Marriage Made In Monte Calanetti. Susan Meier

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      He leaned across the bar, studying her, unable to stop the stirrings of emotions from the past. He’d never really been able to confide in anyone the way he had Lily. And he’d missed that. He’d missed having someone who cared what he did.

      “Paris has its nightlife.”

      She smiled sadly and glanced down at her wine. “I’m sure.”

      Her sadness hit him like a punch in the gut and he was twenty again, simultaneously being offered the adventure of a lifetime and losing the woman who’d been his other half. The confusion of her rejection filled him.

      “I would have loved to show you.”

      Her serious brown eyes met his. “You couldn’t have shown me.”

      He frowned.

      “Mic, we didn’t have any money.”

      He batted his hand. “There are lots of things you don’t need money for.”

      She shook her head. “And there were lots of things that we did need money for. I was uneducated. The best job I could have gotten is what I’m doing now. Waitressing. We would have been cold, hungry.”

      A horrible realization rose in him. It coated his mind like smoke in a brush fire, and awakened memories he’d forgotten.

      “You were angry that we were broke?”

      “I was concerned that you would give up your dream to support me and Melony.”

      He stepped back. “Oh, my God. You dumped me because you believed I couldn’t support you?”

      “I ended us because I knew I was dead weight. Especially since I came with a little girl. Not just an extra mouth to feed, but two.”

      His muscles hardened. His words, when they flowed out of his mouth, felt like dry chips of wood. “You didn’t trust me.”

CHAPTER NINE

      The pain on Mic’s face seeped into Lily’s soul. She’d known it would hurt him if she admitted the truth, but tonight she saw it was unfair to make him live with a lie that also hurt him.

      “I’m sorry.”

      He straightened to his full six-foot-four height. “It’s fine.”

      But it wasn’t fine. She could see it on his face.

      “Why don’t you go home for the night? I’ll clean up after this customer.”

      “No. I’ll stay. It’s my job.”

      “No.” His eyes met hers. “It is my job. And I do my jobs. I always do my jobs.”

      Tears flooded her eyes at the humiliation in his voice. “Please, Mic. That’s exactly my point. You would have taken your responsibilities seriously. And you would have lost your dream.”

      “So you felt it was better to take the decision out of my hands?”

      His righteous indignation finally got the better of her. “Oh, please. You were in the situation every bit as much as I was. You knew I was responsible for my sister. You knew I was still grieving my parents’ deaths. You knew I had the weight of the world on my shoulders, yet when I said no to your proposal you never argued. I said, ‘I don’t love you’, and you left. You never asked why. You didn’t remember my passion for you. You didn’t think that maybe my troubles might have put me in a bad emotional state. You simply got hurt and left.”

      He gaped at her. “You’re pinning this on me?”

      She rose from her bar stool. Her chin lifted. “Maybe I am.”

      “Well, that’s convenient.”

      “Maybe.” A horrible chill enveloped her. The memory of how he’d left raced through her brain. The feeling of abandonment. The knowledge that he hadn’t thought enough of her to even question what she’d said. The memory of the sweeping fear when she realized she was alone and responsible for her ten-year-old sister. “Think back, Mic. You never fought for me. You never fought for what we had.”

      “You know, you like to remember your emotional state, but what about mine? I was moving to a city I didn’t know. Alone.”

      “Oh, so you only asked me to marry you for company?”

      He cursed. “You’re confusing everything.”

      “No. Maybe for the first time the truth is coming out.” And it was killing her. All these years, she wouldn’t let herself examine their situation too closely because the pain of losing him had been suffocating. But now she finally saw the truth.

      She hadn’t simply lost Mic. She’d proven to both of them that he hadn’t really loved her.

      She slid off the bar stool. “I’ve got to go.”

      “That’s right. Leave when things get too difficult.”

      She shook her head. “No. That’s what you do.”

CHAPTER TEN

      Mic was so angry with Lily that he didn’t sleep that night. He actually debated not going to work the next day, but knew he had to, if only to prove he did not run from his troubles.

      When she stepped into the kitchen and took a clean apron from the shelf, he stood taller.

      Accuse him of being wrong? Ha! That was insane.

      “Good morning, Ms. Norelli.”

      Her face flamed with color. “Good morning, Chef Mic.”

      Rafe waved his knife. “And good morning to me. Now that greetings are over, could we do some work?”

      Holding Lily’s gaze, Mic said, “I’d love to work since I don’t let my responsibilities slip.”

      Her chin lifted and she left the room.

      But the quieter she got, the angrier Mic got. Every “please” and “thank you” grated against his nerves. Her sweet, polite act was just a way to make him wonder if she wasn’t correct. Had he really been the one to bail on her?

      As soon as that thought popped into his head, he balked. He had not bailed! She hadn’t given him a chance to prove himself. To prove that he could have supported her, helped raise her sister. She snatched that chance away with her refusal to marry him.

      The next time she gave him her overly polite thank you, he yanked the dish away from her. “Perhaps, if it’s too much trouble for you to be honest, I should serve this dish to our customer.”

      “Too much trouble? I was sparing you trouble!”

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