Page 27 of Captive in His Castle
“It depends on your definition of poor. There was always food on the table and we always had warm clothes, but my parents’ drove battered second-hand cars and there was little money left over each month for treats.”
‘Everything was dying,’ Geppa had said. ‘He brought it back to life.’
“Was buying the castle the driving force behind your success?”
“The main motivation,” he agreed before dropping a subtle wink. “I don’t deny there were other factors at play in my drive for the lifestyle of the rich and famous.”
Women. Private travel. The world deferring and bending itself to your whims. But even as Callie wrote her mental list of the perks that must come from being fabulously wealthy, she couldn’t help but think of the hard work and dedication it must have taken for Dante to create his mammoth wealth from nothing. “What do your family think about it? They must be proud of you.”
“For sure. Bringing the castle back to the family was always my father’s dream too, but he married young and then Tullia came along, followed by me only a year later.” He raised a shoulder. “Every hour was spent in making ends meet. Both my parents worked hard to provide for us, and now it is my turn to work hard for them.”
“Do you get to see them much with your jet-set lifestyle?”
He flashed his teeth. “I see a lot of them – they live here.”
She whipped her head around as if they were about to suddenly burst through the door. “Seriously?”
“Si, seriously. Tullia makes noises about moving in too, butfor the moment she is happy to treat the castle like a holiday home. She comes and goes as she likes.”
“Doesn’t it bother you?” she asked, thinking of how her parents seemed to go out of their way to actively discourage her and Georgia from visiting them. Just turning up at their door was unthinkable. Them turning up at her door was unheard of.
He looked surprised that she would ask. “Of course not. Family is everything.”
That depends on the family, she thought sadly. “So where are they?” Because she hadn’t seen or heard a whisper of them or even a reference to them since she’d been brought here.
“In Accardiano for the wedding. Niccolo is like family to us.”
“Do they know why you’ve abandoned it?”
“They know I’m doing damage limitation to stop the wedding being ruined and know to say I’m dealing with a business emergency if anyone asks.”
“Do they know you’ve kidnapped me?”
“Abducted,” he corrected with another cheerful flash of his teeth. “They know I have a house guest here but are unaware of the details.”
“Would they disapprove?”
“They would trust me to be doing the right thing.”
She snorted a disbelieving laugh that anyone could believe kidnap to bethe right thing.
“If you knew the Espositos, you’d agree I was doing the right thing too,” he said, unfazed by her reaction.
“No I wouldn’t.”
He laughed. “Then we will have to agree to disagree. Now, tell me about you,” he said before she could argue further. “What was your family like when you were growing up?”
Much as Callie was tempted to tell him to mind his own business, she knew it would be belligerence talking. Dantewasn’t shying away from answering her questions, and at least holding a conversation like this meant they were steering far from the topic she most desperately wanted to avoid.
“My parents were both well off in comparison to yours, I suppose,” she said. “They were both doctors. They weren’t rich like you are now, not by any stretch of the imagination – I mean, there’s no way they could have afforded these jeans, not with their overheads – but we had a nice house, and they always drove new cars, and we went on holiday every year.”
“You speak of your parents in the past tense,” he observed cautiously. “Are they still…?”
“Alive? Oh yes. I spoke of their jobs in the past tense because they’ve both retired. They were in their late forties when we were born – it took nine rounds of IVF for us to be conceived.”
Jeeze, just saying the wordconceivedwas enough to bring fresh colour to her face, and she hastily popped a piece of pastry into her mouth. Whatever she did, shemustkeep any conversation between them far away from sex or anything that could possibly lead to a conversation on sex.
“They must have wanted you very much.”
