A Ruthless Proposition(25)

“Seriously?”

“Yes. I felt so . . .” The tears overflowed again as she remembered the mortifying moment she was marched out of his office and back to her own desk. “Humiliated.”

“That guy needs his ass kicked! Tell your brother about it.”

“No.” She could hear the panic in her own voice. “No, Cal. Luc doesn’t hear about this. He’s not to know who the father of this child is.” She was too embarrassed to let Luc know what a colossal mistake she’d made with Dante, and she couldn’t ruin a friendship he held dear.

“But what will you tell him about your job?”

“I’ll tell him I quit or something. It’ll be easy enough for him to believe of his loser sister.”

“Come on, hon,” Cal said. “That’s hardly fair. This wasn’t your fault.”

“Please just leave it for now.”

Cal nodded reluctantly and Cleo reached over to squeeze his forearm gently.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you, okay?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “I’m sorry I wasn’t grim enough to suit the occasion.”

She giggled wetly at the lame joke, and Cal grimaced before reaching into his pocket for a handkerchief.

“Jesus, blow your nose,” he said. “Look at the state of you. You’re such an ugly crier, Cleo.”

“Shut up,” she laughed, and blew her nose gustily. At that moment she just appreciated his presence so much that she couldn’t hold back an impulsive hug.

“Thank you. Sometimes I just don’t know what I’d do without you.”




By ten the following morning, Cleo was still lounging around in her robe and pajamas. She had no real desire to do much. She felt flat. She’d spent the better part of the morning hugging the toilet bowl, vomiting, and now she felt completely wrung out. Her stomach still uncertain, she gingerly padded to the sleeper couch that Cal had, for once, made up before traipsing off to parts unknown earlier that morning. He always disappeared for hours on end doing God knows what, God knows where. Cleo had been relieved to see the back of him that morning because his relentless and oblivious good cheer was driving her up the wall.

She was thinking about attempting to eat some food when a knock sounded on the front door. She frowned, not used to being here during the day and not at all sure who it could be. They had an intercom security system, so knocks at the door without advance warning were extremely rare.

The knock sounded again, and she pushed herself up from the couch. She paused for an instant to get the nausea under control, before making her way to the front door. There was no peephole, so she’d have to go the other route.

“Who’s there?” she called through the door. There was a long moment of silence during which she wondered if the person had moved on to a different apartment.

“Me.” The voice, only slightly muffled by the thin wood of the door, was instantly recognizable, and Cleo froze. When she didn’t respond for a full minute, the knock sounded again, loud and authoritative and so damned like him she wondered how she hadn’t guessed who it was from the sound of the knock alone.

“It’s me, Damaso!” he growled. “Open the damned door.”

“No.”

“What?”

She could practically feel his incredulity through the wood.

“I said no. Go away.”

“I will not leave until we have settled this matter.” He sounded pretty adamant, and she chewed on her lip indecisively.

“I didn’t think there was anything to settle. You’ve made your mind up.”

“I refuse to discuss this through the door. If you do not open it, I will kick it down. I don’t imagine it will take too much effort, the wood is so thin.”

“We can’t all have fancy walnut oak doors,” she said with a sneer, and he was right: the wood was pretty thin if she could hear him sigh through the door.

“I will count to three. If you do not open the door, I will—”

She clicked her tongue irritably and snatched open the door. Only after she stood facing him in his bespoke-suited splendor did she remember that she wore fleecy, polka-dot pajamas with a fuzzy pink robe and pink-and-white bunny slippers. Her hair was a mess, and she probably looked pretty washed out after that morning’s puking session. And the way he stared at her told her everything she needed to know about how truly awful she looked.

“Your hair . . .”

She stared at him in complete bewilderment. Why would her hair be the first thing he noticed about her? And then she remembered. She reached up a trembling hand to run a hand through her short, sleek bob, trying to recall if the pink she and Cal had applied to the bleached tips of her hair the night before was particularly vivid.

“I figured I didn’t have to look like a corporate drone anymore,” she said, shrugging slightly.

“It’s pink.”

“Only the tips.”

He finally dragged his horrified gaze from her hair down the rest of her body.

“Did I disturb your sleep?” he asked, looking truly confused.

“I didn’t see the need to get dressed when I don’t have a job to get ready for.”

“And you did not consider going out to look for a new job?”

Jeez, rich people really had no clue how the real world worked. He sounded way too judgmental for her liking, and she bristled defensively.

“I just got fired from my previous position yesterday. I haven’t had time to sit down with the classifieds to job-hunt yet.”

He nodded and shoved his hands into his coat pockets as his gaze roamed around the small, slightly dingy, and far-from-tidy interior of her apartment.

“This place has lousy security. A student type in baggy jeans and a Rastafarian cap simply let me in. Held the door open and waved me through.”

“Oh.”

“I think he might have been on something,” he said, voice ripe with disapproval.

“If it’s who I’m thinking of, then he was very definitely on something.” Young Isaac from down the hall was always high. Cleo didn’t know how he managed to get any studying done. Dante’s brow furrowed in response to her words.

“And you feel safe in this dump?”

“Why are you here?” she asked, refusing to answer any more of his questions.

“May I sit?” After a brief hesitation, she nodded. He glanced around the room again before heading toward the kitchen table and turning to wait for her there. Once she joined him, he dragged out a chair, ushered her into it, and took his own seat. A little flustered by the gentlemanly gesture, she waited for him to speak. But he didn’t say anything for a long time and merely stared at his loosely folded hands resting on the table in front of him.

She shifted uncomfortably before he lifted his eyes and trapped her with that intense gaze of his. She froze beneath that stare, feeling like a butterfly pinned to a board.

“You’re pregnant.”

“I know.”

“How far along are you now?” he asked. She couldn’t help it; she allowed her hand to drop to her abdomen, still in awe that there was a life in there.

“Twelve weeks,” she whispered. “This week her eyelids started to grow in properly.”

“‘Her’?” he asked gruffly, and she shook herself out of her reverie to focus on him again.

“The baby’s a ‘she’ this week. Last week a ‘he.’ Last week was exciting; she—or he—started making fists. Can you imagine this little life, barely the size of a prune, with tiny hands that can make fists?”

“Can you feel it doing all that? Making fists and stuff?” he sounded fascinated despite himself.

“No, I can’t. I’ve been reading this week-by-week pregnancy book. It’s really good.”

There was another long, awkward silence as Cleo tried to figure out if she could say or do anything to convince him to leave. “I wish I had security guards too,” she said wistfully, and he glanced up at her in surprise.

“So that you can kick me out?” He sounded amused rather than offended.

“I want you to leave,” she admitted. “I don’t like having you here in my home.”

“I came to tell you that I agree to your terms. I’ve signed your documents. If I am the father of that baby, I will pay an amount toward its support.”

“You won’t try to take her from me?” Cleo verbalized her worst fear on a whisper.

“No. Your baby doesn’t interest me. You don’t interest me. I want you both out of my life as quickly and quietly as possible.”

Well, she’d always known that was how he would feel, but the rejection still stung. She felt the pain more for her baby than she did for herself. She’d known the stakes going into this thing with Dante Damaso, but the baby was an innocent in all of this, and now would never have a father to love her and protect her. Still, he was cold and ruthless and would undoubtedly make a lousy father. She’d grown up without a dad, and while she was a mess at times, she’d turned out mostly all right. Luc barely remembered their father either; the man had stuck around for five years and had skipped out on his family less than a month after Cleo’s birth. Their mother, never the most stable of creatures, had gone on a downward spiral after that, and five years later had dumped her children with their grandparents and swanned off to Asia. None of them had seen or heard from her again, and Luc and Cleo had received word of her death soon after their grandparents had passed. Luc flew to Nepal, where she died, and took care of the funeral arrangements. He returned with a few boxes of her personal items, and that had been that. A sad and lonely ending to a sad and lonely life.