The Truth About De Campo(45)

His low groan split the air. His brother was going to lose his mind.

Matteo paced to the other end of the patio, looking out over the water. He was a different man than he’d been three years ago. He had been laser-focused on this deal, had laid all the groundwork in a brilliant, understated fashion that would win it for them. He had done his job. Differently than Riccardo would have done, but strategically, it was perfect. Riccardo would crucify him anyway. He didn’t get him. Never had.

He lifted his gaze to the sun slipping up from the line of the horizon. It struck him he should be taking the advice he’d given Quinn. He needed to stop trying to live up to everyone’s expectations of him and do what he knew was right. Being with Quinn had been right. He knew it in his bones. He needed to convince Riccardo to believe in him. That he would win this deal regardless. That he had always had his eye on the prize.

He was about to go back inside and shower when he saw a lithe figure slicing through the ocean toward their suite. Quinn. He sat down on the edge of the pool while she swam the last hundred meters. She hit the edge, reached up to grip the concrete and blinked the water out of her eyes as she looked up at him, wet dark hair floating behind her like a mermaid come to visit.

He cocked a brow. “You like 5:00 a.m. swims too?”

She reached back and squeezed the water out of her hair, a rueful smile curving her mouth. “Only when I’ve had earth-shatteringly good sex with a man I’m supposed to be doing business with and I’m trying to process. Other than that I’m usually an end-of-the-day, sneak-out-of-the-office-for-a-class kind of girl.”

“Earth-shatteringly good,” he repeated, liking the taste of that on his tongue. “That’s when you’re supposed to stay in bed for more of the same.”

“Did you hear me say process?”

“Processing is overrated.” He leaned down, took hold of her hands and hauled her up onto the concrete. “Regrets, Quinn?”

She settled herself down beside him, water dripping from her wickedly good curves. “I think,” she said with a wry twist of her mouth, “I’ve processed that right out of me.”

“Good.” He captured her chin in his fingers and lowered his mouth to hers for a long, lingering kiss. Her lips were soft and salty, capable of endless exploration. There was something so right about being with Quinn that he couldn’t see the wrong in it. Even when there were ten million reasons why he should.

Her breathing was choppy when the kiss ended. “Maybe,” she said unsteadily, “you should convince me some more.”

He set her away from him with reluctant hands. “Maybe you should talk to me about Julian first.”

She blinked. “Julian?”

“I want to know.”

Her emerald eyes clouded, her gaze falling away from his. “There isn’t much to say. Our marriage was a disaster on all fronts. Julian married me because I was Warren’s daughter. Because I was the ultimate networking opportunity. He didn’t love me and he couldn’t cope with the wife he got in return.”

He frowned. “What do you mean, ‘couldn’t cope’?”

“He wanted a wife who’d rather host dinner parties than work. Someone who was content to stroke his ego 24/7.”

“Did the man not know you at all? That isn’t you, Quinn.”

“He thought I’d want to give it all up at some point. That he should be enough.”

“Did you love him?”

She hugged her knees to her chest. “I was infatuated with him. He was good-looking, successful, everything I should have wanted in a husband. The catch of the century if the prebilling was to be believed. But then I learned who he really was.”

A man who had hurt her so badly she didn’t want to go near a bedroom... He ground his teeth together. “So what happened? I know he hurt you and I know the fact that you took up Krav Maga isn’t an accident.”

She looked out over the sparkling water. “I was inexperienced sexually when I married him. I’d had a couple of relationships, none of them great. Julian didn’t like that. The more I disappointed him as a wife, the more I disappointed him out of bed, the more frustrated he was with me in it. The more he wanted to punish me.” She pushed her hair out of her face in a movement he now recognized as a nervous tick. “The more angry he got, the more I retreated. I couldn’t seem to please him. In the end, I was afraid of him. It became Julian asserting his dominance over me in the only way he could.”

His body went tight. “He assaulted you?”

She shook her head. “I never refused him. I thought that would just make things worse.”