A Ruthless Proposition(44)

But it was so hard to remember all of that when he was sprawled out on her lap like this.

She continued to run her hand through his thick, soft hair. He had a dense growth of stubble on his jaw, and she tentatively ran her palm over it, loving the burn of it on her skin. She was so riveted by the feel of him under her hand that at first the fluttering in her abdomen went unnoticed. But when it came again, she recognized that it wasn’t just a tummy rumble or the popcorn unsettling her stomach. A third, faint movement had her gasping and sitting up straighter.

Her movement woke Dante, who looked at her in alarm.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, instantly alert. “Are you okay?”

“I think the baby’s moving,” she whispered, keeping her voice low as if she were afraid a loud noise would scare the baby and stop the movement.

“He is? You’re sure?”

“Yes! Oh God, there he goes again.” Dante sat up and stared at the small bump fixedly. Cleo blindly reached for his hand and placed it where she’d felt the movement. His hand was so large that it just about covered the entire expanse of her stomach. “Oh. Did you feel that?”

“No.” He shook his head, looking frustrated.

“It’s very faint. Maybe you can’t feel it yet.”

“Is he still moving?”

She paused for a moment before shaking her head.

“No, I think he’s stopped.” He looked so disappointed that she covered the hand he still had on her stomach with her own.

“I’ll let you know the moment he starts up again,” she promised, and he nodded briskly. She moved her hand, and he was just about to remove his when the gentle flutter returned. This time he felt it, and his eyes shot up to meet hers.

“Christ!” he gasped.

“Language, Dante,” she warned, tears in her eyes and excitement in her voice. “There’s a kid in the room.”

“Sorry,” he whispered, before leaning down until his mouth was within an inch of her stomach. “Sorry, pequeño, don’t you listen to your daddy’s bad language, okay?”

Almost simultaneously, they both comprehended that he’d used the word daddy, and Dante froze, his eyes leaping up to meet hers. Cleo wasn’t sure how to respond. What did it mean, him naming himself father to the child? How active did he now expect his role in this child’s life to be?

“How does it feel?” he asked, changing the subject but keeping his hand firmly anchored on her stomach. “To have him move around like that? Does it hurt?”

“It feels strange. A little bit like indigestion. Not painful or anything, just like a tiny tummy rumble. I wasn’t even sure what it was at first.”

“It’s amazing,” he said, his tone brimming with awe and discovery. He stared down at her stomach again, obviously hoping the baby would move some more.

“I think he’s done for the night,” she said gently, and his eyes shadowed with disappointment.

“Thank you for sharing this with me, dulzura,” he said as he reluctantly lifted his hand from her abdomen. She smiled and refocused on the movie that had been running unheeded while they had marveled over the miraculous life they’d created together.

He once again lifted his feet to the coffee table and folded his arms over his chest, keeping contact between them limited to occasional accidental brushes.

“So do you enjoy the teaching?” he asked about ten minutes later, as they were watching Ripley battle her way through droves of ugly aliens.

“I’m finding it quite rewarding,” she replied. “The kids are enthusiastic and talented. They remind me a little of myself at that age. I was absolutely obsessed with dancing. I couldn’t wait for school to finish every day so that I could get to dance classes, I spent all of my time practicing my chaînés tournes in the mirror, and I wouldn’t stop until my grandmother forced me to do my chores. I resented her so much for that.”

She could hear the sadness in her voice at that admission, and from the change in his body language, she knew that Dante could too.

“They only wanted what was best for Luc and me.”

“Where were your parents?”

“I never knew our dad. Luc has a slight recollection of him, but he never talks about the man. Our mother left us at our grandparents’ house—the huge old place that Luc’s staying in—when we were five and ten. Told us it was for a holiday and never came back. I heard my grandmother arguing with her on the phone soon after she left us there, and for years afterward I believed that our mom didn’t come back because my gran had chased her away.”

Dante was silent as she sat there, her hand idly stroking the gentle curve of her abdomen.

“Of course, now I know that if she’d wanted us back, no force on earth would have been strong enough to keep her away. But I spent my entire childhood and teens resenting my grandmother for a telephone conversation that I could only hear one side of. So stupid.”

She shook herself and peered up at Dante in embarrassment.

“I’m sorry. You didn’t want to hear all of that.”

“On the contrary . . . I found it quite insightful.”

“In what way?” she asked, and he shook his head.

“I’m not sure yet. Did you ever hear from your mother again?”

“No. Not a single Christmas or birthday card. No phone calls or letters or e-mails. Nothing until we received word of her death just months after our grandparents passed. She died in Nepal, and the cost of the trip put Luc in a financial hole so deep that he’s still struggling to get out of it more than eight years later. That’s when I really hated her . . . all those years of misdirected anger aimed at my grandparents, who were only trying to provide a stable home life for us. They paid for ballet lessons that they could barely afford and scraped together their money to buy Luc that beaten-up old hatchback for his eighteenth birthday that I now drive. By the time I’d recognized how much they’d sacrificed to raise us, it was too late; they were sick and dying, and then they were gone.”

“I’m sorry.” Dante’s husky voice jolted her back into the present, and she pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, embarrassed to find them wet.

“Aargh, I should be over this by now. I just wish I had a second chance with them.”

“They sound like the type of people who wouldn’t have wanted you to live with all this guilt; they worked too hard to make you happy. You dishonor them by remembering them with only regret in your heart.” His pragmatic words made her pause and consider. He was right; her grandparents had only wanted Cleo and Luc to be happy. And they’d had some good times too. Maybe she should start remembering those?

“My granddad insisted I learn how to ride a bike,” she recalled with a smile. “I argued, at six years old, that a dancer didn’t need to know how to ride a stupid bicycle. And he insisted that everybody needed to know how to ride a bicycle. That man spent days running up and down the road with me, catching me whenever I fell. He never once dropped me.”

She stared blindly at the screen in front of her, and they were quiet for the remainder of the movie.

“I loved them very much,” she said when the credits were running.

“I know,” he replied and reached over to take one of her hands. He gave it a gentle squeeze before dropping it back into her lap.

And in that moment, Cleo knew that her feelings for Dante Damaso had definitely evolved into something very complicated. She wasn’t able to put a name or definition on them, wasn’t sure what—if anything—they would grow into, but one thing she was sure of was that she didn’t like where they seemed to be leading. She felt much too vulnerable.




When Cleo made her way to the gym the following Saturday morning, she heard heavy breathing, grunts, and solid punches. Sure enough, Dante was positioned at one of his heavy punching bags. He was wearing protective gloves, but he was bare chested and barefoot as he punched and kicked the crap out of the bag. It was very primal and masculine and intense. He paused when he saw her standing at the door dressed in her toe shoes, a black leotard, pink leggings, and a wispy pink wrap skirt. He pushed one gloved hand into his already messy hair to get it out of his eyes—he definitely could do with a haircut—and kept his gaze trained on her as she made her way to her dance corner. He looked a little intimidating, gleaming with sweat, and his heaving breaths and rippling muscles and the way he was staring at her, like a lion eyeing a gazelle, didn’t help matters much.

She hesitated, not sure if she should wait until after he was done with his workout, but he waved her in, and it was too late to turn around.

“Hey,” she greeted, and he nodded.

“Hey,” his greeting was curt, and he went back to thumping his bag aggressively seconds later.

“Okay, then,” she murmured to herself as she put her music on. The peaceful strains of Chopin’s Nocturnes flooded through the room, so quiet and gentle at first that Dante didn’t seem to notice it above all the vigorous grunting and punching he was doing. Satisfied that she wasn’t disturbing his workout, she settled into her stretches and then started her barre work. She was moving on to her en pointe exercises when she became aware of the silence at the other end of the room. She looked up into the mirror and saw that he had stopped his workout completely and was watching her again, riveted. She was in the middle of an arabesque penché, supported by her left leg, with her right leg lifted and extended straight behind her. It was a classical ballet pose and did an amazing job of strengthening her core and working on every single muscle in her calves and thighs. She slowly sank back into first position, and he raised his eyes to meet hers in the mirror.