At 22, she'd only graduated university the year before and she'd landed her dream job as a program coordinator for an organization that serviced youth in the Foster Care system.
His handsome face settled into a frown. "But you love travel and history. It is the perfect honeymoon for you,bèdda mia."
For once, Annette didn't react to him calling herhis beautyin Sicilian. She could not let herself get sidetracked by the way he made her feel. She loved him more than anything else and still, something inside her was screaming a warning because of his words.
This was too important. "And if you were talking about the two weeks we had planned, not two months, right when we are supposed to be launching a new STEM program for our youth, I would be leaping on you with gratitude."
"I expected you to leap regardless." His sexy grin did predictable things to her insides.
"You know two months is too long for me to take away from my job," she told him, needing her Sicilian tycoon lover to understand.
"I run a worldwide consortium andIam taking two months," he pointed out.
If that were true, she would feel very differently. Maybe.
"But you aren't taking two months off, are you? You have a state-of-the-art office on board that new yacht and you'll spend a few hours every day making sure that your family's multiple companies continue to run like clockwork."
His expression said he didn't get her point. "You require more sleep than I do, my few hours a day keeping my hand in will not impinge on our time together."
"I believe you'll do your best to make sure they don't, but I also know if an emergency arises, you'll deal with if it. Even if that means you calling in a helicopter to take you to be onsite."
"That happened once."
"During a date," she pointed out because the memory still rankled. He'd left her without a backward glance when they'd been very close to making love. "But in a space of two months, how many emergencies do you deal with?"
"We cannot foresee that."
"No, but we doknowthat my organization will have to hire a program coordinator to take my place, and there can be no guarantee they'll have a place for me when we return. Not to mention the fact that I will not have time to train my replacement how to get into the building, much less how to do the job, between now and our wedding." Which was only two days away. "And we alsoknowthat there will be lots of emergencies over the next two months getting that program up and running, butIwon't be accessible to deal with them."
"You cannot compare your job to my role in Messina Shipping & Exports."
The company had started off as a humble exporter of olive oil and other agricultural goods from Sicily four generations in the past. Now it was one of the world's largest import-export brokers and had an entire fleet of cargo ships.
And even that hadn't been enough for her power broker fiancé. The tall, dark-haired Adonis had his own Venture Capitalist firm which had made him one of the richest men in Europe in his own right by the age of twenty-nine.
Not that any of that mattered to Annette. She'd fallen in love with Carlo the man, not Carlo the billionaire.
"No, and I've never tried to," she said now. "But I do ask that you respect that my job is very importantto meeven if it doesn't make me rich."
"You do not need to work once we are married," he said with arrogant assurance.
Pain filled her as she realized where this two-month long honeymoon was really coming from, and it wasn't her fiancé's desire to spend two months working parttime and remotely. He wanted her to quit her job. Had done since almost the moment she'd first taken it.
Only she thought they'd worked out that was not going to happen. "So, you've said."
She didn't understand his attitude. While his mother might not earn a salary for her volunteer work, the Sicilian socialite easily worked fulltime hours on her various charities and projects.
"Your job should not be more important than me." This time Carlo's frown was more of a scowl and she could see that something more than natural male arrogance was there, under the surface.
Only her own feelings of panic were taking precedence. This felt way too much like conversations she'd had with her father. Why must Annette choose to work in a career with no prestige? Didn't she see how her desire to work with at risk youth made their family look?
She thought it made them look like maybe they'd raised someone who cared about the world beyond her own front door. Her parents did not agree.
Social activism had its role, but not the one Annette wanted to take.
"No, of course not," she said responding to Carlo's words and not her father's playing over and over in her head. She wasn't putting the job ahead of him, but ahead of the luxury of a two-month-long honeymoon. "But how I feel about what I doshouldbe important to you."
"You will find other worthy causes to support after we are married,bèdda mia."