’t that a kick in the pants.

“Right now,” —her voice shook— “you’re the only one keeping me from losing it. Today brought it all back, all of it. I-I need you, Luca.”

She half-expected him to run screaming. What man would want an emotionally crippled woman clinging and crying all over him?

“Tell me,” he said softly, holding out his hand.