A Ruthless Proposition

by Natasha Anders

  “I’ve never seen you laugh like that before,” he muttered.

  “We haven’t had much to laugh about,” she pointed out softly. She remained on her back, one arm curled up above her head and the other resting on the mound of their baby. “An unwanted sex thing followed by an unwanted pregnancy. Not exactly giggle-worthy topics of conversation.”

  “Baby can hear you,” he warned, his tone serious. “Don’t let him come into this world thinking he’s unwanted.”

  “I’d never do that,” she said. “Not after knowing what that kind of rejection feels like. He’s going to know that his mother wants him and loves him.”

  But not his father, Dante reflected. Because that particular idiot gave him up without a second thought.

  He was having a hard time with this entire situation. Living with her and seeing the child grow inside of her. Feeling that child move. How the hell was he supposed to feel about this baby, knowing that it would never bear his name and never know him as a father? Every single decision he’d made since she’d informed him about her pregnancy had been wrong, and he was paying a harsh price for that stupidity.

  He couldn’t allow himself to develop strong feelings for this baby, not when he would never be able to show those feelings.

  And Cleo . . .

  What the hell was he supposed to do about Cleo? He told himself he’d stay away from her, but then when he came home from work he’d find her watching a movie or reading a book, and he’d find a way to insert himself into that activity. He’d ask her questions even while telling himself he didn’t want to know the answers. And that morning, in the gym, God—how did she get more and more beautiful every time he saw her? How was that even possible?

  And then there was the other night when he’d allowed himself to get too close. She’d been so right in calling a halt to those proceedings. He barely recognized himself anymore. He was usually much better disciplined than this. He wasn’t a man easily swayed by his emotions. He would get this under control.

  He had to.

  “Why do you know so much about Star Trek?” she asked curiously, on the verge of falling asleep on the tiled floor. He glanced down into her sleepy face and had a hard time not smiling.

  “Why does anyone?” he shrugged. “Why do you know so much about some celebrity family?”

  Ah, so he knew exactly who she’d been talking about, which meant that he must have made that comment to make her laugh.

  So, who the hell was this guy?

  Before now she would have bet her life on the fact that Dante Damaso did not have a sense of humor. Yet it was there—subtle, dry, and shockingly self-deprecating.

  “So you did know to whom I was referring?” She grinned.

  “I didn’t back when I told you to find a replacement assistant for me. I looked it up.” He flushed at the confession.

  “So the comment about the Klingons and the Vulcans just now was . . .”

  “I told you I have a sense of humor,” he reminded her. “Like I said, you’re always finding all kinds of weird shit to laugh about, but you’re relentlessly grim or sarcastic with me. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to make you laugh as openly as you do with other people.”

  What did that mean? That he had wanted her to laugh with him? That was so . . .

  “Sweet.” She completed the thought out loud and he looked startled.

  “What?”

  “You wanted to make me laugh. That was sweet of you, Dante. Don’t deny it.” The last was said when he opened his mouth to comment. Her quick command made him shut his mouth again. “You wanted to make me laugh. Admit it.”

  “God, you really are quite obnoxious sometimes,” he groused, without heat. “Fine. I wanted to make you laugh. I wanted to prove that I could. Like I said, you’re always laughing with every random person you meet but . . .” His voice tapered off.

  But not with him. Cleo completed the unfinished sentence. Sure, they’d had a few amicable moments together, and she’d shared smiles with him, but this was the first time she’d ever really laughed with him. She’d put up some major defensive barriers to keep him from hurting her, but she couldn’t really remember the last time he had deliberately said or done anything designed to hurt her. Still, just because he hadn’t, didn’t mean he wouldn’t, so her shields would stay up, even though they were taking some battering beneath this weird charm offensive he occasionally launched at her.

  “Are you going to laze around on the floor all day, or are you going to let me help you finish this crossword puzzle?”

  She sighed and unselfconsciously held out a hand for him to tug her back into a sitting position, which he did with the utmost tenderness.

  “Fine, but I’m doing this under protest.”

  “Duly noted.”

  They were halfway through the puzzle when she noticed him staring at her. She lifted a self-conscious hand to her hair, wondering if it was sticking up or something.

  “What?” she prompted, and he hesitated for a moment, his mouth opening and then closing. “Come on, Dante. Spit it out.”

  “I’m sorry.” The words were hurried and a little garbled but unmistakable. She raised an eyebrow and noticed that he had trouble meeting her eyes.

  “For which item on your long list of indiscretions?” she asked as she toyed with the pen.

  “All of them?”

  “Please. I don’t do blanket forgiveness.” She waved her hand dismissively and was delighted to see a grin flirt along the corners of his mouth.

  “Fine. I’m sorry I had you kicked out of my office that day,” he said humbly.

  “And . . . ?”

  “And for having security escort you out of the building.”

  “Hmm.”

  “It was wrong of me.”

  “It was,” she agreed.

  “I’m sorry it caused you humiliation and pain.” An edge of des-peration started to creep into his voice.

  “Are you?”

  “Yes. You believe me, don’t you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Come on, Cleo . . . I’m really sorry. It was a shitty thing to do, and I’ve regretted it ever since.”

  She thought about it, savoring the moment a little longer.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “That one has been struck off the list.”

  “Wait a second. How long is this list?”

  “It varies. Items get added and removed all the time. Now can we finish this puzzle, please?” The rest of the morning and part of the afternoon was spent on the floor together, amicably arguing over every single answer. Cleo couldn’t remember the last time she’d enjoyed herself more.

  Cleo and Dante got along much better after that day. They no longer seemed like strangers forced to live together and felt more at ease around each other. They fell into an easy routine; Dante cooked when he was home, and Cleo ordered takeout for them when he called to let her know he’d be working late, which happened on average about twice a week. And for some reason, Dante always called to let her know that he’d be back late.

  Their workouts were almost always done together, usually in the mornings before Dante headed off to work, but as Cleo’s pregnancy progressed, her physical routine became less strenuous, and her en pointe exercises nonexistent. On Saturday mornings, they did the crossword puzzle together even though Dante was dismal at it, and they often watched old action or horror movies together. Dante wasn’t the biggest horror-movie fan, and that’s all she ever chose when it was her turn to pick a film, mostly because she loved watching him freak out.

  The next couple of weeks passed quickly and peacefully. But the main source of grief and discontent for Cleo—and she sensed for Dante too—was the fact that Luc still didn’t want to speak to either of them. It was going on longer than any of them had anticipated, and Blue was at her wit’s end. Cleo had actually gone to see Luc at the house and at his office on several occasions. He’d asked her how she was, how the pregnancy was goi
ng and—at the house—had found a reason to exit the room and leave her with Blue. At work he’d told her he was too busy to chat. She didn’t know what else to do and decided to let him figure it out in his own time.

  “You’re not even watching,” Dante complained, his voice interrupting her thoughts, and she squinted at him before switching her attention back to the television.

  “Well, it’s your fault for choosing this boring movie,” she retorted, waving a hand at the screen. It was some generic action movie; she didn’t even think she knew the title. It was badly acted and kind of bland.

  “Are you thinking about tomorrow?” he asked. “Are you nervous?”

  The dance recital was the following evening, and Cleo didn’t feel the kids were anywhere close to ready. She thought her choreography was lame, and she just knew that something catastrophic would happen. The building nerves and anxiety were pretty much on par with what she used to feel before performing.

  “It’ll be fine,” she said, more to convince herself than him. “The kids seem confident.”

  “Then what’s bothering you?” he asked.

  “Luc.” The name was out before she could prevent it, and he sighed heavily.

  “I had no idea he could be so stubborn,” he said with a wry twist of his lips. “Why is he so set against the idea of us living together?”

  “Because he knows . . .” Her voice tapered off.

  “Knows what?”

  “He knows that there’s no love between us, and he wanted better than that for me.” Except that she wasn’t so sure the “no love” thing was strictly true anymore. There seemed to be quite a lot of love between them.

  All one-sided and all from her.

  The heavy silence strained the atmosphere, and she kept her eyes glued blindly to the TV even though she could feel his gaze boring into her profile.

  “We could . . .” This time it was his voice that faded away in the middle of a sentence. He reached for the touch-screen controller and paused the movie, turning his body toward her and waiting until she, reluctantly, did the same. He picked up one of her hands in both of his and turned it over so that he was tracing the lines of her palm with his forefinger. “I think we should consider getting married.”

  She gasped and snatched her hand back as if it had been burned.

  “Hear me out,” he said calmly, and she shook her head.

  “Oh my God.” She got off the couch and folded her arms across her chest. He got up as well.

  “Just listen,” he said, and tried to reach for her again, but she sidestepped him.

  “What a manipulative bastard you are,” she marveled. “You’ve decided that you want this baby, and you think that offering me marriage will help you get him. You still have such a low opinion of women in general that you probably genuinely believe that this is the brass ring for me, don’t you? What woman wouldn’t want to marry Dante Damaso? After all, you’re loaded and handsome, and that’s what all women want, right?”

  “I just figured it would make Luc happy and fix the gap between the two of you,” he began.

  “How goddamn selfless of you, relinquishing your precious freedom on behalf of my relationship with my brother.”

  “I didn’t say it was selfless.” Frustration started to creep into his voice. “It’s not just about your relationship with Luc. It’s also about mine. And aside from that, you’re right, I do want this baby. I want to be his dad. I want him to have my name, I want him to know who I am.”

  “He won’t have your name,” she whispered, her voice thick with loathing. “You don’t deserve to give him your name.”

  “Why the hell not?” He finally lost his cool, and his voice rose as his temper broke. “What did I do that was so fucking wrong? I made a mistake in the beginning, I reacted in the wrong way, and I’ll be paying for that for the rest of my life. And worse, the baby will be paying for it too, won’t he? Because you’re too stubborn to admit that maybe I’d be a good father to that child.”

  “And a pretty lousy husband to me,” she added resentfully. “I deserve more than a man who doesn’t love me and who only married me because I was pregnant. We all deserve more than that.”

  “So you want me to tell you I love you? Would that make it all better?” he asked, his voice steeped in bitterness and sarcasm. She uttered a hoarse cry as his words broke something inside of her. It made her want to hurt him as much as he had just hurt her.

  “You’re a miserable excuse of a man, Dante,” she said, venom dripping from every word. “And if you came crawling to me on broken glass, professing to love me, I would never believe you . . . because you’re incapable of feeling anything remotely close to love.”

  His jaw clenched and he went pale before he shoved his hands into his pockets and allowed the tension to leave his shoulders until he was almost slouching.

  “I take it that’s a no to the marriage proposal, then?” he asked with a smirk.

  She gasped and whirled on her heel before heading up to her room as fast as she could. She slammed the door behind her and took childish satisfaction when the sound reverberated through his cold and uninviting apartment. She was shaking uncontrollably and didn’t know how to stop it.

  This is what happened when you allowed yourself to have feelings for someone like Dante Damaso—they found the most creative ways to hurt you, and God, this hurt. She told herself that he hadn’t meant to inflict pain; in his mind it was a cold, businesslike proposition, supposedly beneficial to them both. He expected her to view it in the same dis-passionate way he probably did—marriage to him meant wealth and status for her. It meant she and the baby got the protection of his name and that he got to see if he was capable of being a halfway decent parent to a child.

  He didn’t know that she had fallen in love with him. Why would he? It wasn’t like he had given her any reason to love him, aside from his unexpected moments of sweetness, charm, latent humor, and charisma. But then he turned around and showed her the callous, calculating, and cynical side of him with what had to be the most cold-blooded, jaded proposal in history.

  And how did she tell the idiot that she couldn’t marry him because she loved him? Living as his wife, as the mother of his child, and not having his love would be soul-destroying. She didn’t know what to do, or whom to turn to, and in the end she dragged out her phone and scrolled for Cal’s number. She looked at his name on her screen for a long time before she changed her mind and tossed the phone aside.

  She curled up in the middle of the bed and dragged her knees up to her chest, curving her body protectively around the mound of her baby. She couldn’t leave this apartment, not with Luc still angry with her. She had nowhere else to go.

  She would hold Dante to his promises, she would allow him to be a presence in the child’s life, but she wasn’t going to marry him, and the baby would not have his name. That was what they’d agreed upon, and that was what the latest—in the increasingly useless—lot of legal documents said. And this was a document she would fight tooth and nail to enforce.

  “I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing, Baby,” she whispered. “But it has to be better than subjecting all three of us to a loveless marriage, right?”

  She was gratified when the baby kicked, and took it as a sign of agreement.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The following evening, Cleo stood backstage in a tiny school gymnasium and felt her chest swell with pride as her young dancers took their bows and curtsies. They’d been magnificent, and she just wanted to hug every single one of her little stars.

  She gave each one a high five as they trotted offstage and passed her on their way to the changing room. Every child got a word of encouragement and praise, and she couldn’t resist giving the last—tiniest—girl a brief hug.

  “Did you see me, miss?” the little girl asked in excitement, her face flushed and happy.

  “I did. You were absolutely marvelous,” Cleo said but then added, because she was still the teacher
here, “but you have to work on your basic turns, Maisie. We’ll talk about it on Monday, okay? You were fantastic.”

  “Yes, miss. Thank you, miss,” the girl said with a grin before prancing off, her pink tutu bouncing as she moved. Cleo watched her go with a fond smile on her face, but the smile faded when she saw the man standing in the doorway Maisie had just disappeared through. Why did he always have to show up where he wasn’t expected or invited?

  He watched the girl go before turning back to her with a quizzical look on his face.

  “Did you ever wear those ridiculous little skirts?”

  “Of course I did, I was a ballet dancer,” she replied before getting straight down to it. “Why are you here?”

  “I came to watch the performance. The kids were great. Your choreography was fantastic.”

  “I have to go and talk to the children,” she said. “Excuse me.”

  “I’ll be waiting out in the reception area,” he informed her, and stepped aside to let her pass.

  “Don’t bother, I drove myself here and I can drive myself back.”

  “I’ll be waiting,” he reiterated. Her back stiffened, and she walked off without another look back.

  It took her nearly an hour to finish up. After heaping praise on the kids, she was stopped by parents who were keen to discuss their children. She was supposed to help Susan clean up after the rest of the recital was finished, but the woman, who’d come backstage to congratulate her after her group had danced, urged her to go home, overriding Cleo’s protestations by reminding her that pregnant women should take it easy. Unable to argue with that logic, Cleo had conceded her point and grabbed her denim jacket, heading out of the gym, where the fourteen-year-olds were currently performing.