by Day Leclaire
Francesca shook her head. “You don’t get it. You—or one of your brothers—are the only ones who could have told her. No one else knows.”
He smiled at that, which might have been a mistake judging by the flash of fury that glittered in her dark eyes. “Someone must know, otherwise we wouldn’t have uncovered the information in the first place.”
She slowly shook her head. “I hired a private investigator four years ago to find my father. He couldn’t. But he did find an old friend of my mother’s and she’s the one who told me my father’s identity. I never told anyone, not even the P.I. So unless someone tracked this woman down and forced her to talk, I have trouble believing the leak came from her.”
That caught him by surprise. Shoving back his chair, he stood and circled his desk. Cupping her elbow, he drew her over to the sitting area on the far side of the room. “Are you certain she didn’t tell anyone else?”
“Of course I can’t be positive.” She perched on the edge of the couch and he sat next to her—too close judging by the tide of awareness that washed through her. She struggled to hide her dismay by directing it toward anger. “But I find it highly unlikely she’d call Tina out of the blue and just hand over that information. It doesn’t make any sense.”
He analyzed what she’d said, looking for alternate explanations. “What about your foster parents? Is it possible they had that information?”
“Not a chance. They’d have turned Kurt’s name over to the state to force him to pay child support.” She leveled him with a censorious look. “How did you find out about Kurt? Who in your organization knows the truth?”
“We hired a private investigator to check you out,” he admitted.
She couldn’t prevent the accusation. “You’ve had me investigated?”
“We had all of TH’s designers investigated as a matter of course.” He held up a hand to ward off her indignation. “Listen, I’ll contact the investigator and ascertain how he came across the information. All I can tell you is that I didn’t betray your secret to Tina. Nor did any of my brothers.”
She surged to her feet and paced across his office. “This is going to destroy the Fontaines’ marriage.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Though, privately, he’d rate it closer to probable, edging toward definite.
“If it does, you’ll be able to pick up TH for a song.”
He absorbed the accusation. “Which automatically makes me guilty?”
She spun to face him. “Tina claimed you told her. And it makes sense. Who else profits from revealing the truth to her?”
He shrugged. “As far as I know…no one.”
“You’re not helping yourself.” Frustration riddled her expression. “You realize that, don’t you?”
“I realize that nothing I say will change your mind. I also realize that you don’t trust me. You can’t.”
“How could I? Why would I?” She thrust her fingers through her hair, tumbling the curls into delicious disarray. “Since the minute we met you’ve done nothing to inspire that trust.”
That got to him, shaving some of the calm from his temper. “Our nights together didn’t inspire trust? Our time together hasn’t proven the sort of man I am?”
Tears welled in her eyes again. “Those nights meant everything to me, more than they could have meant to you or you’d never have blackmailed me. You’d never have forced me to betray the Fontaines and work for you.”
He climbed to his feet to give weight to his words. “I intend to return Dantes to its position as an international powerhouse, no matter what sort of sacrifices that requires. I made that fact crystal clear to you right from the start. I will recover every last subsidiary I was forced to sell off when I assumed the reins of this company. And that includes TH.”
She tugged off his engagement ring and held it out. “Take this. I refuse to wear it a minute longer.”
He simply shook his head. “That’s not happening. If we break our engagement so soon after we announce it, your life within the jewelry world will become unbearable.” He held up his hand to stem her protest. “As my fiancée, you have the Dante name to protect you. No one will dare say a word about you, your talent, or where you choose to work. Nor will anyone dare say anything should Tina decide to be indiscreet.”
Her mouth trembled. “You…you think she’ll tell people I’m Kurt’s daughter? You think she’ll publicly blame me for TH’s demise?”
“A woman that angry is capable of anything. There’s no telling what she’ll do.”
Francesca made a swift recovery, one that impressed the hell out of him. “I don’t care about any of that. Let people talk. Let Tina do her worst. Let the world assume whatever they want.”
“Right. And maybe you could handle the public fallout. Damned if you don’t seem determined to try. But I have Dantes to consider. Becoming engaged one day and ending it only weeks later is not the image I want to project to the general public, my suppliers, or my associates and competitors.”
“Then you never should have come up with this scheme.”
“Point taken, but it’s a little late for that.” He offered a wry smile. “When I came up with the idea, my only consideration was you and trying to salvage your relationship with the Fontaines. That’s what I get for thinking like Nic.”
For an endless moment she wavered between acceptance and rejection. To his profound relief, she released her breath in a sigh of reluctant agreement. “How long? How long do we have to keep up the pretense?”
“For as long as it takes.” He ran his hands up and down her arms, picking up on the slight shiver she couldn’t quite suppress. “Give it time, sweetheart. Is it really so bad being engaged to me? You liked my family, didn’t you?”
Once again, he’d said the wrong thing. Her eyes darkened in distress. “I don’t want to fall in love with them.”
He could guess why. “Because it hurts too much when it ends and you’re forced to walk away.”
She didn’t deny it. Instead she changed the subject. “What about the Fontaines? You have to promise me you won’t take advantage of this latest wrinkle. You have to promise me you’re still going to pay full price for TH, even if their marriage falls apart.”
He refused to be anything other than straight with her. “If they offer me a good deal, I’m not going to turn it down.”
Maybe he shouldn’t have been quite that straight. She pulled back and glared. “We have a contract. You have to pay them full price for their business. And I intend to make sure you stick to that agreement.”
“Our contract states I’m to pay fair market value. That’s what I intend to pay and not a penny more.”
“Even if the fair market value drops because Kurt and Tina divorce?”
“Fair. Market. Value,” he repeated succinctly.
She stilled and something drifted across her expression, something that had the businessman in him going on red alert. Then she gave a careless shrug. “If that’s the best you’re willing to do, I guess I have no choice but to accept it, do I?”
He stared at her through narrowed eyes. “That’s precisely what I expect you to do, since that’s precisely what the contract calls for.”
She turned to leave his office without further argument, which worried him all the more. Hell. No question about it. She was up to something, and he suspected he wouldn’t like whatever scheme she was busily hatching.
Later that evening, Francesca stood outside Sev’s apartment building, her head bent against the rain, soaked to the skin from an unexpected shower. Why had he demanded she come by tonight of all nights? she wondered in despair. Maybe if she hadn’t gotten together with Kurt she wouldn’t be finding this so difficult. But when she’d suggested waiting until morning to show Sev her latest designs, he’d insisted that he needed to see them tonight.
She shivered uncontrollably, wanting nothing more than to crawl into her bathtub at home and have a long, hot soak in conjunction with an even longer cry. Swiping the
dampness from her cheeks—rain, she attempted to reassure herself, not tears—she rode the elevator to the top floor of Sev’s apartment building and applied fist to door.
It opened almost immediately. “What the hell…?” Sev took one look at her and swept her across the threshold and into his apartment, ignoring her disjointed protests about dripping all over his hardwood floors. “I don’t give a flying f—” He tempered the expression. “A flying fig about the damn floors. I care about you. What the hell’s happened? Are you all right?”
“I’m wet.” She trembled and held out the packet of designs. “Maybe cold, too. I’m shaking so hard it’s sort of tough to tell.”
He snatched the designs from her hand and tossed them aside. The packet hit the floor and skidded under an antique coat closet. Then he unceremoniously swept her up into his arms and carried her into the master bathroom. She couldn’t rouse herself enough to fight him when he stripped first her, and then himself, and pulled them both into the glassed-in shower stall. He turned the jets on high and she stood docilely beneath the blazing-hot torrent and let the water wash away all emotion.
“What happened?” he asked again, more gently this time.
She didn’t even realize she spoke until she heard her voice echoing against the tile. “He didn’t want me, Sev. My father. He agreed to meet me tonight and then sent me away. He said he was sorry. Sorry!” She covered her face with her hands as she fought for control. “Sorry he had an affair with my mother. Sorry she became pregnant. Sorry Tina found out the truth. He said he couldn’t see me ever again.”
“He’s a fool.”
“Why?” She dropped her hands and stared up at Sev. “What did I do wrong?”
He hugged her fiercely. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Not a damn thing. It’s them, honey. Something’s wrong with them. But you have me and you have the rest of the Dantes. And they flat-out adore you. We’ll be your family from now on.”
“When they find out we’re not really engaged, they won’t want me, either,” she felt obligated to point out.
“They will. I promise.” He continued to hold her close while the water poured down on them. “Easy, sweetheart. Let it all out. You’ll feel better if you do.”
Let what out? Didn’t he understand that she felt dead inside? Her father rejected her. She couldn’t say why she cared so much. After all, what did one more rejection matter after so many? At long last, Sev shut off the water and left her dripping, naked and alone, in the middle of the tile floor. An instant later he reappeared with an armload of towels. He slung one around his waist and dropped another on her head, before swathing her from shoulders to knees in a third. Then he proceeded to rub her down with a briskness that caused her skin to glow.
“What are you doing?” she asked, mildly curious.
“You’re in shock. I need to get you warm.”
She peered at him from beneath the towel. “I’m not shocked. I’m not even surprised. I knew what would happen if Kurt and Tina found out the truth about me.”
He knelt at her feet, drying her with an impersonal touch that had her responding in far too personal a way. “You’d be rejected, just as you’ve been rejected so many times before.”
“I’m sort of used to it.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s what kills me.”
“Don’t let it bother you. It doesn’t bother me. Not anymore.”
“I shouldn’t ask. But I will.” He rocked back on his heels and stared up at her, his face set in grim lines. “Why doesn’t it bother you anymore?”
She spoke slowly, as though to a backward child. “Because I can’t feel.” Sheesh. Didn’t he get it? “When you can’t feel, it doesn’t hurt.”
For some reason that made him swear. When he’d run out of invectives, he planted a hand low on her back and ushered her from the bathroom. “I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink.”
“Several, I think.”
“Hmm. And something to eat.”
Ten minutes later, she was curled up on the floor in front of a fire, dining on a selection of imported cheese and crackers while sipping the smoothest single-malt whiskey she’d ever tasted. Sev lounged beside her, a towel still knotted at his waist. She woke to her surroundings sufficiently to admire the miles of toned muscle rising above the soft white fleece.
Lord help her, but he was the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen. He hadn’t bothered to brush his hair, simply slicked it back from his face so it clung damply to the back of his neck in heavy, dark waves. His features reminded her somewhat of Primo, with the same rugged handsomeness and noble bearing. And, of course, the same stunning eye color. But the rest…Oh, my. The rest was pure Severo Dante.
She buried her nose in the crystal tumbler and took a quick sip. Unable to help herself, she peeked at him from over the rim. Memories from their nights together came storming back. They’d made love right here in front of the fire at least a half-dozen times. Several more times on the couch behind them when they’d been too impatient to traverse the short distance from there to the bedroom. Most nights she shared with him a pathway appeared, one strewn with clothes spreading from front door to bed.
How she enjoyed those moments, when she finally wrestled him free of that last article of clothing. He had the most incredible body, lean and graceful, yet powerful enough to lift her with ease, which he often did, then tip her onto silken sheets and cover her with that endless length of potent masculinity.
She drained the last of the whiskey and set the glass aside. “I need you to do me a favor,” she informed him.
“If I can.”
“Oh, you can.” The only question was…would he? “I want you to make love to me. I want to feel something again.”
He studied her for a long, silent moment and she could see him preparing a list of excuses. She was too vulnerable. He didn’t want to take advantage of her. There were still so many issues unresolved between them. But something in her gaze, or perhaps it was something buried deep in his heart, must have convinced him otherwise.
Instead of turning her down, he tugged the towel free of her hair and tossed it aside before pulling her onto his lap and thrusting his hands deep into her damp curls. Turning her to fully face him, he closed his mouth over hers in a kiss hot enough to leave scorch marks. She opened for him, welcoming him home. The duel was short and sweet, a battle for supremacy that neither lost, yet both won.
“Do you feel that?” he asked.
The question slid from his mouth to hers and she laughed softly in response. “I’m not sure. I might have noticed a slight tingle.”
His eyes narrowed. “Slight tingle? Slight?”
She blinked up at him with provocative innocence. “Very slight.”
“Let’s see what we can do about that.”
He flipped her off his lap and onto her back. Firelight lapped over his determined face and caught in his eyes, causing the gold to burn like wildfire. She missed this. Missed seeing his abandoned reaction whenever they touched. Missed the romantic soul that blunted the contours of his male sexuality. Missed opening to him—physically and emotionally—in the darkest hours of the night and sharing all she hid within her heart. And having him share what he kept locked away in his. But most of all she missed this. The intimacy. The passion. Possessing and being possessed.
He kissed her again. Deeper. More thoroughly. He worshiped her with mouth and tongue until she went mindless with pleasure. “Tell me you feel that,” he demanded.
She groaned. “A tickle. Barely a tickle.”
“Right. That’s it.”
Uh-oh. Annoyed obstinance if ever she heard it. He kissed a path downward, mixing the gentle caresses with love nips that had her toes curling into knots. He ripped the towel open and bared her to a combination of firelight and heated gaze. He shot her one last lingering look before applying himself to his appointed task.
He glided his hands along the sides of her breasts, using just the very tips of his fingers so
he barely connected with her skin. She shivered at the sensation, shocked that so light a touch could provoke such a strong reaction. Around he circled, edging ever closer to the pebbled tips. She fought with every ounce of self-possession to keep from crying out, almost shooting off the plush carpet when his teeth closed over her nipple and tugged.
If she’d ever questioned The Inferno before, she didn’t now. It erupted, low in her belly, spilling over like molten lava. It liquefied everything in its path as it began an onslaught of hunger so deep and all-consuming, she literally shook with the effort to contain it.
He moved lower, touching her belly with his fingers and mouth. Lower. Brushing the nest of curls that protected her feminine core. Lower. Took the heart of her with his mouth. She went deaf and blind as her climax ripped her apart. She fought to draw air into lungs squeezed breathless, barely aware that Sev had left her side.
She still hadn’t recovered when he returned, carefully protected, and settled between her thighs. “Do you feel alive now? Do you feel wanted?”
Sensations toppled one on top of another, so intense she couldn’t process them all. “Sev…” His name escaped in a husky cry, half concession, half demand. “Please.”
He probed inward, a teasing, swirling movement. “Do you feel this?”
“Yes.” She moaned as he slid deep, driving all the way home. “I’m definitely feeling something I never have before.”
She wrapped her legs around his waist and held on. She’d never felt more alive. Never felt more wanted or cherished. Never belonged with anyone as she did with Sev in this moment. Her climax approached again, every bit as powerful as before. Only this time he joined her. To her amazement, it didn’t rip or shred, but melded, uniting them together in something so different, so special, she couldn’t at first find the word to name it. And then it came to her and in doing so, overwhelmed her with the devastating knowledge.
In that brief moment, she no longer stood on the outside looking in. Love opened the door and she flew inside.
