CHAPTER ONE
Luca
MY NAME IS Luca Donato. You may have seen my mug on the cover and in the pages of Forbes, Fortune and the Robb Report, because my family is ridiculously, obscenely rich.
I’m talking Saudi prince–level money.
I could wipe my ass with hundreds for several lifetimes and still not make a dent in the family trust.
My family descends from Italian aristocracy—some royal connections if you go back far enough—and we’ve done well enough with our investments in Donato Inc. to never have to work again if that were our choice.
But unlike some in similar positions, the Donatos haven’t grown soft with privilege. If anything, our wealth has made us harder, hungrier—all about the victory.
We decimate our opponents, and the word no really isn’t part of our vernacular.
In fact, I can’t remember the last time someone refused to cave to my demands.
Until a certain redhead came along.
The one I’d chased to the airport.
Ah, there you are, you gorgeous pain in my ass.
Katherine Cerinda Oliver...my runaway fiancée.
If Katherine had thought to blend in, that spectacular head of burnished auburn hair was her downfall. Stubborn tendrils escaped her messy bun to curl around her delicate jaw, teasing wispy ends that tickled and caused her to rub her nose without thought.
My hands itched to twist in those sweet, silky curls and bury my nose against her skull. Immediate hunger threatened to override my decision to play it cool. The thing was, she was so damn beautiful sometimes all I could do was stare. I’d been a fool to play fast and loose with her heart years ago.
Now I was paying the price.
Our marriage, arranged by our powerful fathers when Katherine was only a girl, was about to be unarranged if my runaway fiancée had her way.
If Katherine had any inkling how difficult the last two years—giving her the space to do her own thing while I focused on the Donato empire—had been for me, maybe she’d be less inclined to hiss at me like a wet cat.
But that didn’t seem likely, given that over the last six months, anytime we were in the same room together Katherine did everything she could to avoid me.
We were supposed to be working toward building a partnership, courting each other, even. But Katherine wouldn’t even sit through a single dinner unless it was insisted upon by my parents.
And now she was running away from me—literally.
I watched unnoticed from the jet bridge, allowing others to go ahead of me to find their seats on the massive commercial plane. I couldn’t remember the last time I flew commercial—preferring the Donato private jet—and I saw little to compel me to do so again.
So she thought she’d gotten away, had she? Believed she’d outsmarted the Donatos by draining her accounts and leaving without notice, paying with cash for every purchase, including her direct flight to the wilds of California.
But as our wedding date loomed—it was set for this spring—and preparations had hit a fever pitch, I’d sensed something was up. My gut feeling only deepened when our last dinner engagement had gone spectacularly sideways and Katherine had practically tripped on her own feet in her haste to get away.
And when your bride-to-be wants nothing to do with you...well, it doesn’t do your ego any favors.
In spite of her bravado, she nibbled at her cuticles in her seat in coach, a habit my mother had never quite managed to drum out of her. As if hearing my mother’s sharp reprimand, Katherine lowered her hand to double-check her seat belt was cinched tight.
Then she trained her attention out the window, though we were still on the ground and there was nothing to see yet.
That hair was her crowning glory. If she’d been playing it smart, she would’ve worn a hat, at the very least, but then, Katherine was a hothead, passionate to a fault and sometimes reckless.
Case in point: her decision to run away before our wedding.
In certain circles, I was considered quite a catch—rich, handsome, fit—but Katherine saw only the man who’d broken her heart when he’d been too stupid to realize that a woman like Katherine came along only once in a lifetime.
I had a week to prove that I’d changed. Starting now.
I peeled away from the attendants’ area to make my way to my wayward fiancée.
“Leaving without me?” I tsked, startling her with the silky censure in my tone.
“Luca,” she gasped in open dismay, her brow furrowing as her nose wrinkled, as if she’d just stepped in something putrid. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing, love.”
“Don’t call me that,” she warned with a glower that could flash freeze meat. “God, you’re like gum on my shoe. Go away.”
Not a chance. “And why would I do that?”
“Because I don’t want you here,” she answered, cutting me a hard look.
I stared pointedly at her ringless finger, hating that she seemed to the world an available woman, when she belonged to me. “Where’s my grandmother’s ring?” I asked, moving slightly so other passengers could get past me, but I was already causing a logjam.
“It’s too heavy and it’s gaudy.”
“It may be gaudy, but there’s a lot of history in that ring,” I said. “Once we’re married, you’ll only have to wear it on special occasions or when we dine with the family. Mother has particular expectations about gifted family heirlooms.”
“I’m never wearing it,” Katherine returned flatly, “because I’m not marrying you.”
Her declaration hit me like a punch to the groin. She’d never outright stated she wanted to call off the wedding, but I should’ve seen it coming.
“That’s a big decision to make. I hardly think making it when you’re angry is a good idea,” I warned, glancing at the people trying to push past me.
“Luca, you’re blocking the way,” Katherine said, embarrassed. “Just go home and I’ll call you when I land.”
“Sorry, that’s not going to happen. Where you go, I go.”
Before Katherine could hit me with a retort, the sharply dressed attendant made her way to us, her expression polite yet annoyed that I was standing in the aisle as she said, “I need you to take your seat, sir. Perhaps I can help?”
Katherine was really going to be pissed, but it couldn’t be helped. “Yes, actually, my bride-to-be seems to have gotten the wrong seat assignment. I was just sharing with her that we’ve been upgraded. Can you help us out?”
Relieved to find the fix so simple, the attendant smiled and looked over my tickets, her expression breaking into a wider, more accommodating smile. “Of course, Mr. Donato.” She gestured to Katherine. “I am so sorry for the mix-up. Your seats are in first class. We’ll get that squared away right now.”
“Excellent,” I murmured, smiling apologetically at Katherine, knowing she wouldn’t risk a scene.
“Upgraded?” Katherine’s gaze flitted from the attendant to me, indecision marring her beautifully expressive face. Tiny freckles danced across the bridge of her nose and onto her cheekbones because she refused to wear enough sunscreen when she went out. She wanted to tell me to shove my ticket up my ass, but I knew she wouldn’t, not with so many people watching.
“Miss, if you’ll just come with me,” the attendant prompted, gesturing again, and I knew Katherine wanted to murder me. I’d take the risk.
“Fine,” Katherine finally relented with a sour look she didn’t even try to disguise, but I didn’t care. I needed more privacy—and legroom—than coach could provide for what I had to say to my runaway fiancée.
In a world filled with daisies, Katherine was a wild blood rose—willful and breathtaking yet dangerous with sharp thorns.
But even roses needed tending.
And Katherine had broken her contract by running. I could be a dick and just drag her off the plane, reminding her that our marriage was a business arrangement that neither of our fathers would allow to be dissolved, but that tactic would only make things worse between us.
“Sweetheart,” I murmured, settling my hand on the small of Katherine’s back as we fell in behind the attendant. I caught her subtle stiffening at my touch and I prepared myself for an uphill battle, dragging a wagon filled with cement—oh, and the wagon was probably on fire.
Katherine gave the attendant a tight smile and lowered into the luxury seat. “I can’t believe you. How dare you chase me down like a fox after a rabbit. I’m not your fucking property,” she said, crossing her arms and skewering me with the heat in her eyes. “How did you find me?”
I paused, accepting a champagne flute from the attendant, then answered, “Alana told me. She also said you quit your job at Franklin and Dodd.” She’d been working there for over a year.
“Damn you, Alana,” Katherine muttered, exhaling an irritated breath. “I knew I shouldn’t have told her where I was going.”
“True enough, but why did you quit your job?” I asked with a frown. “I thought you were doing well in their marketing department.”
Katherine ignored my query and simply shook her head, disappointed in her friend’s loose lips. I couldn’t blame her, but she should’ve known better. I’d never understood their friendship to begin with. Alana was the stereotypical rich girl, raised with wealth and privilege. She was somewhat clueless and out of touch.
I thought Katherine kept Alana grounded, but I had no idea what benefit Alana provided Katherine.
Katherine rubbed her forehead, trying to ease the furrows in her brow. “Damn, damn, damn,” she muttered before leaning back against the headrest, her jaw tense. “I should’ve just bailed and not told anyone.”
“Probably.”
She narrowed her gaze. “Thank you, peanut gallery. Nobody asked you.”
“Does your father know?” I asked.
She cut me a short look. “Of course not. He wouldn’t understand any more than you would.”
I swallowed the insult of being lumped in with her blowhard of a father, but in truth, while Bernard Oliver had more in common with my own father, Giovanni, I was nothing like either man.
“Why California?” I asked, settling in for the long flight, trying to make conversation.
“Because it was on my bucket list. And it was far enough away from everything associated with my life in New York. And yes, that includes you.”
I barked a short laugh even though I was starting to bristle at her constant jabs. “So you picked San Francisco in January? I hope you packed warm clothes, because you’re going to freeze your pretty little ass off.”
“I’m well aware of the weather. I’m not made of glass—I’m sure I’ll survive. Besides, nothing could be worse than a New York winter.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. The marine layer creates a thick fog that eats into your bones. I think I prefer snow.”
“The point was to get away from you. Anyplace would’ve been preferable as long as you weren’t there. Even a swamp. And before you start pointing out that I’ve never been to a swamp, so I can’t make that assumption, just stop before you start. You’ve screwed up my entire travel plan, and I’m really not in the mood to hear your mansplaining bullshit.”
I knew her well enough to recognize that she wasn’t playing.
“You know, I would’ve thought two years was long enough to lose your quills, but if anything, you’ve only gotten worse,” I said, reluctantly ditching any hope I might’ve had that we could pick up where we’d left off all those years ago—back when she didn’t think I was the devil. “Jesus, Katherine, I thought I’d given you plenty of space to do your own thing so we could make this work when the time came to marry.”
She stared me down, shaking her head as if I were an idiot. “That right there is why I could never marry you, Luca. You gave me space? We broke up because you were caught messing around, and to add insult to injury, your actions were plastered all over one of those stupid paparazzi rags. You broke my heart and humiliated me.”
“I told you that was a misunderstanding.”
“And I told you, you’re full of shit. I won’t be one of those women who simper at your feet and believe whatever nonsense you happen to be dishing out.”
I bit my tongue. Arguing with her about the past wasn’t going to solve anything, but I did point out, “I never asked you to be that woman,” because it was true. A simple and vapid woman would bore me to tears. In all the years I’d known Katherine, boring was never a word I’d use to describe her.
That photo had been unfortunate, but I’d learned a valuable lesson. Don’t let cute starlets sit on your lap when you’ve had too many whiskeys and not enough food. The paparazzi had snapped the pic because of the girl, not because of me, but it’d sold quite a few tabloids. It was pretty condemning, considering she’d been kissing me...and she was topless.
My father had been outraged, my mother had been mortified and I’d lost the woman of my dreams.
In all, it’d been a shit day.
“Why’d you wait until now to call off the wedding?” I asked. “Seems if you were still pissed about that incident, you would’ve called it all off before this dramatic exit.”
Katherine’s blue eyes flashed with ire at being called dramatic. She couldn’t help it—it was the red hair. The Scottish heritage was hard to tamp down. “Because you aren’t the only one with obligations. I wanted to call it off then, but my father interceded.”
By interceded, it was a fair guess he threatened to cut her off if she didn’t go through with the wedding. Bernard believed in brute force to get what he wanted. When our households were joined together, the connections in the business world would grow exponentially. An arranged marriage today wasn’t all that different from an arranged marriage back in medieval times.
It was all about the power exchange, the advancement of a family’s reach and influence.
“I wasn’t given much of a choice. I was a semester away from getting my degree, and I wasn’t going to let everything I’d worked for go down the drain because you chose to be a jackass.” She drew a breath and blew it out, adding with a shake of her head, “Honestly, I thought I could go through with it, have a marriage in name only, but these last six months... I realized I can’t. And I won’t. I’m not going to live my life to someone else’s standards. So...I’m out.”
“It won’t be that simple,” I told her, distracted by a whiff of her hair as she purposefully turned away and a wash of memories hit me hard.
Hemlock trees and sage, the heat of summer, coconut-scented sunscreen mingling with her signature white-citrus-and-cucumber body spray and the feel of her beneath me as I took her virginity.
I could still feel her tight wetness clasped around me, the way she shuddered and gasped as I gently pushed myself deep inside, breaching her lithe body for the first time.
She’d been eighteen; I’d been twenty-two.
The way she’d cried out, her teeth worrying the full pink flesh of her bottom lip, seconds before she came on my cock, her sweet sex clenching around me, greedy for more.
In spite of the slight chill of first class, sweat dampened my forehead as I took a deep swallow of my champagne.
Jesus, now was not the time to think of that memory if I wanted to keep my head on my shoulders.
“I’m not looking for an easy way out. I just want out,” she said.
Time to move the subject to safer ground. “If I were going to run away, I’d at least pick someplace warm with a secluded beach and a well-stocked bar,” I shared, clearing my throat and my head of the pornographic things I wanted to do to my not-so-sweet bride-to-be. “I mean, San Francisco in winter...kinda crappy.”
“Perhaps if things don’t work out for you being CEO of the Donato empire, you can start a travel agency,” she quipped with a dismissive glance before adding, “I picked San Francisco because I wanted to experience the cultural vibe of a liberal city. Not because I wanted to get a tan on some beach.”
I smothered a grin. She’d always been curious and artsy—a big film buff, Coppola to be specific—so I could understand why the city appealed to her. “Well, that’s good, because the San Francisco beaches smell like dead fish and they’re barely nice to look at, much less lie around on the sand. The homeless are particularly fond of the beaches, as well.”
“I know what you’re doing,” she said, bored. “Trying to scare me off with all your negative press, but I don’t care. It’s time for me to live life on my own terms, and I want to see the West Coast.”
“You could’ve asked me. I would’ve made it happen.”
“I don’t want to ask you or anyone for anything.” She turned to me. “Do you realize it was never my choice where to go to school or even what I would study in college? Your family made all my choices based on what would benefit the Donato name when we married.” She huffed out a breath. “I am more than a doll you can dress up and prop in the corner, waving and smiling as the perfect, uselessly educated housewife. I never even wanted to go into marketing. I wanted to be a veterinarian, remember? But your father deemed my choice of profession inappropriate for a Donato. So the decision was made for me.”
I remembered Katherine’s desire to work with animals. I also remembered my father’s disdain for such a career choice. I should’ve stuck up for her, but I’d remained silent. At the time, I’d had my hands full finishing up my own degree and learning the business at my father’s side. I hadn’t had the spare brain space to fight Katherine’s battle, too.
But still, I regretted not saying something.
Everything she said was true, but it didn’t mean I’d had any say, either. I couldn’t give a shit what degree she had or what career she pursued. Maybe it was my misfortune to have fallen in love with my arranged bride, unlike others in similarly wealthy families that treated marriage alliances as business transactions.
“So, you quit Franklin and Dodd. What’s your plan? Become a vet?”
“Maybe. I don’t know, but when I decide, it’ll be my choice.”
God only knew it would’ve been so much easier if I’d felt nothing for the troublesome redhead. If I’d felt nothing but obligation to produce a kid, I would’ve written off Katherine a long time ago, selected any of the numerous women trying to get that gaudy ring on their finger, put a kid in her belly and moved on with my life.
But I loved her. That was the inescapable truth that made it impossible for me to walk away without one hell of a fight.
“So...did you pack appropriately?”
“Of course I did,” Katherine said, adding sardonically, “Did you?”
“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 change, where’s the harm in letting me spin my wheels?” While she considered my point, I pressed my agenda, saying, “Give me one week,” because I wasn’t going to stop until she agreed.
The fact was, I loved her. I didn’t want anyone but Katherine.
Now it was up to me to remind her why, once upon a time, she’d loved me, too.