Page 15 of Savage Proposal

I heard Damian’s question in a vague kind of way, but the words didn’t really register. I waved him off. “It’s the IVF doctor. I’m thinking about canceling.”

“IVF doctor?”

Thosewords registered. I looked at myvicecapo, who was staring at me slack-jawed. I ground my teeth together. “What?” I asked, immediately defensive.

“You’re going to have a baby with?—?”

“It’s none of your business, Damian.”

He pursed his lips into a line. “It’s my business to keep you safe, right? You have a baby with some unknown like Isabella, andthe minor families are going to revolt. Even if you wanted to do things this way and not get married, you still need to pick one of their daughters to be that baby’s mother.”

Fucking politics would give me an ulcer. My father always seemed to have one when I was growing up, and now I understood why. “They want me to have an heir, and I’m having one,” I said flatly. “Who I have an heir with is none of their fucking business.”

Damian shook his head. “You know that’s not how it works.”

“Oh? You want to tell me how things work,stronzo?” I was trying to pick a fight, and we both knew it, but Damian wasn’t Elio, who had a bit of a hairpin trigger, and he wouldn’t rise to my bait.

Damian held up his hands. “You know I’ll follow your lead whatever you do,” he said. “I just have to do my due diligence and warn you that you might be making a mistake.”

Fucking Christ. “Go check on the casino, will you? Take Elio with you.”

Damian nodded. “Sure, boss. Need us to bring anything back for you?”

I shook my head. “The next shipment is due; I want you to check it personally. Make sure we got everything that we paid for, yeah?”

Once Damian was gone—collecting Elio from where he was bothering his wife in the kitchen as he went—I had nothing to distract me from thinking of Isabella. I wasn’t sure if that was what I wanted or not, but it was what I got.

A message from Amalia some ten minutes later about lunch came through, and while she offered to bring it up, like she did most days that I worked in my office, I told her I would come down. Being cooped up was obviously not helping anything.

If I took the long way to the kitchen, that was my own business.

When I passed by her room, I noticed that Isabella’s door was cracked open.She’ll be needing lunch too, right?I put a hand on the wood and pushed. I heard a gasp, followed by a shrill, “Get out!” but all I saw was miles of bare skin.

Fucking perfect, was my first thought, but then my eyes landed on the nest of raised, ropey scars spanning much of the right side of her body. Isabella clutched a bath towel over her chest; her eyes wide with fear. I stepped farther into the room and shut the door behind me; Isabella flinched backward, as if she were terrified.

“I’m not going to hurt you.” I meant to be comforting, but that only seemed to set her off all the more. She flinched backward, as if she was trying to flatten herself against her closet door. I could see how her shoulders trembled.

“Can you turn around or something?” she snapped. Her knuckles were turning white from where they clutched the bath towel to her chest.

There was absolutely no way I was going to do that. “Why would I do that?”

She gave me a look like she was wondering what it would be like to set me on fire. “Can you at leastpretendto be a gentleman?”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I don’t think you’d like it if I were a gentleman.”

I expected some barb in reply. Even when she was obviously scared of me, she had yet to back down. So, it was surprising when she all but curled in on herself. “I know I’m just your goddamn broodmare,” she cried, frustrated. “I agreed to be that for you, but it doesn’t mean you can humiliate me.”

Isabella was well and truly bothered, and I couldn’t figure outwhy. Sure, it might be embarrassing to be walked in on like this, but her reaction didn’t make sense to me. “I don’t need to humiliate you,” I told her. “I own you.”

She scoffed and looked down at herself. “Well, at least you know what kind of disgusting mess you own, I guess.”

Disgusting mess? “Do you honestly believe that a little thing like scar tissue makes you undesirable?” Hell, it was even better that she did have the scars. It made her all the more different from Sienna. Every new thing I learned about Isabella made me feel less haunted by my wife.

Isabella, clearly, didn’t believe me. It was written all over her face. “You don’t have to lie to me,” she said. “I know what men like you think.”

Whoever convinced her that she was, somehow, unattractive because of a couple of scars deserved to rot in hell. If I ever got my hands on them, I’d send them there myself. I crossed the room to stand in front of her. When she refused to look at me, I grabbed her chin between my fingers and made her look up. “Do you need me to show you?”

Isabella glared up at me. She was trying to puff herself up with her anger, but I could see the wavering, needy thing that she was behind the bravado. “Show me what?”

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