A Ruthless Proposition

by Natasha Anders

  “No comment,” she replied, and his lips quirked at the corners as he looked back up at the monitor. Cleo’s eyes lingered on his profile for a few moments longer, charmed—despite herself—at how very entranced he was by the wriggling image on that screen.

  They spent another ten minutes exclaiming and marveling over the various features and body parts they could identity, while Julia took down the fetus’s vital statistics and answered the myriad questions Dante seemed to have for her. He asked questions that would never even have occurred to Cleo.

  Julia had gotten over that first fluttery reaction pretty quickly and now treated him the way she probably did most expectant fathers, giving each question a measured and intelligent response and never once showing the slightest sign of impatience.

  All three of them were a little woebegone when she finally switched the monitor off and the baby’s image disappeared.

  “I know it’s tough to say good-bye,” Julia sympathized. “But I’ll have a DVD and stills made for you. Well, your baby seems to be happy and healthy, Miss Knight. You can arrange next month’s appointment with Dr. Klein at the reception desk. How many copies of the DVD would you like?”

  “Two,” Dante replied before Cleo could respond, and Julia nodded and happily made arrangements with Dante for the delivery of the DVDs. Cleo couldn’t help but feel a bit sidelined. She might be carrying the baby, but her pregnancy was rapidly becoming a Dante Damaso Production, and she was petrified that if she wasn’t careful, he would find a way to marginalize her completely.

  “I have to pee,” she whispered to Cal after she’d made her next appointment at the reception desk. “I’ll meet you at the car.” She handed him her car keys so that he wouldn’t have to wait in the rain, and turned to Dante, who’d watched the whispered exchanged in interest.

  “I’ll call you later,” she told him. “We have to make arrangements to meet with our attorneys present about modifying our previous agreement.”

  She turned away to rush to the closest ladies’ room, not waiting for him to acknowledge her words.

  She half expected him to still be waiting for her when she finished five minutes later, and she was relieved to see no sign of him in the reception area upon her return. She waved to Viv, the receptionist, as she dragged on her lightweight denim jacket on her way out the door. She was so preoccupied with fixing one of her jacket sleeves that it took her a while to notice her car was missing. She glanced up and stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, still absently trying to force her arm into the jacket sleeve while she stared blankly at the spot where her car should have been. She frowned in confusion before glancing up and down the road. Maybe she was mistaken about where she’d left it. There was no sign of the nondescript, faded-blue hatchback. Maybe Cal had moved it. But why would he? The spot had been ideal.

  She was still trying to figure it out when a hand descended on her shoulder. She nearly jumped out of her skin in fright, and if she hadn’t just emptied her bladder she would have embarrassed herself even further. She swung around to confront her accoster and only marginally relaxed when—predictably—Dante Damaso stood behind her.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said apologetically.

  “Yeah? Then stop sneaking up on me,” she griped. She was still furiously trying to get her arm into the damned jacket when he took hold of her wrist and gently guided it into the errant sleeve. Dressing her like he would a small child.

  “I suppose you have something to do with Cal’s disappearance,” she said, once she had her jacket on properly.

  “You don’t have to make it sound so ominous,” he replied. “I just told him that we needed to talk and that I’d drive you home. Don’t worry, he issued all the warnings a dutiful friend would but recognized that you and I have a few unresolved issues to take care of.”

  “Well, I suppose we’d better get this over with, then.” Cleo couldn’t help the surliness that crept into her voice. She felt defensive and had wanted time to mentally and emotionally prepare for this discussion. “Where are you parked?”

  Dante watched Cleo animatedly chatting and laughing with James, his driver. They were discussing James’s grandmother’s chocolate fudge cake, which was apparently “to die for.” Although how the hell Cleo knew that was anybody’s guess. She didn’t look at Dante once during the drive, didn’t make any conversation, not even to ask where they were going. Not one stray smile or misplaced comment spilled over in his direction, and he wasn’t sure why, but that bothered the hell out of him. It was as if he wasn’t even present.

  Dante was not used to being so comprehensively ignored, so he did what he always did when a situation became awkward: he took out his cell phone to check messages and make calls. When he was working, he was in charge; he was never uncomfortable and knew how to handle every scenario that was thrown at him. It was a handy way to ignore difficult social situations. Still, this time he couldn’t shut them out as completely as he would have liked; part of him wanted to weigh in on the buttercream versus fondant debate. He had very definite views when it came to cake, but Cleo wouldn’t know that because she thought he was boring, stuffy, and overbearing. And maybe he was, but he could damned well discuss cake with her—and anybody else—any day of the week.

  He stifled his childish thoughts and managed to complete a couple of important phone calls before their short drive ended. James rolled the car to a stop in an underground parking lot, and Cleo stopped talking and peered at her surroundings curiously. She’d been so busy proving that she could ignore Dante that she hadn’t really absorbed the direction they were heading during the short trip from the doctor’s office.

  “Where are we?” she asked, before seeing a familiar sign on one of the nearby tourist maps. “Are we at the Waterfront?”

  “Close,” he said, gathering his briefcase and phone while James stepped out of the car and opened the door for Cleo. Dante didn’t bother waiting for the man to do the same for him and was at Cleo’s side before she had properly emerged from the car.

  “Close? How close is close?” Her voice was suspicious, and he stifled a smile. He liked this prickly side of her, even though it also frustrated the hell out of him.

  “Close enough.” He kept his responses short and cryptic, partly because he knew it would piss her off, and partly because he didn’t want her freaking out before he got her where he wanted her. “I thought we could have a late lunch and talk.”

  She hesitated, and he sighed before gently taking hold of her elbow.

  “Cleo, try to trust me, okay? What the hell do you think I’m going to do to you? We need to have an uninterrupted talk, that’s all.”

  She just stared at him, and he sighed before steering her toward the express elevator to his penthouse apartment.

  “James, I’ll call you when I need you to take Miss Knight home,” Dante said once he and Cleo were safely aboard the lift. James nodded, his expression serious and businesslike once again.

  “What restaurant are we going to?” she asked, her voice alive with doubt, and Dante squeezed his eyes shut before confirming her suspicion.

  “No restaurant. I brought you to my apartment. We can talk there.”

  “I don’t want to go to your apartment,” she screeched, and he grimaced. “Let me off at the next floor. Where are the buttons for the other floors?”

  “Cleo, come on. Don’t be silly.”

  “Oh, sure, now you use my name, when you have me trapped in this creepy one-button elevator. Is that supposed to reassure me? Are you using my name to create a rapport with me?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” he asked, trying—and failing—to keep the exasperation out of his voice.

  “That’s what kidnappers do, right? Try to create a rapport with their victims?” They’d reached the penthouse floor, and Dante shook his head and stepped into the elegant lobby, leaving her to frantically push at the single button in the elevator.

  “It won’t work,” he told her af
ter her third desperate jab. “It’s coded to accept only my fingerprint.”

  Of course it was. She was so pissed off. Bringing her to his place was a sneaky thing to do. She would really rather speak to him on neutral ground or on her own territory. And she had a feeling he knew that. This didn’t bode well for future amicable relations.

  She glared at him before reluctantly stepping out of the elevator.

  “I can’t figure out if this is reminiscent of Hannibal Lecter’s lair or James Bond’s high-tech den,” she muttered, and he tossed her a cynical little smile.

  “Is that a retinal scan?” she asked, fascinated in spite herself as he stepped up to a discreet sensor next to the door frame. A green light switched on after the scan, and he followed it up by placing his palm on a panel below the sensor, and a second green light switched on. Just below the panel was a keypad, and he shielded it slightly with his body as he keyed in a number. There was a third green light followed by a slightly musical beep, and he opened his door and waved her in.

  “Paranoid much?” she asked as she swept by him.

  The place was huge, lavish, and seriously expensive, with panoramic views of the mountain, the waterfront, the yacht basin, and the ocean through floor-to-ceiling glass panes. There was gray-and-white marble everywhere, ugly stark furniture, and gigantic potted plants that looked like they belonged in a greenhouse or a rain forest. Then again, with all the glass, this place could easily pass for both greenhouse and goldfish bowl.

  “Guess you don’t roam around naked much,” she observed, stepping up to one of the windows and glancing down at the little people strolling around on the dock.

  “The windows are tinted,” he said, his gravelly voice sending unwelcome stirrings of desire shuddering up her spine. “We could do all manner of things in here, and nobody would ever know.”

  “Yeah, but you can see out.” Ugh. That didn’t sound sexy so much as creepy.

  “Hmm, it tends to bring out the closet exhibitionist in some people,” he murmured.

  She ignored his suggestive tone and continued to roam around the place, pausing every so often to stare out at the view or to look more closely at some grotesquely oversized vase or to gape in awe at his gigantic flat-screen TV and ridiculously complicated-looking entertainment system.

  He didn’t say a word, just watched as she flitted from one part of the huge living room to the next. She eventually paused at a sliding door that led out to the wooden deck with its deep blue rectangular infinity pool.

  She was aware of his eyes on her as she slipped out onto the deck. The rain had stopped enough for the weak, watery spring sun to slip between the clouds and bless her with a glorious shaft of light. She lifted her face to the heat and just stood there, trying to gird herself for what was to come.

  “I’m putting a couple of T-bones on the grill.” Dante’s quiet voice came from behind her and startled her out of her reverie. Immediately back on the defensive, she stepped out of the sun and under the eaves. It was cold in the shadows, which kept her alert and ready for anything he had to throw at her. “How do you like your steak cooked?”

  “Medium,” she said, and hugged her arms around her as she tried to ward off the chill.

  “Come in out of the cold,” he told her as he turned to go back inside, and she followed. Once inside she wandered aimlessly from one end of the living room to the other. He was busy in the open-plan kitchen, his tie undone, jacket tossed aside, and shirtsleeves rolled up. It was the most relaxed she’d ever seen him. His kitchen was a modern masterpiece of chrome and marble, and felt as frigid and unlived in as the rest of his home.

  That’s what was wrong with this place! It didn’t feel like anyone actually lived here. There were no personal effects lying around, no family pictures, no clothes scattered about. No remnants of any work he’d been doing spread out, not even a book he might have been reading. It was eerie.

  “You can have a look upstairs if you like,” he invited, and she glanced over at him in surprise.

  There was another floor?

  “The staircase is tucked away over there.” He nodded toward a spot opposite the patio door, and she saw that the staircase was situated inconspicuously in the far corner of the room.

  She meandered over to it, and before she knew it, she had her hand on the highly polished banister and was making her way upstairs. Like the living area down below, the place was a marvel of décor and architecture and was as cold as ice. Cleo hated it. There were three bedrooms, each with its own attached bath and shower, complete with a king-size bed with matching bureaus, huge walk-in closets, and a wall of those nasty voyeuristic windows. There was also a spacious, very well-equipped gym with a treadmill, Airdyne bike, punching bags of various sizes, and weight-training equipment. Considering his hard body, she figured he probably spent a lot of time blowing off steam in here.

  His study was the smallest room and the only one that bore any hint of personality. It was furnished with rich oak furniture, and gorgeous floor-to-ceiling bookshelves took up an entire wall of the room. It was also the only room with wooden floors, a fireplace, and cozy rugs. Comfy overstuffed chairs and a matching love seat were situated in front of the fireplace. His large oak desk took up an entire corner of the room, which was where she saw real signs of life. Papers, a laptop, a familiar-looking iPad, and . . . was that a ficus perched on his desk? She shuddered at the sight of it and focused instead on several framed photographs.

  The one that held her attention was an old photo of a grinning dark-haired boy of about nine or ten hugging a scruffy dog. Of course, it could only be Dante. The eyes were the same, and the boyish features held a promise of the gorgeousness to come. There was another picture close by of an older man who bore a striking resemblance to Dante, with his arm around the teen version of Dante. A smile twitched at her lips as she took in the gawky frame that would eventually fill out so magnificently, the awkward hunched shoulders, and the glare. The glare was definitely Dante’s. Then there was a picture of Dante and Luc beaming at the camera in their graduation robes, both looking young and carefree as they held up their degrees in triumph. Luc had a similar picture in his study. Cleo had missed Luc’s graduation; she’d been busy doing something she’d undoubtedly considered vastly more important but couldn’t even remember seven years later. She sighed and tore her eyes from the photograph.

  There were a few other pictures scattered about of the dog, the older man with various women, and one of a yacht, but no more of Dante. In all there couldn’t have been more than ten photographs, and she found that rather sad. She might have resented her grandparents, but every aspect of her childhood and teen years had been recorded for posterity. Every report card kept, every playbill from every dance recital she’d ever been in had been meticulously filed away in a scrapbook. She had been loved, and it showed in every memento and photograph that they had kept of—and for—her.

  Feeling like an intruder, she backed out of the room and headed downstairs. Dante was focused on whatever he was doing in the kitchen.

  “It smells divine,” she said, leaning on the butcher block in the middle of the kitchen as she watched him chop veggies for a salad.

  “I hope it tastes divine,” he said, and shrugged a little awkwardly.

  “Do you often cook?” She would never have guessed it of him.

  “Sí. I enjoy it. I have never really cooked for anyone before now, though.” The confession surprised her, and her eyes widened.

  “Really?”

  “I don’t bring women here.”

  “Really?”

  “Will you stop saying ‘really’? It’s . . .”

  “Aggravating?” she supplied without thinking.

  “It’s . . . ,” he continued, ignoring her.

  “Frustrating?”

  “Annoying.” The word was gritted out between teeth so tightly clenched, Cleo actually feared he’d break them.

  “‘Frustrating’ and ‘aggravating’ are synonyms for ‘
annoying,’” she pointed out.

  “I wanted to use ‘annoying.’ Which is what you’re being right now. In addition to being frustrating and aggravating.”

  “And you’re being redundant.”

  “You’re really difficult to talk to sometimes,” he accused, his accent thickening with every word, and she shrugged a little shamefacedly.

  “I know,” she confessed. “It’s a defense mechanism.”

  “I don’t mean to put you on the defensive, but it seems to be your natural state.”

  “It’s my natural state around you.”

  He sighed and pointed to the kitchen cabinet.

  “Cutlery, tableware, place mats.” He pointed at the huge dining table a couple of yards away. “Table. Make yourself useful.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said snappily, and jumped to it.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Whoa, this is great,” Cleo enthused, after slicing off a sliver of tender, perfectly cooked steak. It was beautifully flavored and practically melted in her mouth. Dante had served it with a mushroom sauce, a baked potato with all the trimmings, and a healthy green salad. He had a glass of Pinotage to accompany his meal, and she had settled on grape soda—she thought she could pretend it was red wine until she took a sip and the sweet fizziness made a liar out of her.

  “I never imagined you’d be a good cook,” she said as she dug into her potato.

  “I find it relaxing,” he said. He seemed a little uncomfortable with her praise and quickly changed the subject. “By the way . . . kidnappers do not try to create a rapport with their victims. That would make them terrible kidnappers. Victims try to create the rapport. They want the kidnappers to see them as human.”

  “What?”

  “It’s just that what you said earlier was technically incorrect,” he pointed out, and she laughed incredulously.

  “I was making a point,” she said, and he shrugged. “You brought me here against my will.”