Consequence of His Revenge(30)

Sweat popped onto his brow as a disturbingly vivid memory came over him of that first time she’d proved it. Her first time. She had trusted him with herself. Then, when she had had a chance to walk away from him with perhaps not riches, but certainly a bonanza by the standards she’d been forced to live under, she had left it on the floor of his hotel suite.

She had tried to pay her father’s debt in good faith and, even more shocking, when she had learned her father was innocent, she hadn’t taken a stake to Dante’s heart. She hadn’t hidden his child from him. She had agreed to marry him, despite all the ways he’d damaged her life.

At no time had she betrayed him. She was the most steadfast, loyal, lovable—

A flash of blue caught his eye. His chauffeur was carrying her battered, full backpack to the car.

Oh, hell, no.

* * *

What could she possibly say to Bernadetta except, I’m sorry?

Hovering the pen over the paper, Cami almost wrote, I’m not brave like you, but that just made her feel ashamed of herself for running away. What was she supposed to do, though? Put up with having an ax over her head forever? She couldn’t. If today wasn’t the end, then something else would come up.

Something always happened. She would far rather be the one to choose how she and Dante parted than invest more of herself and feel the break that much more deeply in the future. It already hurt so badly she could hardly breathe.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Dante asked, coming into the library and shutting the door with a firmness that was very close to a slam.

The sharp noise cut into her, making the agony she had been holding off flood through her in a wave. She tried sitting straighter in his grandfather’s antique rolling chair, but when Dante came to lean on the desk and glare at her over it, she wanted to wither. She pushed to her feet, chest tight.

“My Sicilian isn’t great,” she told him, hearing the strain in her voice “But I got the gist. You want a paternity test. Fine.” She threw down the pen. “But I’m not going to marry a man who won’t take my word on something so basic.”

“You’re going to let one ugly accusation destroy the life we’re trying to make? Which one of us is having trouble trusting?”

“Oh, come on, Dante. One accusation is all it took the first time. My entire life is still being destroyed by one ugly accusation.”

Through the moisture gathering in her eyes, she saw his head snap back as though he took her words as a blow on the chin. His face contorted with emotion. Something that might have been despair shadowed his eyes.

“And you can’t forgive me for believing my cousin instead of your father.”

How was it that she could withstand her own pain, but not his?

“It’s not about forgiveness. I wanted to believe my father was innocent despite the evidence.” She tapped her chest. “I completely understand why you didn’t imagine your cousin could have done it. We want to believe in the people we love.”

“That tells me how you feel, then, doesn’t it?” His face was sharp and tight, his lips white.

How could she admit to her own love when, “You don’t love me!”

That was the excruciating heartbreak she was trying to escape, unable to face it when her own heart was so completely his.

“You will never believe in me, despite how much I’ve tried to prove...” She had to bite her lips to steady them. Swallowed past the tightness in her throat. “I can’t live my life like that. If you don’t trust me, I can’t trust this.” She waved between them. “I won’t build castles on clouds.” She started to walk around the desk and out of the room.

“I love you,” he ground out.

The words went into her as an arrow, making her suck in a deep breath. “Don’t. At least keep truth between us.”

“You dare to suggest I would lie about that?” He grasped her by the shoulders, swinging her to face him. “I should have—” His hands tightened briefly on her, revealing the deep emotions gripping him. “I should have said it when we were still in Whistler, but do you think I knew what it was when I’ve never felt this kind of love before? Passionate and intense and so quick to rip me apart I still can’t take it in?”

“Dante.” She pleaded for him not to make this harder. “I don’t get happily-ever-after. My life never works out. It always falls apart, and I can’t bear that I’ll start to believe the things you’re saying only to have it all disappear. I have to go now, before it’s more than I can survive.”

“It’s already too late. Leaving would kill us both.”

She teared up and he smoothed his hand over her hair, soothing her as he drew her stiff body into his chest and pressed his mouth to her temple.

“This is my fault. I’ve destroyed your ability to believe in the future, but you have to give me a chance to fix that. To prove we have one.”

“We’re always going to be who we are.” She set her hands on his waist, not sure if she wanted to embrace him or push him away. “The past is always going to have the power to rear up and destroy us. I can’t live like that, waiting for it to happen. I can’t build something that means everything to me, then lose it.”

“So you want to throw it away now? No. Listen to me.” His arms tightened and his breath stirred the hair near her ear, sending tingles down her nape. “We are who we are, but not who you think. We aren’t enemies. We were meant for one another, Cami. If you leave today, we’ll only come back together later. It’s inevitable. Your father invited me to come see you ski, did you know that?” He drew back to look her in the eye. “I made an excuse, but if things hadn’t gone to hell, I would have come one day and watched you and fallen for you then, because you’re that amazing and wonderful.”

“I was fourteen,” she scoffed, closing her eyes against the alternate reality where she crushed on the young man who so impressed her father and he loved her back. She won medals while he designed futuristic cars. They married and had children who grew up knowing their grandparents.

“I would have waited for you. I did wait.” He growled. “You didn’t find anyone else, either. It took far too long, but we came together again under yes, difficult circumstances, but we came together. What are the chances of that? Hmm? And that we would fall for each other even with this mess between us?”

He combed her hair back from her face, tilting up her chin and letting his gaze wander the delicate line of her jaw, grazing gentle fingertips against her cheek and the sensitive hollow beneath her ear.

“We scare the hell out of each other, our feelings are so strong. So yes, our trust needs time to grow deeper roots. It’s been rocky, but even if you aren’t ready to believe in me, you have to believe in us.”

Her chin crinkled. She searched his eyes for some evidence he was being fanciful, but he wasn’t a man to make up nonsense.

“Can you really look past...everything?”

“I already did, when I kissed you the first time in Whistler. Can you?”

“I want to.”

The tension in his hand, where it had slid to the side of her neck, eased into a gentle caress. “Because you love me?”

She could hardly take in that he was using that word. With her. Her chest felt too full, like it would split from the pressure swelling her heart. “I do,” she admitted with a scrape in her throat. “I love you a lot.”

He grew very somber. “You humble me with your capacity to forgive. Your generous heart. I will never take you for granted. You can believe in me. I will prove it to you.”

He started to kiss her, but her hand went to the middle of his chest, holding him off. “But what about the paternity test?”

His expression softened. “Of course you’re carrying my baby,” he chided. “I could hardly tell my uncle I remember exactly when we conceived, in vivid detail, could I? My only regret is that you were angry with me that day. Unsure of us. But we were already in love, Cami. Damn right that’s my child you’re carrying.”

He placed his hand over the very slight bump that was really only visible to him because he knew her shape so well. She blushed, but teared up, too.

“It was a very small chance we took that day, yet look how it’s binding us together,” he said, lifting his gaze to hers.

Perhaps they were fated.

As the light in his eyes continued to pour through her, she began to believe it. With a shaky smile, she lifted onto tiptoes and let the love on his lips absorb into her soul. She didn’t imagine she could taste it. She knew it as a tangible thing that filled her with growing joy and a euphoric certainty that was so sweet and precious, her tears sprinkled past her lashes onto her cheeks.

Three weeks later, she took her brother’s arm. He was terrifically handsome in a morning suit. Her dress had an empire waist to hide her small bump.

“I don’t want to give you away,” Reeve said with a rueful smile. “You’re all I have. But you look so happy...”

“I am, Reeve. I really am,” she said, still stunned by it herself. The fragile trust between her and Dante had been growing exponentially, concentrating into something that centered both of them on a foundation that brought her peace for the first time in her adult life.