“What are you talking about, Sasha? Competing with Aaron? I’ve never done that. Not with him, not with any other man other than what you overheard. I would never take something so far that I’d ask a woman to marry me—”
“You didn’t ask me, Giovanni,” she interrupted.
Everything in him stilled. “I didn’t?” Surely, he hadn’t been that big of an idiot. No, he’d been that arrogant. He’d declared it to the world, put the ring on her finger, but he hadn’t asked her because … “You might have said no to me. We talked about this.”
“How it came about. Wearing your ring. That we might actually make it work, but you didn’t really ask, Giovanni.”
“If I ask officially, are you going to say yes?”
She burst out laughing. “You can’t cheat. Either you do the right thing and ask me or you’ll never know.”
“Are you serious?”
She nodded her head, but there was a teasing glint in all that sapphire staring into his eyes. She took his breath. His heart. She liked to play. To laugh. She gave that to him in some of their worst moments, and he knew she always would.
“Giovanni, if and when you really ask me, you have to be serious.”
“Baby, you’re still doubting me. Go over there, where your shadow can touch my shadow.” He practically tossed her off his lap. She wanted a proposal, she was going to get one and she was going to be standing where their shadows touched so she could feel exactly what he was feeling. He didn’t want her to doubt him again.
“What did my good friend Aaron say to you?” He should have obeyed his first instincts and broken that up immediately, but he wanted to show her he could overcome jealousy.
“Just nonsense apparently. I knew he was lying and I still was worried. Maybe it’s me I doubt, not you. I don’t seem to know what I’m doing anymore.”
“You work too much and you’re tired, Sasha.”
She shook her head. “I’m used to working long hours. On a ranch, the work is never done. It isn’t that, it’s Sandlin.”
Her voice broke, and he wished he still had her in his lap.
“I lost my parents, the ranch, my entire world. And they keep telling me I’m going to lose Sandlin. I’m fighting for him the only way I know how, but sometimes, I can’t sleep worrying that when I’m not with him, something terrible is going to happen and then I’ll lose him, too. I just can’t, Giovanni. I just can’t lose him.”
He would give his fortune to keep that from happening. He had to consult with the acknowledged best doctors in brain trauma that he could find. He had to make it a priority immediately. That didn’t mean he was going to be distracted. He knew Aaron had said things their friendship should have prohibited and he needed to know what those things were in order to do damage control. He was not going to lose the best thing that had ever happened to him.
He slipped off the chair and waved her toward the light where her shadow would be cast straight across his. When she backed into that position, he moved as close as possible and knelt down. Her eyes widened and she shook her head. He could see that she hadn’t really expected him to ask her. Not formally. Not on his knee.
“Sasha Provis, would you do me the honor of becoming my wife and living the rest of your life with me?” His heart pounded and thunder roared in his ears. He hadn’t expected to be so fearful. “I need you. Your laughter. The way you know how to love. I want you for a million other reasons. I know you’re the one, the only for me. I don’t cheat, in spite of whatever you may have heard to the contrary. I believe in loyalty and family. I swear on my family’s code that I will do everything I can to make you happy.”
He knew she would have to feel his sincerity. This wasn’t about that anymore. This was about whether or not she felt capable of loving him. He didn’t take his eyes from her, taking in every detail. The slightest nuance, her every expression.
She touched her tongue to her lip. “Are you hiding something from me? Something about your family business that might change how I answer?”
She might as well have shot him—put a fucking bullet right through his heart. She was smart, and there was no hiding the fact that his family was powerful and dangerous. They wanted people to know they were a force to be reckoned with. That was how they protected themselves and their territory.
He took a deep breath. “Yes.” It was the only answer he could give. The only answer he would give. He had to be honest with her, and in any case, their shadows were connected. She came from a family straight from Sicily. She might not have been trained to be a rider but she certainly could have been one. Her brother as well.
Sasha stepped close to him. “Will you tell me what it is?”
“I’m not at liberty to tell you until we’re together.” That was the truth, too.
She studied his face for what seemed an eternity. Very slowly she nodded her head. “Then yes, Giovanni, I’ll marry you.”
For the first time in his life, he actually felt so weak he thought he might hit the floor. “After what I just told you?”
She was there, sinking to the floor beside him. Her hands framed his face, her thumb sliding over the bristles on his jaw. “I know your family has to have secrets. You didn’t lie to me, Giovanni, and you promised you would explain when we were committed. I’m committing to you. Tying my life to yours. You come with secrets, and your mother. I come with stalkers and Sandlin. We’ll find a way to work it all out.”
“Eloisa.” He sighed.
“Stalkers.” She matched his sigh.
The two of them burst into laughter, and he gathered her into his arms, pulling her onto his lap again. He liked her there. He liked the way her arm naturally curved around his neck and she leaned into him. Almost melted into him. “Have that ridiculous game and your worries been put to rest?”
She nodded. “I really wanted to play the game and get your money back from Geno. He was very smug about his winnings.”
“I lost a ton of money that night, but it was well worth it. I found you. I wasn’t about to leave that table and have you thinking I was playing that game.”
She laughed again. Dio, but he loved her laugh. Her fingers curled around the nape of his neck, and just that touch, the way she brushed his skin, made his heart pound and his cock stir. There wasn’t anything at all sexual about the way she was acting with him, but the intimacy of her touch and the way she was so naturally sensual were arousing. She didn’t have to try very hard with him.
“I noticed, too. I was watching.”
“Tell me what Aaron said.”
“He lied about you. He said the two of you competed for the same woman and he implied you would go so far as to get engaged and then dump the woman just to win.”
He didn’t have many men he counted as friends and that hurt. Deeply. He liked Aaron. He’d helped him often with his training.
“That was never true. I’ve never come close to an engagement. You can go back through every tabloid and every speculation. I was never photographed with the same woman twice. I was careful never to escort a woman more than once to a charity event or any public event, for that matter. I never in my life have led a woman on. I have never been with one that didn’t know the score.”
She closed her eyes and let her head fall on his shoulder. “You don’t like your life, do you, Giovanni?”
“Do I sound bitter? I don’t mean to. I don’t like every aspect of my life, but sometimes, it is necessary to do things for the family. I can’t perform my regular job, so I play the part of the playboy. That’s a job and I’ve learned, over the last few months, to be very good at it, but no, honey, I don’t like it.”