Catherine’s POV
My heart slammed straight into my throat.
Every self-defense video I’d ever half-watched flashed through my head at once.
I threw an elbow back, hard, aiming for a rib, ready to scream bloody murder the second his grip slipped.
Then I caught the smell of him.
Cedar.
Cold, expensive, unmistakable.
I knew that scent.
I’d been standing close enough to it exactly once, in a courthouse corridor, married to the man wearing it.
“Mr.
Marino?” The name came out muffled against his palm.
His hand loosened, then dropped.
But he didn’t step back.
He couldn’t, really; he’d pinned us both into the mouth of the alley, my spine flush against his chest, one of his arms still caging me in against the brick.
“Quiet,” he breathed, low, right against the shell of my ear.
“Don’t move.”
I felt that word more than heard it.
It rolled down the back of my neck and settled somewhere low in my stomach, warm and unwelcome.
I twisted my head to hiss at him and immediately regretted it, because now his mouth was inches from mine and I could see the sharp cut of his jaw in the dark, the tension running through it.
“What the hell are you doing?” I whispered.
“Why are you even *here*?”
He didn’t answer.
His eyes weren’t on me.
They were fixed past my shoulder, out toward the parking court, narrow and hard.
I followed his stare.
Two men.
Big ones, in dark coats, moving through the lot with this slow, deliberate walk that made the hair on my arms stand straight up.
They weren’t strolling to their cars.
They were *hunting*, heads turning, scanning every shadow, every parked vehicle, like they were looking for someone specific.
My mouth went dry.
I’d seen enough movies to know what men like that looked like.
Everything about them screamed *don’t*.
“Those men,” I whispered.
My pulse was going a mile a minute, and it wasn’t entirely from the men anymore, because Lorenzo hadn’t moved an inch and I could feel every hard line of him against my back.
“Are they looking for *you*?”
Something crossed his expression that I couldn’t name, something almost sheepish, and on a man carved out of ice like this one, it looked completely wrong.
“They’re collectors,” he said finally, voice clipped.
“They’re owed money.”
I blinked.
“Owed money?
By *who*?”
A muscle jumped in his jaw.
“By me.”
I actually pulled back an inch, which just pressed me harder against his arm, but I couldn’t help it.
“By *you*?” I said.
“You work at Romano.
You married me in a suit that probably cost more than my rent for a year.
How are you being chased through a parking lot by *loan sharks*?”
For a second I thought he wasn’t going to answer.
His throat worked.
When he spoke, his voice had dropped even lower, rougher, and he still wouldn’t quite meet my eyes.
“Not my debts.
My father’s.”
“Oh,” I said quietly.
“He gambles.” The words came out flat, like he’d said them too many times to feel them anymore.
“Always has.
Cards, horses, whatever’s in front of him.
He runs the family into the ground and then he waits for someone to dig it back out.” A beat.
“My mother died when I was young.
There’s a stepmother now.
A half-brother.
None of them clean up after him.
That’s always been my job.”
Oh.
Oh, *no*.
No wonder he’d needed a paper wife.
No wonder some stranger from a courthouse deal had been easier than dating.
What woman with any sense signs up for *that* family?
A gambling addict for a father-in-law and creditors that trailed you into parking lots?
God.
I’d married the male lead of a very tragic novel.
It was a miracle he’d found me, honestly.
It was a miracle he’d found *anyone.*
“Mr.
Lorenzo,” I said, and my voice had gone gentler than I intended.
“I’m sorry.
I didn’t know.”
Something flickered across his face.
He glanced at me then, quick.
That look did something to my breathing.
I was suddenly very aware of the almost nonexistent space between us, of his chest rising and falling against me, of the heat pouring off him in the cold night air.
Of the fact that his hand was still braced on the brick beside my head and neither of us had moved to change that.
I forced myself to focus.
Something wasn’t adding up.
“But wait,” I said.
“You’ve got money.
A place, a car; I’ve seen the way you live.
Why not just, I don’t know, hand something over?
Settle it?
Why hide in an alley like a fugitive?”
“Because I’ve done that,” he said.
“Over and over.
Every time I cover one debt, he runs up another.
I’ve bled for that man’s mistakes for years.” His voice went hard, final.
“I’m done.
Not another cent.
Not another rescue.
Let them chase *him* for once.”
It made a terrible kind of sense.
I’d have done the exact same thing.
Hadn’t I just spent six years pouring my savings down Marco’s throat, funding his dream, telling myself *this* time it would pay off?
People who bleed you dry never stop.
You have to be the one to close the wound.
“Okay,” I said softly.
“Okay.
I get it.”
He didn’t answer.
He just kept watching the men over my shoulder, jaw set, one hand still flat against the wall by my face, the other now resting, warm and heavy, just above my hip.
I don’t think he even realized he’d put it there.
We stayed like that, breathing quiet in the dark, until the two men finally gave up.
The court went still and empty.
I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding.
He stepped back at last, giving me air, giving me space, and I turned around to face him properly for the first time.
His eyes dropped, just for a second, to my mouth.
The whole alley went hot and airless.
I forgot, for a second, how to breathe.
My heart was slamming so hard I was sure he could feel it hammering against his own ribs.
There was something in his face I hadn’t seen before, something that made my knees go stupid and unsteady, and heat crawled up my neck into my cheeks.
I wanted kiss him.
“They’re gone,” I whispered.
“They’re gone,” he agreed.
Neither of us moved.
His throat worked, his Adam’s apple sliding once beneath the sharp line of his jaw, and God help me, even *that* was distracting.
Then it hit me.
I wasn’t going home tonight.
If I was going to sell this whole reunion act, if Isabella was going to lie awake picturing me tangled up with a man who adored me, then I needed to actually not walk back through my own front door alone.
I looked up at him, chin lifted, and went for it.
“So,” I said.
“Any chance I could crash at your place tonight?”