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She hoped she could make it through the weekend without jumping his bones.
* * *
When the pizza arrived, they took both boxes out to the balcony. The sun was setting and washed the exterior in a golden glow. Bruno had a glass of red wine and placed a decanter in the middle of the table. Marissa opted for a Coke.
He opened both boxes.
“This is your garden variety pizza with pepperoni and cheese. This is one of my favorites—prosciutto and arugula with a drizzle of balsamic glaze. Both delicious in their own way.” He removed a slice of each and placed them on her plate. “Bon appétit.”
“Bon appétit,” Marissa said.
She took a bite of each, and they were delicious. She didn’t expect anything less because of course he had great taste. “This view. How can you leave it for Atlanta?”
“This house is nice to come back to, I admit, but my family is in Atlanta. No view can compare to that.”
Marissa finished chewing. “You weren’t kidding when you said you were close to your family.”
“Not at all. Our relationship is especially important to me because my parents split when I was a kid. My mother took us back to Colombia where she’s from. After a while, my father moved permanently to the United States. He had been living part of the year here and the other part in Mexico. It was difficult to not see him on a regular basis. My mother… well, I love her because she’s my mother, but not everyone is meant to be a parent. She is missing the mother gene. She always depended on help to raise us, but once she and my father divorced, we spent much more time with the nannies than with her, which we hated. Which caused us to act out. We were a handful.” He shook his head before taking a bite of pizza.
That explained the aversion to having a nanny raise his children, a sentiment he had expressed in their initial interview.
“A handful? Uh-oh.”
He chuckled. “We were boys, and I was the oldest. My younger brothers followed my lead.”
“You made your mother’s life miserable, didn’t you?”
“As much as I possibly could.”
“Bruno!”
He shrugged, elegant in his nonchalance. “I was a child, only eight or nine years old. I didn’t fully understand what I was doing. Then when my father married Rose, my stepmother, I was not happy. I gave her hell at first, but she was different. She was a hands-on mother and took care of us. I tried my best to make her life miserable too. She was not my mother, and I wanted to make sure she understood that. But, the more difficult I was, the more she showed patience and understanding. It was truly unbelievable.”
He took a sip of wine before continuing.
“Both my parents were actors, so I was accustomed to histrionics, but Rose…” He shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe his stepmother’s patience. “She never wavered in showing us love. She wore me down, and once my attitude changed, my brothers followed my lead. I don’t know how she found out, but she learned I liked to cook. I ended up in the kitchen with her and the family chef most days. She taught me about gardening and how to grow my own vegetables. Let me tell you, as a kid, to pick vegetables you had grown and cook them and serve them to your family—there is nothing like that experience.”
Marissa enjoyed getting these insights into his family life. He experienced love and affection, which she’d longed for growing up. “Rose sounds like an amazing woman.”
“She is.”
“You’ve spoken highly of both your parents. They sound like wonderful people. Why are they divorced?”
Bruno swirled his glass of wine with a sigh. “Because my father is stubborn. Rose wanted to spend more time with him, and the old fool couldn’t see she was a different kind of woman from my mother. She wasn’t trying to tell him what to do, which he hates. She loved him. That’s all. Their divorce was difficult to watch because I know they love each other. I hold out hope that one day they’ll get back together.”
“You’re a romantic after all,” Marissa remarked.
“Not a romantic. A realist. They love each other and make each other happy. They should be together.”
“You call it realism, I call it romance.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Bruno smoothed moisturizer into his freshly shaved jawline and then dressed in his black tuxedo. He made a final check in the mirror, brushing a piece of lint from the jacket.
While Marissa had gone to the West Coast office of Executive Match, Inc., he had visited hisrestaurants. Had his brother been in L.A., he would have spent time with him, but Ignacio was out of town doing publicity for a project. Bruno and Marissa had only seen each other briefly when they returned to the house, but he couldn’t wait to see what she looked like in formal wear and the jewelry she purchased.
He’d had his jeweler contact her before they left to make sure she had the right jewelry for the trip. She had protested, of course, but after he explained the importance of having those final pieces to complete the outfit, she acquiesced.
