She stood, and Dante blanched, mentally seeing her topple over the edge of the car and plummet to the ground. “Sit down! Do you want to get yourself killed?”
Lips twisted into a smirk, Vicky perched on the edge of the seat and shuffled her way toward him. “There? Happier?” She peeled the fingers of one of his hands from the plastic, then snuggled close so he was forced to choose between holding onto the Ferris wheel car and holding her.
There was no choice. His hand snaked over her back to find her waist and squeeze her even tighter to his side. “Mildly happier.”
She snorted a laugh and buried her face against his chest. “What would a girl have to do to make you much happier?”
“Make me forget I’m dangling in a metal box hundreds of feet from the ground?”
She snuggled in closer. “Okay, let’s try talking. Look at me and tell me all about this charity thing we’re going to.”
The instant the wheel jerked into motion again, he turned her way. God, she was beautiful. Against the backdrop of the distant setting sun, her hair was aglow in a golden corona of light. His own personal angel. “You’re going with me then?”
“After making you get on this thing? I don’t really feel like I have much of a choice.” She rolled her eyes like he should have known her response. “So where are we off to? One of those things where we work at the local McDonald’s? Car wash?”
“Well, now I’m wishing it was a car wash just for the chance to get you in a bikini.”
“Very funny.”
It might have been, but it was also enticing. He didn’t deserve the pieces of her he was getting, but that didn’t stop him from wanting more. And didn’t stop his dick from responding to thoughts of her in only a couple scraps of fabric. Time to focus on reality before he made a fool of himself again. “Never fault a man for being honest when he answers a question. No car wash…this time. We’re going to the opera instead.”
“Opera?”
He nodded. “Several student musicians we kept off the street will be performing with the pit orchestra as guests. It started as a small thing, but then word got around and we sold out the theater. It’s turned out to be a really big deal.” Lee would have loved it. The guest performances were exactly the kind of thing he’d have tried to arrange for Dante had his skill set been music rather than violence. But Lee knew him on sight. Kindred spirits and all that. He’d left the damn bullet fragments to Dante in his will.
“Opera.” She shook her head, tearing him from the dark memory and back to her light. “I don’t have anything to wear to the damned opera.” Vicky started worrying at the nail of her index finger. “Maybe Stasia left something at Evan’s place here that’ll fit.”
“Or I can get something for you.” The idea of buying something for her—providing for her—gave him a much bigger thrill than he wanted to admit.
“No.”
“Vicky…”
“I said no. That’s a silly waste of money, especially since Stasia and I are pretty much the same size.”
And then the Ferris wheel started moving in earnest, and the time for arguing passed. His fingers clenched at her skin, and Vicky made sure he had no way to disagree with her—by covering his lips with hers.
By the time the ride stopped, he’d almost forgotten why buying her a gown was such a big deal.
Almost.
Chapter Nine
One of the biggest reasons Dante wanted Vicky at the opera was because it had nothing to do with the birthday party, the movie, or even Reed. More specifically, he really wanted her to have a chance to see him away from Hollywood and closer to something near and dear to his heart.
I don’t have anything to wear to the damned opera.
At least the issue hadn’t changed her answer to a no. He’d still been unsteady after the Ferris wheel—even with all her distractions. In the end, he’d asked if she’d take a rain check for the picnic on the beach. Since she’d needed to get in touch with Stasia about a dress anyway, she’d agreed.
By the time Dante made it home, he regretted the decision.
A smart man would have said, let’s just find a nice, quiet restaurant. A smart man would have taken the whole making-out-on-the-Ferris-wheel bit and run with it all the way home.
He was feeling pretty fucking stupid as his phone buzzed with an incoming text.
Problem. Stasia is such a conscientious Hollywood wife that she already donated all her dresses to charity. What are the requirements for something like this? I still have some time to go out shopping. Also, can we at least do some emailing back and forth about the party so I have a few billable hours for today?
Just knowing she was willing to go out of her way—and spend money she really didn’t have—to attend the event with him made Dante realize that pushing her toward more intimacy would have cheapened what they already had. The kissing was enough until she made it clear she was ready for more. He just hoped that happened soon. He texted back:
Send me your address and your dress size. Measurements if you can. Then I’ll email back about the party.
She’d balked a little but had agreed in the end. And, after laying out some party basics for a couple hours, he’d gone to sleep with a smile on his face. Now, in the light of day, he was nervous again. He’d called in a favor to a friend who worked as a personal shopper. She’d promised to take care of everything for Vicky.
But there’d been no contact since then. He shouldn’t be nervous, but it felt like picking up his date for prom or something.
With the limo at the curb, waiting to take them to the airport, and all her neighbors poking noses out doors or shifting open blinds, Dante strode to Vicky’s door and knocked.
She stepped out, a vision in bronze satin. The top of the dress, with ruching on the sides, was held up by a single shoulder strap, and the plain skirt was slit nearly to her hip. Frowning, she waved toward the people watching them. “Seriously? You couldn’t have called up from the car? Or better yet, let me take a cab to the airport? I was going to get enough looks walking out in a designer gown. It’s kind of hard to not deal with prying questions when your date picks you up in a limo. It’s even harder when your date makes it obvious to everyone that he’s famous.”
“If you really want to make it look like it’s not a big deal, I can take care of that.” He grinned at her, then turned toward the courtyard and said as loudly as possible, “Hi, everyone, I’m Dante Palladino, and I wanted to thank you for checking us out. Doesn’t Vicky look gorgeous? My friend here won a raffle to be my date tonight—all the proceeds from the event we’re attending go to my charity to keep kids in school and off the streets. Don’t worry, I promise to have your neighbor back safe and sound as well. Have a great night.”
When he turned back to Vicky, her cheeks were stained crimson. “Yeah. That was a lot more subtle.”
“Perfect.” He winked, getting far too much enjoyment out of her being flustered than he should have. Hell, he was just glad she hadn’t backed out. “Are we ready to go then?”
“Lead on.” She hesitated when he offered his arm, but slid her fingers against his bicep—obviously aware her neighbors were still watching. “Nice plug for the charity, by the way. Could you have done the whole minimizing thing without the self-promotion?”
The self— What the hell had she read about him in the past few years to even remotely think he was that kind of guy? “The easiest way for people to find out where the money is going is with my name. The easiest way for us to find out what is most effective with the kids is through people who live in troubled neighborhoods. It’s a circle that works, Vicky.”
Dante held the limousine door open for her, but she stopped before entering and turned to look at him. “I’m sorry. I just… I’m trying to figure out who the hell you are, and nothing is meshing with anything else in my head. The smart part of me says I shouldn’t care, but I’m starting to, and it’s driving me crazy.”
Boxing her in with his arms, Dante le
aned close and whispered in her ear, “There’s an easy way to find out what you want to know. It’s called asking.”
…
Asking. Yeah. Right. It was like he forgot her brother was an actor, too. They lied for a living. It’d be far too easy for him to say whatever he wanted her to believe. And, unlike growing up with Evan, she hadn’t known Dante all her life. She couldn’t recognize his tells.
The only thing she knew for sure was that, other than the original blackmail threat, she hadn’t seen anything bad from him. On the contrary, even when she’d sneaked into his room or shoved her hand in his pants, he’d been a perfect gentleman—which wasn’t helping her confusion any at all. Nor was it helping her keep her distance.
She’d come home last night, and after texting about the dress, she’d stewed through two hours of party emails. She’d attempted to distract herself with TV, then a book, then looking at vendors for the party. Anything to settle her mind.
In the end, she’d caved and done an internet search on Dante. The initial hunt hadn’t turned up anything she didn’t already know: bio, filmography, wrestling history, the charity.
No one’s past was that clean.
So she’d searched his name and rumors.
Suddenly there was plenty of reading.
Former wrestling colleagues had called him out for excessive violence in the ring. Some even suggested drug use, though he’d taken every test requested without complaint and passed them all.
A couple costars reportedly bitched about him being an attention whore and provided examples to “prove” it.
Ex-girlfriends.
Tabloid nonsense.
But that was something else she knew because of her brother. A lot of the stories were complete fiction. Unfortunately, some of them usually had a grain of truth. So where was Dante’s grain?
She’d worried at the question all night, and then she’d gone and made that stupid comment before getting in the limo. He was giving her the princess treatment, and she was acting like some sort of spoiled brat—never getting exactly what she wanted, so she bitched about everything.
But when the limo drove straight up to the plane and Dante took her hand to help her out, she didn’t see the guy who blackmailed her. When he kept his hand seated on the small of her back as they boarded the ramp, there wasn’t even a glimpse of the violence she’d read about. When he gave her a brief tour of the plane he called “an indulgence he couldn’t resist,” there were no ex-girlfriends. There was just the two of them, couched in leather seats, alternately staring at each other and looking out the windows at the clouds as they passed by.
He hadn’t poked again about how she could ask him anything, which was nice, but she wanted to know. She just didn’t know what the hell she was supposed to ask him. And she still hadn’t figured out why any of it mattered to her so damn much anyway.
Then his fingers brushed an errant lock of hair from her cheek. She met his gaze, and she understood. It was the same thing she’d known back before she got married, why she’d been so very willing to latch onto Evan’s insistence that Dante was bad news.
She was falling for him. Falling for the muscles and the tattoos and the carefree grin. For the guy who moved to L.A. with nothing but an odd skill set and determination. The guy who called his first bosses here his family and had a “little brother” he was trying to nudge toward a better future.
Back before Brandon, she hadn’t known most of that stuff about Dante, but he’d charmed her and made her feel smart and beautiful.
Here he was doing it again. Only this time there was no fiancé waiting in the wings and no Evan to tell her to run the other direction. Without all of that, she was hunting for something—anything—to keep her from leaping from a building just to see if Dante would catch her.
The look in his deep brown eyes said he would—without question or worry for his own safety. He’d be there for her.
And the thought was terrifying.
Since Brandon, her main goal had been to get herself squared away. Sure, she’d dated. She’d even had fun on some of the dates. As Jade knew too well, though, she hadn’t had sex—going on two years now—and she certainly hadn’t let any guy within a stone’s throw of her heart. It wasn’t so much that it was still broken as the organ still felt too breakable, like with the slightest hint of something off, it would shatter into more pieces than she could possibly reassemble again. Brandon had done that to her—willfully. He’d turned her into a shell of a person, more fragile than she’d ever imagined possible.
Then Dante came along. That night at the party, she’d heard Evan’s voice in her head, warning her away from him. But more than that, she’d remembered Dante’s magnetic pull on her. She hadn’t given in before, but part of her knew she wouldn’t be able to resist this time.
For crying out loud, she’d ended up in bed with him that night. Ready to have sex with him, thinking he was another guy. Who the hell did that sort of thing happen to?
It was as if the universe itself was shoving the two of them together. As much as she liked to believe in destiny, she had a hard time thinking that fate wasn’t playing a cruel joke on her. After all, he was her brother’s best friend and the guy who had almost made her second-guess her impending marriage.
Come to think of it, that last bit might be the very reason she should give him a chance. Had she followed her impulses then, she never would have married Brandon…or let him break her heart.
“Vicks?”
She shook off her musings to find Dante still staring at her, worry in his eyes now. Worry. For her. The fact he could feel that when she’d really been kind of bitchy to him with her whole yes-then-no roller coaster said a lot about his character. Maybe there was some truth to the rumors. Maybe there wasn’t. But she needed to stop looking for the bad and start truly embracing the good. There was no question she would let go of her fears eventually—her heart already knew. Her head needed to stop denying it. “Sorry. Lost in my thoughts.”
He gave her hand a squeeze that sent sudden, intense need rushing through her body. “Well, if it’s anything you want to share, I can be a pretty good sounding board.”
“No. I think this is something I have to decide for myself.” But she’d already decided. Her reaction to his hand on hers proved it. Now she just needed to figure out how the hell she was supposed to handle the rest of the evening with him when she’d finally given her body free rein to feel everything it had been trying to hold in since seeing him at Saul Mortensen’s party.
“Oh. Okay.” He let out a breath that probably wasn’t meant to sound like a sigh but totally did. “We should be landing in a few minutes. You might want to at least finish your champagne.”
She stared at the glass and watched as a bubble separated from the bottom, sliding up through the liquid. It reached the top, and it was as if time stopped, holding its breath for a moment. Then the bubble burst.
Vicky couldn’t help but imagine a bubble of desire inside her. It, too, was just waiting for the moment it would escape and she’d get the release she’d been waiting on for such a ridiculously long time.
Waiting…for Dante.
…
They made it through the requisite schmoozing of donors large and small and posed for more pictures than Dante wanted to count. This was the part of his job that Lee would have rolled his eyes at. It had taken Dante a long time to realize it wasn’t about accolades for doing the right thing so much as advertising for the charity. The pictures garnered them attention, which drew donations, which let them do more good. A positive cycle to break the negative one so many kids found themselves in.
And in this case, it was pictures with Vicky by his side. While Lee might have frowned at the promo, he would have liked her, Dante was sure of it. Looking over at her now, he wondered how on earth anyone couldn’t like her.
Except the photographer, which made Dante like him less.
When the guy mentioned visible panty lines, Vicky had t
ried to step away, reminding Dante that no one knew or cared who she was anyway. He’d leaned in close and whispered that he cared. It had been enough to keep her by his side, smiling for photo after photo—after a brief visit to the ladies’ room. There’d been no complaints about panty lines after that. The picky photographer would just have to edit out the growing bulge in his pants.
The only exception to her agreeing to be photographed had been promotional shots with the kids who were performing tonight. On that issue, Vicky wouldn’t budge. “You’re the one who got them here. You’re the one their friends will go gaga over. I’m just your date. Get over there and give them the picture they really want.”
Something in the way she said it made him cave. It wasn’t about her not wanting to be with him—this was her putting the kids first, and that wasn’t a motivation he was willing to ignore. Instead, he made a point of introducing her to each and every one of the kids before sending them backstage.
After that, they’d finally made their way to the box Dante had purchased for tonight. He’d planned on inviting some of the other kids—the ones who were on the fence about what they could do with their futures if they applied themselves. Apparently, “opera” was the kiss of death when it came to convincing them of anything. The promise of a ride in a private jet might have enticed a few, but having them hate the opera itself would have been counterproductive.
Until Vicky, he’d imagined sitting in the box all alone. As it was, they stepped through the red velvet curtains into a very secluded seating area.
She glanced around, her hands twisting the clutch purse. “This is cozy.”
He arched a brow at her, wondering once more what the hell path they were on as far as she was concerned. She never ran cold, but hot and tepid were still too far apart for his liking. “Want me to invite some people to join us?” He would if it would make her feel better.
“No. I just…” She pressed her lips together, letting them roll free slowly. When she stopped, they were wet and swollen—totally kissable.
Blackmailed by the Hero Page 9
