Chapter Seventeen

Knox

london, united kingdom

Why was it any time I wanted to watch something there was nothing on?

Better yet, why had I thought staying longer in London would be a good idea?

Oh, that was right, because when I set my flight schedule I had thought this trip would be no different than the ones in the past—I’d work and work and work some more. But somehow along the way my personal life got mixed up with this trip and suddenly I was driving myself nuts.

Rina.

Bianca.

Rina.

Bianca.

Frankly, after this week, I deserved this time in my room to be left alone and watch a little television, maybe catch a game, and sit with my thoughts.

Scratch that, I needed this time.

Frustrated by the lack of options, I shut the television off and tossed the remote beside me on the bed just as my phone signaled a text.

Bianca: Allie’s in Milan.

Knox: I know, you told me she’d be there for live footage.

Bianca: Yes, but what I didn’t tell you is that she’s going to cover for me when needed so we can have some time to ourselves without the added pressure of running from show to show.

Knox: In other words, cut the work part out of the work trip?

Bianca: Exactly! How do you feel about having Alicia and Joann fill in for you occasionally?

Knox: I’m sure they wouldn’t mind. As you can imagine, they love this stuff.

Bianca: Good; it’s settled then.

Knox: I have to say, I’m sort of bummed. If your sisters weren’t on board, we could’ve snuck around.

Bianca: Oh, that could’ve been fun. . . and hot. Sneaking around is always hot, isn’t it?

Knox: I wouldn’t know firsthand, but something tells me you do.

Bianca: Angelo Morelli is my dad, of course I know a little something about sneaking around. Hello, I’d had a life when I was a teenager.

Knox: One he didn’t approve of, I’m assuming.

Bianca: My father doesn’t approve of anything. If it were up to him, I’d still be a virgin and wouldn’t marry until I’m forty. So I’d done what any rational teenage girl in my shoes would’ve done—snuck boys in and out.

Knox: You better hope you don’t have a daughter one day because she’s going to be just like you, and you’re going to have your hands full.

As soon as I hit send on the text, I reeled. Holy cow, I just talked about offspring. What is wrong with me? I’d tell you what was wrong with me—everything. I pulled on the back of my neck and groaned as the three dots appeared and disappeared, appeared and disappeared. Until finally they never came back.

We weren’t in a relationship. Not really.

You wish you were in a relationship. And you would be, too, if you could just decide between Rina and Bianca .

Silencing that little voice, I calculated how bad this was.

Calculating. . . calculating. . .

And the results were in—it was bad.

Do you know how many women I had been with who had talked about babies on a first or second date and my body had quite literally broken out in a cold sweat?

I mean, babies were the kiss of death to a new. . . well, whatever it was we were doing here. We were just getting to know each other and exploring our feelings.

Good job, Knox, maybe you’d like to tell her: no worries, though, because when you have that baby, I’ll be the father and we’ll figure it out together.

Even to myself I was sounding like a weirdo.

Finally, she responded.

Bianca: I always hoped I’d have a boy.

A boy.

A knock on the door had my head turning so fast I could barely process that piece of information.

Knox: Someone’s at my door. I’ll be in Milan soon and then we can see each other.

I opened the door and was surprised to see—

“Rina,” I acknowledged her. “What are you doing here?”

The corner of her lips tugged upward as she stared at me. She was holding a bag and raised it in the air. “Can I come in? Since we’re both still here, I thought we could make the most of it. And I brought sustenance.”

I stared at her for a moment and saw the vulnerability in her eyes. She came off as confident, but I knew better. She was afraid of rejection, just like the rest of us. And right now, she was afraid I’d turn her away. Which I wouldn’t do. I wasn’t that guy.

I moved away from the door and let her come in.

“What do you have there?”

She smiled sweetly. “Lunch.”

I cocked a brow and must’ve wrinkled my nose because she came over and tapped the top of it. My eyes followed her as she took a seat next to me on the bed.

Dumping the bag on the floor as she pulled out the contents—a plastic to-go container with food—she explained, “They call it a ploughman’s lunch. It’s like a cold platter.” Pointing to each item as she listed them, she told me, “Bread and butter, ham, cheese, hard-boiled eggs, pickled onions, and—”

“Pickled onions?” I placed a hand over hers. “You hate anything pickled.”

Now she scrunched her nose. I used to love it when she did that, often kissing where it scrunched up. And then, of course, we’d end up just kissing. There wasn’t much need for talking those days. “I do hate pickled onions, but I remember you like them.” As she opened the container and gave me a fork, she double-checked. “You do still like them, right?”

I nodded, forked one and put it in my mouth. “Definitely.” I just wished I could say the same about Rina, but we already knew where I stood—on the corner of what do I do and why me .

She began eating, too, selecting a piece of cheese first. “I don’t know how you eat them. They burn my throat. All that vinegar.”

I chuckled, remembering the first time she had tried pickled onions, actually. “Do you remember when you had them at my parents’ house? You asked my mom if she had a cough drop because you were worried the burn would affect your voice.”

She swatted my arm, joining in and laughing, too. “That’s so not funny. My mom told me that my vocals were delicate and that I couldn’t take them for granted, that my voice could become hoarse and deep.”

I shook my head as we continued eating. Leave it to Rina to worry about that. “And that was your biggest fear.”

“A deep voice? Yes, absolutely.”

“Now what’s your biggest fear?”

“Thin lips.”

“What?” I arched a brow. “You can’t be serious.” If this was going to work and she wanted to fight for me, and I was going to give her a chance— us a chance—then she had to open up. She had to be vulnerable. Because Rina Blum hadn’t been an open book, but I’d known everything about her—what had made her tick, what she’d liked, what she’d needed and when she’d needed it. She’d once told me wrapped up in my arms was her favorite place to be because they acted as a shield, keeping her safe from everything that scared her in the outside world—the unknown, the known, all of it. I didn’t feel like I knew squat about Rina Levana, on the other hand, and that was the worst part about it. I felt like I was hanging out with a stranger and I didn’t like it.

She ran a hand over her lips and swayed her head back and forth. “Well, it’s definitely one of my fears. You know, as women age, their lips get thinner. My mom’s did. And men always tell me they like my full lips. Without them, what will I have going for me?”

“Everything else.” Rina had a lot going for her. Below the surface she was kind, funny and generous, and while I hadn’t seen many of those traits this week, I knew they were in there somewhere.

She stopped eating and looked up at me, her eyes homing in on mine. After swallowing, she dropped her voice and in one of the most vulnerable moments I’d seen from her, she admitted, “I’m also afraid of ending up alone.”

My gut clenched and my heart broke for the girl I knew. I drew my brows together and reached a hand up to her cheek, stroking it with the pad of my thumb. “Hey,” I whispered, “that’s never going to happen.”

Her eyes looked down at my touch before meeting my gaze again. “How could you be so sure?”

“Because I don’t believe life is that cruel.”

We stayed like that for longer than I expected and the next thing I knew Rina was leaning in, angling her head like she was going in for a kiss.

I cleared my throat before she closed her eyes. I felt foolish that I stopped it from happening, but it wasn’t right. Sure, it would’ve been easy to fall back into our old ways, but it wasn’t right. It didn’t feel right.

Backing up, she plastered a smile on her face like nothing happened. “I think we should go to dinner when we’re in Milan.”

Did she just ask me out on a date? I searched my brain for the right thing to say, but only came up with this: “Um, I don’t know. I mean, I’d love to, but I’m going to be busy with—”

“Bianca?” she supplied quizzically.

“No!” I was quick to answer. Retreating, I knew I had to be honest. “Yes, I’m not going to lie, I am going to see Bianca, but I also have work and shows, you know?” I knew Alicia and Joann could cover for me, but I still had some work I had to get done myself. I couldn’t drop it all in their laps.

She nodded. “You’ll get that promotion, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’ll pay for ads with you myself if I have to.”

She was trying, but I didn’t like that, and she knew it.

With a sour expression, she swallowed and tried again, saying, “I mean, I’m not worried and you shouldn’t be, either. Anyway, I’m going to be at some shows, too, so we’ll figure something out.”

I nodded. “I’m sure we will.”

Going back to eating, she crossed her legs and got more comfortable, as she began, “I’ll never forget the first time I went to Milan. I was. . .”

As Rina caught me up on her life since we’d split, all I could think about was how normal it felt with her. The truth was, having a past with each other made imagining a future with her not that difficult.

Rina was comfortable.

I knew what I was getting with her. For the most part.

And there was no real risk. Well, besides her leaving me again.

But we didn’t have the same spark we once had, at least not on my end.

“That’s it!” Rina exclaimed, cutting into my thoughts, her voice loud with excitement.

“What’s it?” I asked, clearly having missed something.

“Let’s see the opera together. I was supposed to go with Stefan, but it turns out, he’s not going to Italy, and I don’t want to go alone. Operas are only fun when you have company. What do you say?”

An opera. There had to be at least two dozen reasons why that wasn’t a good idea. “I don’t know, Rina, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” There, I said it.

Head angled, she regarded me seriously. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to keep pretending like we can give this another try. I don’t want to.” It felt wrong to say, but she obviously needed to hear it.

“Oh, pish”—she waved a hand in the air and shook her head—“you don’t know what you want.”

Has she lost it? She couldn’t seriously think that we had any real chance of working out. I felt more spark when I charged my phone. “I think I do,” I said, trying to let her down gently again. I mean, how many ways did one person have to be told no?

She narrowed her eyes and brushed her hair behind her ear. Then in a low voice, she answered, “I’m not giving up on you. I meant it when I said that before. You’ll see, Bianca is nothing but a passing fancy. It’s me and you, baby.”

I wondered if she suffered from memory loss. Unfortunately, I didn’t. I remembered when she’d broken up with me; in fact, it was crystal clear. “Where was this two years ago?”

“We needed the time apart. Can’t you see that?”

It was obvious she really believed that, but I didn’t. How do I get through to her? I stood and raked a hand through my hair. “I don’t think so, Rina. I think you like the idea of me now that I’ve made something of myself and our worlds fit into one another’s nicely, but that’s not following your heart.”

“Well, so what if that’s true? We’re both in the same industry, we run in similar circles. Isn’t it nice that we fit together?” she asked, all but pleading with me. Not that it would change my mind. I felt the way I felt, and that was it for me.

Trying to make her see reason, I explained, “It’s logical. But I don’t want to be with someone because it’s logical. I want to be with a woman because there’s passion, chemistry, and compatibility that isn’t just on paper. I should think you’d want the same things.” I understood her fear in ending up alone, but that couldn’t mean she was willing to settle for a loveless relationship just to say that she had someone by her side, could it? I hitched a brow in the air and waited for her response.

She smacked her lips together but didn’t say a word, only got up and walked to the door. Then she turned back to me. “I’m sorry, but you’re wrong.” Her eyes widened, growing more impassioned with each word as she said, “We had passion once before and we could have it again. You just need to give us a chance. Give me a chance. But I can wait. I can be patient.”

I went to speak, but she raised a finger in the air and closed her eyes before reopening them and exhaling. She clearly already knew where she stood and nothing I said was going to change her mind. “You get little Bianca Morelli out of your system, and I’ll be here when you want something more serious. I’m all in with you, Knox Rhodes.”

I shook my head. “Please don’t say that, Rina. I’m not going to change my mind.”

With one hand on the door now, she looked content as the corners of her mouth curled upward. “You will. You forget, Knox, I know you. And I’ll be here when you change your mind. I’m not going anywhere this time, that I promise you.”

So she didn’t hear a word I said. Great.