Page 42 of Untamed Billionaire's Innocent Bride
“Do you? Or do you like imagining that your Mr. Combe cannot make it through a day without you?” He shrugged when she glared at him. “We are all of us dark creatures in our hearts, little red. Think of the story from the wolf’s point of view next time. Our Red Riding Hood doesn’t come off well, does she?”
He thought she had quite a few things to say to that, but she nodded toward the silverware before them instead. “We’ll work from the outside in, and as we go we’ll work on appropriate dinner conversation at formal occasions, which does not include obsessive references to fairy tales.”
Dominik couldn’t quite bring himself to tell her that he already knew how to handle a formal dinner, thank you. Not when she thought she was giving him a tool he could use to save himself, no less.
Just as he couldn’t bring himself—allow himself—to tell her all those messy things that sloshed around inside him at the thought of her as a scared nine-year-old, abandoned by her parents and left to make manners her sword and shield.
He showed her instead, pulling her onto his lap before one of the interminable courses and imparting his own lesson. Until they were both breathing too heavily to care that much whether they used the correct fork—especially when his fingers were so talented.
He meant to leave the following day, but there was dancing, which meant he got to hold Lauren in his arms and then sweep her away upstairs to teach her what those bed posts were for. He meant to leave the day after that, but she’d had videos made of all the San Giacomo holdings.
There was something every day. Presentations on all manner of topics. Lessons of every description, from comportment to conversation and back again. Meetings with the unctuous, overly solicitous tailors, who he wanted to hate until they returned with beautiful clothes even he could tell made him look like the aristocrat he wasn’t.
Which he should have hated—but couldn’t, not when Lauren looked at him as if he was some kind of king.
He needed to get out of there, but he had spent an entire childhood making up stories about his imaginary family in his head. And he didn’t have it in him to walk away from the first person he’d ever met who could tell him new stories. Real stories, this time.
Because Lauren also spent a significant part of every day teaching him the history of the San Giacomos, making sure he knew everything there was to know about their rise to power centuries ago. Their wealth and consequence across the ages.
And how it had likely come to pass that a sixteen-year-old heiress had been forced to give up her illegitimate baby, whether she wanted to or not.
He found that part the hardest to get his head around—likely because he so badly wanted to believe it.
“You must have known her,” he said one day as summer rain danced against the windows where he stood.
They were back in the library, surrounded by all those gleaming, gold-spined books that had never been put on their self-important shelves for a man like him, no matter what blood ran in his veins. Lauren sat with her tablet before her, stacks of photo albums arrayed on the table, and binders filled with articles on the San Giacomo family. All of them stories that were now his, she told him time and time again. And all those stories about a family that was now his, too.
Dominik couldn’t quite believe in any of it.
He’d spent his childhood thirsty for even a hint of a real story to tell about his family. About himself. Then he’d spent his adulthood resolved not to care about any of it, because he was making his own damned story.
He couldn’t help thinking that this was all...too late. That the very thing that might have saved him as a child was little more than a bedtime story to him now, with about as much impact on his life.
“Alexandrina,” he elaborated when Lauren frowned at him. “You must have known my mother while she was still alive.”
And he didn’t know how to tell her how strange those words felt in his mouth. My mother. Bitter and sweet. Awkward. Unreal. My mother was a dream he’d tortured himself with as a boy. Not a real person. Not a real woman with a life, hopes and dreams and possibly even reasons.
It had never occurred to him that his anger was a gift. Take that away and he had nothing but the urge to find compassion in him somewhere...and how was a man meant to build his life on that?
“I did know her,” Lauren said. “A little.”
“Was she...?”
But he didn’t know what to ask. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answers.
“I couldn’t possibly be a good judge.” Lauren was choosing her words carefully. And Dominik didn’t know when he’d become so delicate that she might imagine he needed special handling. “I worked for her son, so we were never more than distantly polite the few times we met. I don’t know that any impression I gleaned of her would be the least bit worthwhile.”
“It is better than no impressions, which is what I have.”
Lauren nodded at that. “She was very beautiful.”
“That tells me very little about her character, as I think you know.”
“She could be impatient. She could be funny.” Lauren thought a moment. “I think she was very conscious of her position.”
“Meaning she was a terrible snob.”
“No, I don’t think so. Not the way you mean it. I never saw her treat anyone badly. But she had certain standards that she expected to have met.” She smiled. “If she was a man, people would say she knew her own mind, that’s all.”