by Tara Pammi
She smiled, thoroughly enjoying herself. “Is that praise I hear for my principles?”
“If you think mucking around through life, running from your own shadow is principled, all power to you. I call it a juvenile need for petty revenge you’ve yet to outgrow. And I keep waiting for you to wake up from this...protracted dream of yours, for the thud of reality to hit you.
“I know spoiled princesses like you like the back of my hand. There will be a day when you’ll crawl back to the luxury of your old life with your tail tucked between your legs. Because, really, what have you achieved in the last six years, except to sell off your mama’s jewelry piece by priceless piece?
“Sign the prenup. When that day comes, you’ll be thankful to me for giving you that option to fall back on.”
Wow, he wasn’t pulling his punches. Somehow, Ali kept her smile from sliding off her face.
His matter-of-fact assessment of her stung more than it should. She’d seen that same lack of respect, that same exaggerated patience in her father’s eyes on the eve of her eighteenth birthday.
As if dressing like a skank and making out with a former junkie rock star in front of their esteemed guests was all he had expected of Ali. And before she could change his impression of her, before she could apologize for her share of mistakes, he’d been lost to her.
But, if it was the last thing she did, she resolved to change Dante’s opinion of her.
Not because she wanted his approval—okay, she did, in some throwback to her angsty, unwise, earlier self—but because she wanted to prove him wrong. She needed to bring that arrogance down more than a peg or two. Really, she was doing a public service on behalf of all the women of the planet.
She needed to find some kind of closure for all the painful history between them. She longed for the day when she could look him in the eye and feel nothing.
No attraction. No wistful ache. No emotional connection whatsoever.
“No. No prenup. Let’s not forget I’m doing you a favor. I know you’re used to people bending over backward for you but I—”
Dark heat flared in his gray eyes. “Do you really want to threaten me about what I can or can’t do with you, Alisha?”
Ali jerked back, the temperature cocoon soaring from arctic cold to desert hot within seconds. Red-hot images of herself doing his bidding, forbidden images of their limbs tangling...the heat between them was a near tangible thing in the air.
Did that mean he felt it too?
Walk away now, Ali. Walk away before you’re far too tempted to resist.
But the thought of being able to save the charity that meant so much to her mother, the thought of returning to London, the thoughts of being grounded for a while, the thought of proving to Dante that she wasn’t a car crash in the making won out. “I want your word that this agreement is only on paper. That you won’t use it to manage me, to manage my life in any way.”
* * *
His fingers roped over her wrists like a gnarly vine. That accent slipped in through his soft words. “Do not think to play those silly games with me that you did with your father, Alisha. I will not let you drag my name through mud like you did his. No splashing yourself all over the media with some ex-junkie. No sneaking out behind my back with another man. At least not when you’re in London.”
“If you’re not careful with your threats, you’re going to sound like a real fiancé, Dante.” Whatever his conditions, she knew she’d have no problem keeping them. Like she’d already told him, her days of doing things to wind him up were over.
But she wouldn’t let Dante have all the power in this relationship. “Let me get this straight. If I give up men for three years, will you do the same? Will you be celibate for three years?”
“I won’t be the reason my name or this agreement of ours gets dragged through the mud.”
“That’s not really answering the question.”
“My name, my reputation...they mean everything to me, Alisha. I built them brick by brick from nothing. Away from the shadow of my father’s crime.
“I created a new life from the ground up. I built my fortune, I made my reputation anew after everything I had was destroyed in a matter of days.” Ali shivered at the dark intensity of his words, the specter of his past almost a live thing between them. With his ruthless ambition coating every word, it was easy to forget what had brought Dante to her father at all. What had built him up to be this man she saw now.
“You put one toe out of line during any of this and your precious charity won’t get a penny.”
CHAPTER FOUR
SHE WAS LATE.
Of course she was. It was his own fault for assuming Alisha could ever be a headache-free zone for him. What he should have done was show up at the dingy flat she lived in, insist she pack up and drag her to the airstrip.
Instead, he’d given them both a few days to gain perspective. To make sure he could think, away from the distraction of her...presence. Of her outrageous demands. Like the demand that he forward a sum of ten thousand pounds as the first payment.
Already, his lawyer was freaking out at the massive risk Dante was leaving himself open to by marrying her without a prenup.
And that was before the man found out what a firecracker Alisha was.
But for all the threats and warnings his lawyer had screamed over the transatlantic call, Dante couldn’t see her using this marriage to fleece him, to build her own fortune. He couldn’t see her dragging him into some kind of court battle—but threatening to sully his reputation in a rage, yes.
That he was more than ready for. In fact, the idea of sparring with Alisha now, the very idea of going toe-to-toe with her sent a shiver of excitement through him. Cristo, his life was truly devoid of fun if a battle with Alisha filled him with this much anticipation.
He’d called it her protracted, rebellious phase—he had thought her a spoiled princess but he was beginning to question that. He had had his chauffeur drive him past her flat, he’d seen where she waitressed sometimes. And she’d lived like that for more than five years.
Common sense pointed out that she wasn’t going to come after his fortune. Or Matta Steel.
The realization both calmed and unnerved him. Because, for the first time in his life, he had a feeling that reassurance came mostly from a place of emotion, despite the logic of it too. But he was determined to keep control of the situation.
If she thought he was handing over that amount of money without asking questions...if she thought he’d let her play him, play fast and loose in London, if she thought being his wife in name was just the latest weapon she could use against him...
It was time to reacquaint her with her adversary and set the ground rules for this...agreement between them. He refused to call it a marriage, refused to give his suddenly overdeveloped sense of guilt any more material to chew on.
Which was why he was waiting in Bangkok to accompany her back to London in his private jet rather than have his security bring her. He was also determined to accompany her because her return to London would definitely be commented on by the press, and once they announced that they had married, even their planned civil union without pomp and fanfare would still occupy the news cycle for a couple of weeks at least.
Thanks to his father’s notoriety during his life and the spectacle of his suicide during his incarceration alongside Dante’s swift rise through the ranks of Matta Steel to the position of CEO, there was plenty for the media to chew on. They were always ready to find some chink in his personality, some weak link in his makeup to crow that he was his criminal father’s flawed son.
Sometimes they did get their hands on a juicy story from a woman he’d dumped—for the simple reason that she wanted more from the relationship and he didn’t. Dante didn’t care a hoot about a tabloid feature.
But this...agreement with Alisha would be no
small step in the eyes of the media and the world. As such he needed to make her understand the importance of her behavior in the coming months.
The stubborn defiance in her eyes, the stark silence she’d subjected him to through the drive back to her flat hadn’t been lost on him.
Alisha didn’t respond well to threats.
He remembered the two-day disappearance she’d engineered when, on Neel’s instructions, Dante had tried to enroll her in a boarding school in Paris a couple of months after she’d first come to live with her father.
Fighting the near constant hum of his attraction to her had briefly made him forget that.
This was a business deal and he couldn’t antagonize Alisha any more than he would lose his temper with a new business partner. There had to be a way to get her to behave, to cooperate without letting the full force of his contempt for her to shine through.
The one thing he knew for certain was that he couldn’t punish her for his own attraction to her, for his lack of self-control. And as much as his mind and body were bent on reminding him that she had fancied him once, he refused to go down that road.
No.
After the first hour, he stepped out of his car. The unusually heavy wind roared in his ears and he pushed up his sunglasses even though the sun had yet to make an appearance on the chilly late September morning.
Patience had never been his strong point. And yet he had a feeling that it would be stretched to the limit in the near future. A few months with Alisha was bound to turn him mental in his thirties.
He continued to wait and was just about to call her when a caravan of cars—really, a who’s who of colorful vintage cars in different stages of deterioration—pulled up on the long, curving road that led to the airstrip.
Laughter bubbled out of his chest. He sensed his security team giving him sidelong, concerned looks. Well, no one ever made him laugh like Alisha did. Neither had a woman tested his control, or called forth some of his base instincts with a single smile like she did.
How fitting that the drama queen arrived in a ramshackle entourage of her own.
The caravan came to a stop with a lot of screeching noise that confirmed his suspicion that all three cars were on their last legs. But what crawled out of the cars was even more shocking. A surprising number of people clambered out of those small cars, a torrent of English and Thai flowing around. Car trunks were opened and suitcases and bags in different colors and makes pulled out.
Emerging from the third car, dressed again in short shorts that should have been banned, and a chunky sweater that fell to her thighs, almost covering the shorts, was Alisha. Loose and oversize, it fell off one shoulder almost to her bicep, leaving a hot-pink bra strap exposed.
And there was that same black camera bag—heavy from the looks of how the wide strap pulled over one shoulder and between her breasts.
Hair in that messy bun. No jewelry. Combat style boots on her feet.
No makeup that he could see. In fact, in the gray morning light, she looked freshly scrubbed, innocent and so excruciatingly lovely that he felt a tug low in his belly as surely as the sun peeking through the clouds.
Her wide smiles and husky laughter made her eyes twinkle. She stood among the loud group like sun shining on a vast field of sunflowers, every face turned toward her with genuine affection, long limbs grabbing her, hugging her, men and women kissing her cheeks. A sense of disbelief went through him as he spied a sheen of tears as she hugged the man called Mak.
And then she met his eyes.
Current arced between them even across the distance. As one, the group turned their gazes on him. Instead of surprise or curiosity, there was a certain knowledge in the looks leveled at him, knowledge about him. A certain warning in the looks, a subtle crowding around her, as if Alisha had imparted her opinion of him.
Out of the blue, for the first time in their shared history, he wondered what Alisha thought of him. What was behind all that...resentment of him? Did she still believe he’d stolen her legacy?
That hum began again under his skin as she pushed away from the crowd.
His breath suspended in his throat as the subtle scent of her skin teased him. He felt an overwhelming urge to bury his nose in her throat; to see that gorgeous, open smile leveled at him.
“Do you have the money ready?”
“All ten thousand pounds, si,” he responded, a hint of warning in his tone.
She pulled out a slip from the back pocket of her shorts, the action thrusting her breasts up. He gaped like a teenager until she said, “Please have it transferred to this bank account.”
He looked at the slip of paper with a routing number and an account number and raised his brows. “Whose account is it?”
“Kiki and Mak’s joint account.” She sighed at his silence. “You can’t place conditions on how I use the money. No micromanaging my life.”
“You’re not doing this to piss me off, are you?”
She rolled her eyes. “No. As much as our shared history gives you reason to believe that, I’m not.”
He took a step toward her. “Are they blackmailing you? Whatever it is, I’ll take care of it. What was it, Alisha? Drugs they hooked you into? Naked pictures?”
“What do you mean, naked pictures?”
Her shock was so genuine that it took Dante a couple of seconds to speak. “Who do you think took care of that junkie rock star before he could sell your pics to every tabloid magazine?”
A frown tied her brow, her gaze staring at him unseeingly. “Richard threatened to sell naked pictures of me? Did you see them?”
“Of course I didn’t look at your pictures,” he snapped. “He gave us enough proof to show it was you.”
He pushed a hand through his hair, the very prospect of that idiot taking advantage of a young Ali turning him inside out even now. It was the one time in his adult life that Dante had lost his temper and given in to the urge to punch the man’s pretty face.
Vikram had had to restrain him physically.
“So did you pay him?” Ali asked softly.
“I don’t respond well to threats, just like you. He gave me the flash drive with the pics on it and I smashed it with a paperweight.”
She laughed, the sound full of a caustic bitterness. “Wow, you really don’t think much of me, do you?” Her mouth trembled. “Mak and Kiki are the last people who would blackmail anyone. For the first year, when I moved here, I didn’t pay for anything. Board or food. Whatever I pay them, believe me, it’s very little in return for what they did for me.”
Would the woman never develop a sense of self-preservation? “It’s not a hardship to be kind to an heiress, Alisha. A payoff is usually expected at some point.”
Hurt painted her small smile, her eyes widening, even as she bravely tilted her chin.
He had hurt her. The realization sat tightly on his chest.
“They don’t know who I am, Dante. When you showed up at the restaurant a week ago, it was the first time I told either of them who I was.”
“Alisha, I don’t—”
“And if you say some stupid thing like I haven’t earned it to give it away, believe me I did. Mama earned each and every one of those voting shares. She lost Papa to the blasted company. And all she got were those in return. So, yes, she paid for them. And y’know what? I paid for them too because I should’ve grown up with my father and brother and Mama in the same house. I shouldn’t have had to wonder why Papa barely visited me. Vicky shouldn’t have had to wonder how Mama could have so easily given him up. I shouldn’t have had to wonder why it took Mama’s death for him to be in my life.
“I shouldn’t have to wonder what I lacked that meant he chose...” Her chest rose and fell, a haunting light in her eyes. “I paid for those shares, Dante. And I want some good to come out of what I’m signing up for with you. Something to grou
nd me when you drive me up the wall over the next few months. That money will be a nice deposit for the business Mak and Kiki want to begin.” She swallowed and met his gaze. “They welcomed me with open arms when I desperately needed friends, when I needed to be loved.”
The vulnerability in her words struck him like a punch to his solar plexus, bringing in its wake a cold helplessness.
I’m not that impulsive, destructive Ali anymore.
Her words from a week ago haunted Dante as he watched her climb the steps to the aircraft. Maybe she wasn’t that same old Alisha anymore. But as far as he knew, people didn’t really change.
A reckless Alisha wouldn’t have visited London three times and tried to patch up her mother’s favorite charity.
A spoiled Alisha wouldn’t have lived in anonymity when she could have simply used her father’s name to live in luxury.
So maybe he hadn’t known Alisha at all.
Maybe he didn’t know the woman he was marrying after all.
CHAPTER FIVE
ALI STARED MINDLESSLY as she stepped onto the flight and elegant luxury met her eyes. Every moment she spent with Dante, the past relentlessly pulled at her. Along with all the moronic decisions she’d made in anger, in hurt, coming back to take a chunk out of her ass.
From the moment she’d stepped out of the car, she’d been aware of his eyes on her every second. His silent scrutiny, the way his gaze devoured her expression made her skin feel stretched tight. Any hope she had indulged that that pulse of attraction at the restaurant was just a heightened reaction because she was seeing him for the first time in six years died a quick death.
Even with her friends surrounding her—she still couldn’t believe how many of them had showed up—she’d been aware of him.
It was as if, overnight, she’d developed an extra sense. A sixth sense that evolved to keep her in tune with Dante’s every move, his every look, his every breath. And now they had twelve hours of flight in the enclosed space together, and the fact that the interior of the aircraft was much more expansive and luxurious than a commercial flight made no difference whatsoever.
