Her eyes opened wide. “You expect me to live in Venice for the next year?”
“I expect you to live with me for the rest of your life.”
Her lips parted in a silent gasp. Her stomach cramped. He was out of his mind, or far too sure of his power. Seconds passed, and then minutes. Rachel could not bring herself to speak, and Giovanni didn’t seem interested in filling the silence, increasing the tension until she wanted to jump up and run. But where could she go? Nowhere. Because Michael was at the Marcello palazzo and she’d never leave Venice without him.
“You want to protect your company,” she said carefully after an endless stretch of silence. “And I want to protect Michael. Surely we can both agree on that.”
Gio’s dark head inclined.
“I understand damage control is needed, especially since the media is fascinated with this fantasy story of ours, but eventually the media will move on to other stories and other scandals, and we can return to our lives, hopefully relatively unscathed.”
Gio just waited.
She swallowed and mentally went through her thoughts before speaking them aloud, testing their strength and clarity. “Let’s start with the pretend engagement. We can do that. It’s not beyond our ability to smile in public and try to behave in a unified manner. It’s a role we can manage for a few weeks, or even a few months. But let me be clear, I can’t commit to anything longer than that. It’s enough for us to take this first step now, implementing damage control, which should prevent the situation from spiraling.”
He studied her from across the table, his gaze slowly examining every inch of her face. “So you’ll stay here for the duration of the engagement?”
“I have a job, Gio, and I might not be the owner of my company but I have colleagues who count on me, and customers impatiently waiting my return—”
“I don’t want you to return to Seattle, not if you’re going to take Michael.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want him with a stranger all day while you work. You deprive him of you. You deprive him of me. It’s not right, not when I’m here, and I want him in my life.”
“And what would I do if I stayed here?”
“Be his mother. Be my wife.”
“And you’ll compensate me, correct? You’ll give me an allowance or open a bank account for me.” She shuddered. “That is not my idea of a life. There is no independence. There is no freedom.”
/> “Do you have freedom now? Show me your independence. You were on my doorstep begging for help.”
Her lips compressed. She averted her head, her hands knotted in her lap.
“I know about your life in Seattle. You had a job, and a two-bedroom apartment—two bedrooms because Juliet often needed a place to crash—and a car with one more year of payments left on it. It’s a life, a respectable life,” he added quietly, “but it’s not fantastic. It’s not a dream. There’s no reason you can’t consider other options, and you need to consider other options, if not for your sake, then for Michael’s.”
She was so close to crying that she had to bite the inside of her lip hard, brutally hard, to keep the tears from falling. A marriage without love? What kind of future was that?
As if able to read her mind, he added, “Romantic love isn’t everything. There is companionship. And passion. I will ensure you’re satisfied—”
“Can you please drop this?” she choked, mortified.
“For now.”
* * *
Leaving the café, they walked in silence for several minutes, pausing to let a group of tourists push past. They were talking loudly and in a hurry, and Rachel stepped back close to the building, glad for the interruption as it had been almost too quiet for the past few minutes.
Another group appeared on the heels of the first, and Rachel pressed her back to the building, letting the next group get by them, too.
“The water is receding,” Gio explained. “The tourists have been waiting anxiously in their hotels for the tides to drop, and now that high tide has passed, the tourists are descending on the city again.”
“Does it flood this much every winter?” she asked as they started walking once more.
“We usually have a little bit of flooding every winter, but the amount varies. Acqua alta, which means high water, can range from just a few centimeters to three or four feet. Last year was a bad year. We had over four feet, and over half the island was covered. It was one of the worst seasons we’ve had in one hundred and fifty years.”
“You sound so pragmatic.”