“When did you hear last from Cleo?” he asked Luc, and watched his friend tense.
“This morning. She called with Christmas greetings.”
“Is she alone today?” The thought of her being alone at Christmas bugged him, but then he told himself that she didn’t have to be alone. She could be here with people who cared about her.
“Cal’s there. They’re attempting their own version of a roast lunch.”
Dante grimaced at that news.
“They’ll poison themselves,” he grunted, shaking his head. “Especially if Cleo does the cooking.”
“Yeah, she’s a pretty awful cook.”
“Is she happy?” Dante hated asking, but he needed to know, and Luc shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“She’s not unhappy, and for now I think that’s all we can hope for.”
A month after leaving Cape Town, Cleo was starting to feel like she had a handle on her life again. Just a couple of days after arriving in Durban, she’d gone to a local dance studio and informed them they’d be idiots not to enlist her to teach a few ballet classes. Cal and a few of her former colleagues had vouched for her. She loved teaching and had fledgling dreams of opening her own dance school. She finally felt like she had a purpose again. She also choreographed dance pieces in her spare time, sometimes inspired by a song or a piece of art or even a bird in flight. It was wonderful and stimulating. She was developing quite a portfolio but didn’t know if she would ever be brave enough to pitch those ideas to any dance companies.
It was close to five in the evening, and she was just getting home to the apartment she shared with Cal after one of her new junior dance classes. She had her head down and was fumbling with her keys when she walked straight into something huge, warm, and solid just outside of the apartment door.
“You really need to start looking where you’re going, dulzura,” chastised the last voice she had ever expected to hear again. She dropped her keys, her head flying up in reaction to that voice. She was filled with such raw, unbridled joy at the sight of him that her knees could barely hold her upright.
“Well?” he prompted in that dulcet voice. “Do you have anything to say to me?”
“What are you doing here?” she asked shakily. He snorted and shook his head in disgust before bending down to retrieve her keys.
“I think the more accurate question is, what the hell are you doing here?” He unlocked the door and steered her inside before following her in and slamming the door behind them.
“I live here,” she replied defiantly.
“No, you live with me,” he gritted out. “You never moved out!”
“I seem to recall moving out after I lost our baby,” she said pointedly.
“That was always going to be a temporary thing.”
“How can you say that? I was only living there because I was pregnant.”
“Cleo, tell me what the hell happened? We had Zach’s memorial, we said good-bye at the Waterfront, I told you I’d see you the next day, and you just left! How could you do that?”
She had boarded the first plane out of Cape Town the next morning, telling Luc and Blue only that she would be living with Cal, but not telling them exactly where that was, because she didn’t want to put them in the position of lying to Dante. They’d protested, of course, said that she was making a mistake, and begged her to stay for Christmas. But Cleo hadn’t been able to face the holidays and had firmly believed that she needed to get out of the city and as far away from Dante as possible in order to cut him out of her life completely.
“I left you a note,” she reminded him.
“Which said absolutely nothing. ‘Thank you for everything you’ve done. I cannot express how much it has meant to me but I think we both deserve a fresh start’?” He sounded incredulous, but Cleo was more shocked that he could recite her note verbatim. “What the hell was that supposed to mean?”
“It meant exactly what it said, Dante. Everything that tied us together is gone, and there is no need for us to be in each other’s lives anymore.”
“Bullshit,” he growled. “There is every reason!”
“I didn’t want you to stick around because you felt guilty or whatever. I wanted you to go on with your life, and I tried to pick up the pieces of mine. It’s for the best. There’s just no reason for us to ever see each other again.”
“Stop saying that!” he snapped. “No reason for us to ever see each other again? Well, what about this?” He framed her face and planted an angry, bruising kiss on her lips, and she was so shocked at first that she didn’t react, but when the shock wore off and she started to struggle against his hold, his kiss gentled. His mouth opened and his tongue traced the seam of her lips. It was an invitation she couldn’t resist . . . not when she’d spent the last month missing him every single hour of every day. She welcomed him in, and he groaned, the sound smothered against her mouth. He deepened his kiss, taking just that little bit more before ending it and stepping away from her, leaving her reeling.
“There’s that,” he said triumphantly, pointing a finger at her, and she shook her head to clear her befuddled senses.
“We know we have chemistry,” she said. Her tongue flicked out to taste him on her lips, and he groaned at the gesture. “We’ll probably always have chemistry, but let’s face it, that’s all we ever had, all we’ll ever have. It’s not enough.”
“I’m getting sick of you leaving me, Cleo.”
“I didn’t leave you, Dante.”
“Why do you have to be so damned unreasonable?” It was a familiar refrain, one she had heard from him in various forms of exasperation before. “Sometimes I don’t even know why I bother.”
“I don’t know either,” she said, her absolute confusion showing in her face and in her voice.
“So you’re living with Callum again?” he asked, changing the subject.
“It’s just temporary.”
“And how have you been? After everything?”
“Fine,” she said. “Some days are harder than others, you know?”
“Yeah. I know. I got a call from that baby-furniture store the other day.” His eyes took on a shimmer. “I forgot to cancel the order, and they wanted to know . . . to know when I wanted them to deliver it.”
“Oh God.” Her hands flew to her mouth as she imagined how awful that must have been.
“That was one of the bad days. I left work early and went home and wished to hell I could talk to you about it! Only you weren’t around, and I got sick of giving you time to come to your senses, so I came to fetch you home.”
“Wait, are you saying you knew where I was?”
“Dulzura, please, you forget that I am Dante Damaso. I have wealth, power, and influence at my fingertips.”
She rolled her eyes, old habits surfacing in his presence.
“Also ego,” she added. He sent her a quelling glance before continuing.
“I knew you were with Callum. It was just a matter of finding out which company he danced for, and there aren’t many options in Durban. Once I figured that out, a quick phone call told me exactly where he was staying. I’ve known since almost the beginning. But I wanted to give you time to figure this out by yourself. Then I got sick of giving you time, because I missed you like hell.”
“W-what?”
“I spent Christmas with your brother and Blue,” he said. “Because they felt sorry for my pathetic ass. I was always calling them and asking if they’d heard from you and wanting to know if you were okay.”
Cleo knew that; Blue and Luc had both told her stories of how Dante kept questioning them about her well-being. She had thought it was just polite concern, but looking at him now, she could see it was far from that.
“Damn you, Cleo! You gave me a home and family, and then you just took it away from me,” he hissed. “We lost Zach; we didn’t have to lose each other too.”
“Okay, back up a second,” she said. “You’re making no sense, Dante. Before I lost the baby, we had an arrangement. I’d move out with Zach and set up house in an apartment you provided, and you would play the role of his glorified uncle or something. That was the extent of our relationship. We were living together for convenience, and you never once hinted at anything different.”
“I asked you to marry me,” he reminded her, his nostrils flaring with irritation.
“Because you wanted Zach!” she said.
“No, you idiot.” He was practically yelling now, and she blinked at the spectacular emotional explosion she was witnessing from the famously cool Dante Damaso. This was just . . . fascinating. “Because I wanted you!”
She stumbled backward and sat down on the hard couch with a thump. “What?”
He sighed and sank down on the couch next to her. “I mean, of course I wanted the baby, but I wanted you too. No, let me rephrase, I wanted you especially.”
“I . . . how?”
“I’m not great at talking about things like this,” he said with a wince, keeping his gaze straight ahead while she kept hers fixed on his stark profile.
“Give it a go.”