by Lynne, Donya
But sometimes fantasies played out better in the mind than in reality, so maybe she should just leave that door closed, even if Mark wanted to open it.
She lifted her gaze to the moon. She wouldn’t find the answers tonight. For now, she simply needed to put his confession out of her mind so her subconscious could dissect everything he’d told her. She didn’t need to ruin their vacation by obsessing over things she had little or no control over. That included Mark’s past and all the things she still didn’t know about the man she loved.
And she was in love with him. That much was certain.
But would that love continue to grow, or would his past eventually prove too much to contend with?
Chapter 6
With everything that has happened to you, you can either feel sorry for yourself or treat what has happened as a gift. Everything is either an opportunity to grow or an obstacle to keep you from growing. You get to choose.
-Wayne Dyer
Mark rolled toward Karma only to land against cold sheets instead of her warm, welcoming body. He brushed his hand over his face, blinking sleepily at the empty bed.
Sitting up, he combed back his hair and glanced around the room through the filmy curtains. She wasn’t there. He pushed back the covers and pulled himself out of bed.
“Karma?” He peered into the bathroom then went to the kitchen, finding it deserted.
Slightly alarmed, he returned to the bedroom, put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, and stepped out onto the deck.
She wasn’t in the hammock. “Karma?”
“Over here.”
Relieved, he turned toward the sound of her voice and, after crossing the upper deck, spied her sitting on the side of the pool, her feet in the water.
“What are you doing out here?” He started down the stone steps. “Are you okay?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
He faltered. Could she be having second thoughts? “Is something wrong?” He frowned, stepping up beside her. “Are you upset about what I shared with you?”
“No . . . yes . . . no . . .” Her shoulders slumped as she turned puppy eyes up at him. “God, I don’t know.”
He sat down beside her and dipped his legs into the cool water. As he’d drifted off to sleep, he had worried this could happen. That once the euphoria of the moment passed she would revisit their conversation like she was warming up day-old pizza. Pizza never tasted as good as it did fresh from the oven, and here Karma was, analyzing the soggy crust and congealed cheese, trying to figure out if she really wanted to eat it.
Time for damage control. He’d gotten through the apprehensive discussion unscathed. He wasn’t going down now. “Want to talk about it?”
“I just—it was a lot to take in, Mark.”
“I know. Maybe I shouldn’t have unloaded so much on you all at once.” He took her hand. The fact that she let him was a good sign she hadn’t turned her back on him. “That’s why I wanted to handle the discussion differently.”
“You mean, that’s why you made a plan?” She grinned as if chastising him. Another good sign.
He lightheartedly bumped her arm with his. “And here you gave me a hard time for planning.”
She made a dubious noise. “I still think it’s best to just get it out there.”
“Yeah, but now you’re suffering information overload. See what going against the plan gets you.”
Smirking, she leaned into his arm then rocked away again. “I’ll get over it.”
“Maybe I can help. What’s got you stuck?” He felt like they were at least in this together. Like they were finding their way along a new, untraveled path and didn’t know where they would end up, but at least they’d end up there together instead of alone.
“I’m just trying to process everything, that’s all.” She swung her legs under the water, creating small waves on the moonlit surface. “I feel like I should be angry, but I’m not.”
“Why should you feel angry?”
“Because that would be the socially appropriate response.”
He regarded her for a moment, absorbing the soft warmth of her palm against his. “And since when have you ever been the socially appropriate type?”
Confusion fell over her face.
He pulled her hand into both of his. “Karma, if you were the median woman—the kind of woman who follows the status quo and always does what society expects—you and I wouldn’t be here right now.” He gripped her hand more firmly and looked her dead in the eyes. “You wouldn’t have gone up to my room the night we met . . . then run out a few minutes later.” She grinned and briefly glanced away. “You wouldn’t have gotten involved with me, because socially acceptable women don’t get involved with men they work with, especially when that man is her boss.”
She smirked. “You weren’t my boss.”
He smirked back. “Close enough.” He teetered toward her until their shoulders kissed. “And you wouldn’t have broken off your engagement and taken me back, either.” He paused to admire the way the moonlight reflected off her eyes. “Karma, you are anything but socially appropriate, which is what makes you so extraordinary. It’s why you’re constantly surprising me. I’m always expecting the socially appropriate response every other woman would give me, but you always give me anything but. You amaze me every day. You take my breath away every morning and leave me in awe every night, and I hope I haven’t scared you away, because I can’t envision my life without you in it.”
“What if I stop surprising you?”
“You won’t.”
“But I could.”
“If that happens, which I doubt, I’ll still love you as much as I do now.”
Her gaze remained locked to his for a long moment then drifted toward the beach. For a while, they sat in silence, legs dangling in the water, stirring gentle waves.
“What else is on your mind, Karma?” He could tell there was more.
She turned toward him, eyes guarded, lips loosely knotted as if she didn’t want to voice whatever was troubling her.
He still held her hand and tightened his fingers around hers. “I can tell something’s still bothering you. What’s wrong?”
She sighed. “It’s not that something’s wrong. It’s just . . .” She frowned, hesitated, sucked in her breath. Then she shook her head, closed her eyes, and blurted, “Just how much money do you have, Mark?”
The question came out of nowhere, and before he could stop himself, he burst into laughter. “What?”
She playfully slapped his leg. “Don’t laugh. I’m serious.” But she was struggling to fight back a smile. Within seconds, she giggled and looked away, kicking her legs more vigorously so water splashed onto their thighs. “Okay, so maybe that was a little funny.”
“A little? It came out of nowhere.”
But he wasn’t surprised she’d asked. He had been burning through the cash the past few days.
“I’m just curious, Mark. You’ve spent a lot of money on this trip. The limousine, the private jet.” She glanced toward the villa. “And this place can’t be cheap.”
“I don’t do cheap.”
“Obviously. But there’s a difference between cheap and frugal. I get the feeling being frugal isn’t an issue for you.” She dropped her gaze to her hands before meeting his eyes again. When she spoke, there was a tenderness in her voice. “I don’t love you for your money, Mark. I’ve never even thought about it until now. But that’s just it. I haven’t thought about it. And now I’m getting a glimpse for the first time as to just how affluent you are, and it makes me wonder what else I don’t know about you.” She turned to face him, one leg still in the water, the other bent on the pool’s deck. “I get the impression you’re in this for the long haul with me, so if that’s the case, I think I need to know more about you. You don’t talk much about yourself.
“And maybe that’s the reason for my conflicted feelings right now. This was the first time you’ve really opened up to me about your past, so wh
ile I feel closer to you than I’ve ever felt, it does make me aware we’ve only really known each other five months . . . and four of those were more about me than you. You’ve learned so much more about me than I’ve learned about you, and now you’re finally letting me in, and as you do, I start thinking about all the things I don’t know. Things I should know if we’re going to make this work.” She lowered her eyes. “And I want to make this work.”
He turned his gaze toward the sea, a little disoriented. He hadn’t intentionally kept his wealth a secret. It had just never come up.
He’d prided himself on being able to read her. To know what she was thinking and what she needed before she did. Yet, he hadn’t seen this coming. Was he losing his touch?
“Shit, I’m not making any sense,” she said as if misreading him. “It’s not a big deal. Forget it.” She began to turn away but he stopped her.
“No, it is a big deal.” He scooted closer to her. “To you. It’s a big deal to you, Karma, so it’s a big deal to me.”
“But I’ve upset you.”
He shook his head. “You haven’t upset me. I promise.” He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “I just didn’t see this coming, that’s all.”
Letting out a heavy exhale, she bowed her head. “But I don’t want to ruin our vacation.”
He let go of her hand to cradle her face and lift it so he could look her in the eyes. “Do you really think this could ruin our vacation? That getting to know me better so we can grow closer could possibly be a bad thing?”
Her pale eyes glowed in the moonlight, swimming with innocence and doubt. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Karma, I can assure you, you absolutely cannot ruin our vacation by wanting to know me better. And if I were more aware and had been playing closer attention, I would have known I needed to tell you all of this a long time ago.”
With a subtle nod of surrender, she offered him a wan smile but didn’t say anything.
“I’ve made no secret that I want us to be together,” he said, “so of course you should know everything about me, including the state of my bank account.”
“But I don’t want to come off like a gold digger.”
“Gold digger?” He cocked his head and chuckled. “Karma, you could never be a gold digger.”
“But—”
He placed the tip of his index finger against her lips, quieting her. “You are not a gold digger. Now, let me answer your question about how much money I have.”
With a tiny, chagrined smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, she quieted, giving him the floor. Or, rather, the pool deck.
“Okay, so first, bear with me as I explain the history.” He folded his hands in his lap. “I’ve already told you that my grandfather was a powerful businessman in Chicago. That I chose to follow in his footsteps rather than those of my parents.”
“Yes.” She shifted so she squarely faced him.
“Well, my grandfather owned a successful shipping company he built from the ground up and hoped to pass down, but that didn’t work out.”
“Because you’re mom wasn’t interested, right?”
“Partly. She wanted to pursue dancing, which my grandfather gladly funded. But what I didn’t tell you before was that I had an uncle who’d been groomed since high school to inherit the company.”
Her eyebrows popped. “I thought he wanted your mom to take over the company.”
“Only after my uncle was killed in a tragic car accident.”
“Oh.” She bit her bottom lip. “That’s horrible.”
“It was horrible. I still remember the funeral, how everyone cried, completely devastated. Grandpa only had two children, and when Uncle Franco died, that was it. I was too young to step in and help, so when my grandfather got sick a few years later, he decided to sell the business. He’d branched out into other areas than just shipping, so the company was worth a lot when he passed away. The money from the sale, as well as the money he’d invested, in addition to his personal fortune, came to over fifty million dollars. A lot for the time.”
Karma gasped, her mouth falling open. “Fifty million? That’s a lot for any time.”
“Yes.” He lowered his voice. “I won’t lie, Karma. My family is very wealthy.”
Her mouth clapped shut. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“That’s okay. I know it’s a lot of money. Sometimes I forget just how much it is, because I’ve never really known anything else.”
“But you don’t act like. . .” She trailed off as if she couldn’t find the right words to convey her thoughts.
“I don’t act like I have money falling out of my ass?” He grinned at the way her cheeks darkened in the moonlight. “I don’t drive foreign sports cars, jet set around the world, and throw hundred-thousand-dollar Vegas parties every weekend? Is that what you were about to say?”
She bit back a smile and nodded. “Okay, sure. You could put it that way.”
He shifted position on the pool deck. “Yeah, I’m not your stereotypical rich kid. I was brought up with a strong work ethic. My parents never flashed their money around, and they imparted the same values in me. I can afford the finer things, and I enjoy the finer things, but I don’t flaunt them.”
“Until now.” Amusement tickled her expression.
“Okay,” he said with a roll of his eyes, “so I’ve flaunted them in the last few days.”
She held up her hand with her index finger and thumb a half-inch apart. “Just a little.”
“Maybe a tad.” He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed the back. “But only because I have reason to now.” After a brief pause to impart she was his reason, he continued. “So, when my grandfather passed, he left half his fortune to my mother, and the other half to me.”
“What about his other grandchildren? Weren’t there others?”
“I’m it. Uncle Franco’s wife and two children were, unfortunately, killed in the car crash with him, and I’m an only child.” He glanced down at their joined hands. “You’d think that since he was Italian he’d have had a massive brood of kids who all had massive broods of their own, but he didn’t. I’m the last. At least until . . .” He met her gaze. “Until I have kids of my own.”
From the way her lashes lowered and she leaned a little closer to him, he could tell she knew he intended to have kids with her.
“Do you want to have children?” Since they were getting to know one another better, he might as well ask a question or two of his own and determine just how open she was to the idea.
She shyly hid her face. “Yes.”
“With me?”
She blinked and met his gaze again, biting her lower lip and slipping her leg back into the water. “Yes.”
It was the perfect moment. Moonlit, intimate, romantic.
This was the moment he’d been waiting for. The one he knew would come during this trip. The perfect moment to propose. He should go inside and get the ring and . . .
He sighed, curling his hand around the back of her head and tucking her face against his chest as he kissed her hair. Instead of rushing back to the bedroom for the ring, he remained rooted in place, holding her, eyes closed, the breeze cooling his skin.
He should propose this very moment. Not wait another second. And yet, he just couldn’t. Maybe another moment would present itself. A better moment.
They’d just decided they wanted kids together, but he had yet to ask her to marry him. Talk about putting the cart before the horse.
“So . . . you haven’t really answered my question.” She lifted her head but remained angled toward him. Her feet teased his feet in the cool water.
“You mean, exactly how much money do I have?” Tonight had been revelatory. It felt good to get things out in the open.
“Yes.” The single syllable lilted suggestively, as if she didn’t want to come off pushy.
He smiled. “Enough.”
“Enough for what?”
He chuckled. “Enough that we
’ll never have to want for anything.”
“That’s not much of an answer.”
He brushed her foot with his and linked their fingers together. “Grandpa left me twenty-five million, which I gained access to when I was twenty-one.” He glanced askance at her with a conspiratorial dip of his head. “Grandfather was adamant about making me wait until I was mature enough to understand the responsibility of having that much money. But he needn’t have worried.” He playfully rubbed his shoulder against hers. “Except for those eighteen months after Carol left, I was very responsible, even from a young age. I wasn’t the type to burn through millions of dollars just because I could. When I turned twenty-one, I aggressively invested and turned twenty-five million, plus the interest it had earned waiting for me to come of age, into forty-five by the time I was thirty years old. I think I’m sitting right at forty-nine million now.”
Karma’s cheeks grew more luminous in the moonlight as if the color had drained from her face. “That’s a lot of money.”
“Like I said, enough to never want for anything.”
She blinked several times and turned toward the ocean.
He remained silent, intuitively understanding she needed a time-out to digest this new bit of information.
Finally, she turned back toward him. “What do you plan to do with all that money?”
“I plan to start my own business someday.”
“What kind of business?”
“I haven’t decided. At one time, I thought I’d take over the dance studio, but now I realize that’s someone else’s dream, not mine.” And it wasn’t his dream anymore because Carol’s duplicity had killed that part of his life, as well. “I’m a good consultant, so that’s a frontrunner. But consulting is a competitive field, and I’m just not sure my heart’s in it. I want to love what I do, not just be good at it.”