Page 95 of Vow

“I could, but nobody wants lemon flavor in their wedding cake, Kev.”

“She has a point,” Andino murmured, drawing the attention to himself. He would much rather pretend like he wasn’t there at all, but here he fucking was. He might as well make the most of it. “But then again, no one thought to ask the only woman who should really get a say about it, yeah?”

All eyes turned on a quiet Ginevra sitting beside Andino. She, like him, had barely been paying attention throughout this whole charade as well. She didn’t want to be there any more than he fucking did, clearly.

Not that he blamed her.

“I don’t care,” Ginevra said.

There she be.

Ginevra did well on her good days to pretend when it came to this marriage nonsense. She put on a smile, and acted like she gave a fuck. She didn’t step out of line, or do something that might piss off her brothers’ already thin patience. She was the respectful, dutiful wife-to-be, Andino supposed.

And then there were days like this.

Days when she didn’t care to even try. She still managed to be somewhat kind to Andino and Siena, but he figured that was because they were the only ones who made an effort to look out for what she wanted or needed. Kev and Darren surely didn’t give a single fuck about Ginevra, or what she was feeling.

They’d made that clear enough.

Kev passed Ginevra the same kind of look he had given to Siena just a couple of moments earlier. The man wasn’t very good at verbal communication unless it was to tell one of his sisters or his brother an order that he wanted them to follow. Otherwise, he just glared and went on like a foolish prick.

Then again, that’s exactly what Kev was.

A fucking prick.

Well, that was too bad for Kev because this wasn’t about him. And even if the wedding would never happen—Andino was still working on that angle how he could—he didn’t think this needed to be so goddamn traumatic for Ginevra, either.

Andino gestured at his fiancée—fuck, he hated even thinking that—and shrugged. “She doesn’t care. Continue on, I guess.”

“Yes, well, okay,” the baker muttered.

Andino might have laughed at the woman’s befuddlement on any other day, but really, he just found it fucking sad. Even she could tell that this whole tasting bit was pointless. She wasn’t making a wedding cake for a couple that even wanted to get married, and it was palpable.

It made for an awkward tasting.

To say the least …

The baker waved her hands at the pieces of cake in front of everyone at the table. “Well, I will just leave you all to it. I don’t think you need me here.”

Or rather, they didn’t want her there. It was probably obvious, like everything else, frankly.

Kev grunted, and heaved his heavy body out of the chair he had been sitting in. Passing the rest of them a look, he muttered, “I think we could all take a few minutes, actually. I’ll be back—you two, fucking mind.”

He said that with a beefy finger pointed at Ginevra, and then Siena. To Andino, however, the man only gave a nod. He fucking knew better than to open his mouth and spew some kind of shit to Andino. That wouldn’t fly over well for any of them.

Had he mentioned that this tasting—like every other part of planning this goddamn sham of a wedding—had been awkward?

Because it was.

This was exactly why, even though his mother continued to ask time and time again to be allowed to help, Andino refused her. He knew Kim wanted to be involved in some way, even if she knew he wasn’t happy with this whole thing simply because it was her son, and what they all believed to be his only marriage.

He would be married.

And once.

Not to Ginevra, though.

Nonetheless, his mother didn’t need to be a part of this unholy mess. Kim was too good for that shit. He didn’t want her to put effort into something that he only intended on ruining. He wasn’t that horrible of a man to do that to his own mother.