Mills & Boon Stars Collection: Shocking Scandals: Castelli's Virgin Widow / Expecting a Royal Scandal / The Guardian's Virgin Ward. CAITLIN CREWS

snorted. “Old.”

      “Maybe everyone is not as ageist as you are,” she snapped at him.

      He raked his hand through his hair then, annoyed and frustrated in equal measure.

      “It is time for the truth, cucciola mia,” he said then, roughly.

      He moved before he knew he meant to, crossing over to place himself directly in front of her, at the foot of the high bed. She tilted up that chin of hers, as if she expected him to take a swing, and Luca was obviously deeply perverse, that such a thing should excite him. Or maybe it was simply that he liked it when she fought. When she stood up for herself, even against him. When she was nothing remotely like defeated.

      “I’m telling you the truth. I can’t help it if it’s not the truth you want to hear.” She eyed him, as if his proximity bothered her. Luca hoped it did. It would make them even. “I think we’ve already established that you have a history of believing what you want to believe, no matter what the actual truth might be.”

      He felt his mouth curve in acknowledgment. “But this is not a question of innocence. This is a question of how a young woman meets a much older man in a medical facility, so she could have no fantasy that there was anything virile about him at all, and decides to marry him anyway. I have no doubt that he proposed to you. That was what he did, always. But what made you agree?”

      Kathryn held his gaze, and Luca didn’t move. He didn’t even blink, aware somehow that she was making a momentous decision. And he needed it to be the right one. He needed it—and he wasn’t sure he wanted to investigate why that need was so intense. After a long while, she let out a sigh.

      “My mother has crippling arthritis,” Kathryn explained. “When it flares up she can hardly move. It had become very difficult for her to take care of herself.” She shook her head, more as if she was shaking off a wave of emotion than negating anything. “I should have been there to help her, but between the classes for my degree and all the studying I had to do to barely keep up, I couldn’t even do that well. I lived with her, which was one thing, but it was all beginning to feel a lot like drowning.” She sucked in a breath. “But when my mother came out of her appointment, she recognized your father at a glance. One thing led to another, and we all went out for a meal.”

      Luca waited.

      “Your father is very easy to talk to, actually.”

      “That was not a common sentiment.”

      “My mother told him everything. My struggles with my degree. Her battle with her arthritis. He was very kind.” Her gray eyes grew distant, and he thought she tipped her chin up that much farther. “And at the end of the evening, he asked if he could see me—just me—again.”

      “This is where I think I need some clarification,” Luca murmured. “Did you date a great deal?”

      “I didn’t date at all,” she retorted, and he almost didn’t recognize that fierce thing that soared in him at that, possessiveness mixed with a kind of triumph.

      “But you dated my father.”

      For the first time she looked uncomfortable. “I didn’t necessarily want to date him,” she said softly. “But he’d been so nice, and so sweet, and I didn’t see the harm in having another dinner with him. I thought I was doing a good deed.”

      “What did your mother think?”

      She didn’t quite flinch. But he saw the tiny, abortive movement she made, and his eyes narrowed.

      “She’s always worried that I had more looks than sense,” Kathryn said quietly. “Which I’m afraid I proved to her through my failures with my studies.”

      “A first-class degree is, by definition, not any kind of failure.”

      “I had to work ten times as hard as she did, and I still only did it by my teeth,” she said with a dismissive wave of one hand. “But when we met your father, it seemed a perfect opportunity to stop worrying about the brains part and let the looks do some good for a change.”

      “What,” Luca asked through his teeth, “does that mean?”

      “It meant we both knew he liked the look of me,” Kathryn said, with an edge to her voice. She sat up straighter on the bed. “And he was just as funny and kind and charming when I went out with him alone. Still, when he asked me to marry him on the third date, I laughed.”