Dante's Temporary Fiancée

He shouldn’t have mentioned his brother. It brought her lasering back to her original question. “Seriously, Rafe. What happened to you that day at the lake? The day Draco broke his leg?”

When he remained silent, she added, “Consider it a condition of my leaving this ring on my finger.”

Damn it to hell! “Now you’re really pushing it.”

“Tell me.”

“There’s not much to tell.”

He crossed to the table and made short work of opening the bottle of Dom. Not that he was in the mood for a celebration. What he really wanted was to get rip-roaring drunk and consign his entire family, the bloody Inferno and even his brand-new, ring-wearing fiancée straight to the devil. Splashing the effervescent wine into each of the two flutes, he passed one to Larkin before fortifying himself with a swallow.

“Rafe?”

“You want to know what happened? Fine. I was forgotten.”

Larkin frowned. “Forgotten? I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

He forced himself to make the admission calmly. Precisely. Unemotionally. All the while ignoring the tide of hot pain that flowed through him like lava. “I mean, everyone went off and left me behind and didn’t realize it until the next day.”

Seven

“What?” Larkin stared at Rafe in disbelief. “They left you there at the lake? Alone? Are you serious?”

Rafe smiled, but she noticed it didn’t quite reach his eyes. They’d darkened to a deep, impenetrable green. “Dead serious.”

“I don’t understand. What happened?” she asked urgently. “How old were you?”

She could tell he didn’t want to talk about it. Maybe she should have let him off the hook. But she couldn’t. Something warned her that whatever had happened was a vital element in forming his present-day persona.

“I was ten and our vacation time was up, so we were getting ready to leave. My cousins and brothers and I were all running around doing our level best to pack in a final few minutes of fun while my sister, Gia, chased after us doing her level best to round us up. Since she was the youngest and only five, you can imagine how well that worked.”

“And then?” Larkin prompted.

He lifted a shoulder in a casual shrug, though she suspected his attitude toward that long-ago event was anything but casual. “Draco climbed a tree in order to tease Gia. I knew it would take a while for my parents to get him down, so I took off to check on this dam I’d built along the river that fed the lake. Apparently while I was gone Draco fell out of the tree and broke his leg.”

She rubbed at her own leg and winced in sympathy. “Ouch. How bad a break was it?”

“Bad. All hell broke loose. Mamma and Babbo—my mother and father—took Draco to the hospital. Gia was hysterical, so Nonna and Primo took her with them. My aunt and uncle grabbed Luc and their four boys.”

He was breaking her heart. “No one wondered where you were? They just…forgot about you?”

“There were a lot of kids running around.” He spoke as though from a memorized script. “They each thought someone else had taken me. Draco was in pretty bad shape, so my parents stayed overnight with him at the hospital, which is why they didn’t realize I’d been overlooked.”

She could sympathize with his parents’ decision, having gone through a similar ordeal. Only, in her case her mother hadn’t stayed with her. Gran had been the one to stick by her side day and night. “When did they figure out you were missing?”

“Late the next day. They didn’t get back to the city until then. When they went to round us all up, they discovered I was nowhere to be found.”

“How hideous.” Larkin gnawed at her lip. “Poor Elia. She must have been frantic.”

Rafe glared in exasperation. “Poor Elia? What about poor Rafe?”

“You’re right.” So right. “Poor Rafe. I’m so sorry.”

He reminded her of a snarling lion, pacing off his annoyance, and she couldn’t resist the urge to soothe him. She approached as cautiously as she would a wild animal. At first she thought he’d back away. But he didn’t. Nor did he encourage her, not that that stopped her.