A Ruthless Proposition

by Natasha Anders

  “Philistine,” she said with a long-suffering sigh, her hand starting to run soothingly through his hair. “You got that quote all wrong.”

  He twisted his head to meet her eyes with his smiling gaze.

  “Sí? What is it then?”

  “You’ll see. Now be quiet and watch.”

  Half an hour later, after pilfering half of her popcorn, criticizing a few of the choices some of the characters had made, and wondering why they didn’t just leave someone on the “big ship” to wait for everybody, his big body went completely limp. A quick glance down confirmed that he’d fallen asleep. Cleo smiled, feeling an overwhelming surge of affection for him. She had never expected to like Dante Damaso, and yet she did. He had wormed his way into her good graces, and she wasn’t exactly sure how.

  The logical part of her brain told her to keep him at a distance, that feeling anything more than fondness for him would lead to pain and possible heartbreak. He wasn’t the type of man one could play house with. He was like a wild animal who seemed to do better without any sentimental emotion bogging him down. Cleo and this baby were momentary blips in his lifestyle, and maybe it was the novelty of the situation that drew him. She couldn’t allow herself to depend on him. Not in any emotional sense. He would keep his word when it came to supporting the child, but if she thought he could feel anything deeper than what he’d promised already, she would be fooling only herself.

  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 time
s 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.

  “That was beautiful,” he gritted out.

  “So was what you were doing.” And it was, in an extremely raw and primitive way.

  “Yeah, well, it didn’t quite match this music.” His broad shoulders moved restlessly and drew her attention back to his beautifully proportioned, well-muscled body.

  “The Ballerina and the Beast,” he said gruffly, as if reading her thoughts. “You make that look so effortless. It’s hard to believe that you’re no longer able to dance professionally.”

  “Oh, believe it,” she said, turning around to face him properly. “The way I fell? I’m lucky I didn’t break my neck. Broke my leg in two places, injured my hip, and my knee.” She shook her head, the memory sending a shudder down her spine even all these years later. That awful feeling of inevitability of being unable to stop yourself as the worst happened.

  “I would have been able to fully recover from any one of those injuries quite easily,” she said, unconsciously sweeping her right foot back and forth. “But all of them combined were catastrophic, and the knee is simply unable to bear the strain of a professional dancer’s life anymore. I’d had injuries before, countless injuries, and I knew when I landed that it was the end of my career, but it took me years to accept it. Anyway . . . I was wondering how long you’ve been doing this.”

  “The kickboxing?” She nodded, and he rolled his shoulders before peeling off his gloves. “Since I was an early teen. I had some . . . anger-management issues. My father thought I needed to channel some of that rage.”

  “Oh?” she prompted, but he just nodded and went back to punching his bag, ending the conversation. A little irritated that she had told him so much about herself while receiving next to nothing in return, Cleo went back to her own workout, vowing to keep her own counsel in the future. Just because she was lonely and a chatty person didn’t mean Dante was the best person to blab to about her sorry life story.

  He finished before she did and left the gym without another word. She watched him leave in the mirror; he didn’t spare so much as a backward glance.

  She had no idea what was going on in his mind most of the time, and once again questioned her decision to come and live here. Despite the improved surroundings and financial circumstances, she was filled with as much doubt as ever and constantly worried about the future.

  She finished her workout and headed to her room for a shower. When she emerged a short while later, it was to find him sitting on the deck with a mug of coffee in hand. He was staring at the yachts, deep in thought. She grabbed a glass of juice and hesitated at the sliding door leading out to the deck, not sure if she should join him or not. Maybe he wanted some privacy; she didn’t know him well enough yet to tell.

  She decided to play it safe and turned away from the door to wander into the living room instead. On the way, she grabbed a discarded newspaper from one of the kitchen counters and sank down onto the floor next to the low coffee table. She went straight to the crossword puzzle and picked up his expensive Montblanc pen, which was lying on the table next to his glasses. She was immersed in the puzzle within minutes.

  “Why are you on the floor?” Dante’s voice brought her back into the present, and she gazed back at him blankly. He stood, hands in his trouser pockets, staring down at her with a curious look on his face.

  “Your couch is uncomfortable,” she said, before going back to nibbling the end of his pen and giving the puzzle her rapt attention.

  “More uncomfortable than the floor?”

  Irritated by the interruption, she clicked her tongue and glowered at him.

  “I’m trying to concentrate,” she snapped, and his eyebrows shot up before he unceremoniously plonked himself down next to her.

  “Try ‘place,’” he suggested, pointing to the paper.

  “What?”

  “Fifteen down. It’s ‘place,’” he said with a smug smile. She peered at the paper and sighed.

  “No, it’s not,” she said, before neatly penning the letters V E N U E into the blocks. His lips twisted, and he refocused his attention on her puzzle before grunting.

  “Twelve across is . . .”

  “Stop!” she commanded, placing her hand over the puzzle in an effort to block his view. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m helping you,” he replied, looking a little perplexed by her reaction.

  “I don’t need help finishing my puzzle,” she fumed.

  “It’s my newspaper,” he pointed out. “So I think it’s my puzzle.”

  “Once a newspaper has been read and then tossed aside, it becomes public property.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” he scoffed. “I have never heard of this rule.”

  “Well, that’s the rule in South Africa. I can’t help it if you had different rules in Spain. I have an entire nation behind me on this one. Now back off and let me finish my puzzle.”

  “While I’m down here, I might as well help you out,” he said magnanimously.

&n
bsp; “English isn’t even your first language,” she rebuffed.

  “That’s not nice,” he chastised. “I don’t make fun of your shortcomings.”

  “Because I have none.”

  “You talk too much,” he pointed out, and she gasped, rather outraged by that. “You have this annoying habit of finishing my sentences, and you have an odd sense of humor.”

  “And you have no sense of humor,” she dismissed breezily. “Jeez, would it kill you to laugh once in a while? You really need to find a surgeon to remove that stick you have up your—”

  “What do you call a fly without wings?” he interrupted, and she blinked. He was staring at her expectantly, eyebrows up and lips tilted at the corners.

  “Uh . . . what?” she asked, needing some clarification.

  “What do you call a fly without wings?” he repeated, his voice laden with anticipation and something she couldn’t quite define.

  “A walk?” The light dimmed in his eyes, and the smile that had been forming on his lips faded. She was actually sorry she had given him the right answer.

  “You’ve heard it before?”

  “Dante . . . everybody over the age of five has heard that joke before.”

  “I heard it in passing at work yesterday. See? I have a sense of humor, but clearly it’s much too sophisticated for someone like you to possibly comprehend,” he said gravely, and she gaped at him, not sure if he was serious or not. He thought the fly joke was sophisticated? Was he joking? But his face was expressionless, and she couldn’t quite tell what was going on in that diabolical mind of his.

  “Someone like me?” She latched onto that bit, and when he opened his mouth to clarify what he’d meant, she held up her palm to stop him. “No, wait, don’t tell me. I’ve heard this before. Something about you not appreciating celebrity gossip or wanting to hear about what’s trending on Twitter. Or the Kardashians.”

  “Why did you carry on about them so much while you were working for me? There are also Klingons, Vulcans, and . . . why are you laughing?” The last as Cleo literally rolled on the floor and laughed her ass off. She actually had to clutch her sides because it was the kind of belly laughter that just couldn’t be contained. When the laughter died, she felt completely spent and gradually came to realize that she was lying flat on her back, staring up at a smiling Dante. How could he smile at her like that one moment and be completely remote the next? His eyes were warm and inviting, and that smile was open and tender. He reached over and brushed a thumb over her cheeks. They came away wet.