Read Perfect Fit for Free Online

sorry.” He drew her closer, and she didn’t resist, at that moment needing his comforting nearness. “I didn’t know.”
    “No.” She shook her head. “It’s okay. And to answer your question, no, we weren’t very close. Before he died, we were trying to rectify that.”
    Rowyn paused beside a trash bin, pitched in her half-finished cone, and accepted Darius’s napkin to toss. Inside, the words she’d never verbalized churned in her chest like a furious cyclone, gathering momentum, ready to burst free. But fear corked the flood. She wanted to talk to Darius—confide in him—but it felt as if an invisible hand covered her mouth, trapping the words.
    With a light tug, he guided her back to the middle of the path. They resumed walking, her hand still firmly clasped in his.
    “You know, I grew up in a family not so different from yours. We were prominent, well-to-do, in the clothing business. My father is third-generation Italian. His grandfather had emigrated from Italy and founded a department store that started with a wheeled cart full of shoes.”
    “He sounds like a remarkable, determined man.”
    “From the stories, that’s pretty accurate. He died when I was a baby. But my grandfather was just like him. Proud. Hardworking. Not free with praise, but when he gave it, it felt like the sky had just opened up and beamed down a gift.” Darius chuckled. “I loved him, and though he never uttered the words, I know he loved me. Unfortunately my father could not say the same.”
    Caught up in his story, Rowyn hadn’t noticed when he paused beside one of the benches that dotted the trail. Darius lowered to the seat and gently pulled her down beside him. The wood warmed the backs of her thighs through the thin material of her dress, and she leaned a shoulder against the back of the bench, her body turned toward him.
    She hung on every word, hungry to learn more about this man who had captivated her from the first moment she’d noticed him standing at the end of the nightclub’s bar.
    “My father disappointed my grandfather. From his choice of wife, to anglicizing his name to ‘Fury’, to how he ran the family business. So he transferred his attention and time to me…and my father resented me for the approval he believed should’ve been his.”
    Darius flipped over the hand he held and, staring down at it, traced the light brown lines crisscrossing her pale palm. The tender touch tingled, transmitting hot pricks of sensation to her breasts and between her thighs. She squirmed under the caress that, compared to others they’d shared, was almost platonic. But she realized that anything Darius did—from hand-holding to an innocent stroke across her palm—amounted to foreplay.
    “Since I was old enough to understand, I realized my father has been in competition with me. A spontaneous game of basketball turned into a vicious battle. When I brought home a report card full of A ’s and B ’s, he pulled out his report card from his childhood that contained straight A ’s. After I graduated from college and joined the company, he fought every promotion and bonus because he wanted me to earn my way through hard work and not nepotism, regardless that I remained in the office long after everyone had left or contributed to the rise in revenue for the entire year. His bitterness toward my grandfather never allowed us to have a relationship.”
    “Your last name,” Rowyn said softly, shifting her gaze from their hands to his face. “Is that why you go by Fiore instead of Fury?”
    Darius nodded. “I changed it back to our original family name in honor of my grandfather. He died when I was eighteen, and I lost the person who gave me the love and acceptance my father didn’t. Or wouldn’t.”
    God, she understood that. Never being good enough. Never able to attain approval, no matter the awards, accolades, or success. Never receiving love from the one who was supposed to give it unconditionally.
    She clenched her