dark eyes glinted. “Don’t sell yourself short, Dario. Your nonverbal communication was deafening.”
“To be clear,” he said when he could speak in an even tone, “you claim you’re not using the child as a pawn, but you are perfectly prepared to hold him for ransom. Am I getting that right?”
“He’s just a concept to you, Dare,” she said after a moment, and he wondered if she knew she’d reverted to that nickname only she had ever used. He didn’t let himself think too much about why he’d noticed. Especially when she was looking at him as if it hurt her to do so. “But to me? Damian is everything.”
She shook her head at him as if she found him deeply lacking, and there wasn’t a single reason in the world he should care what this woman thought of him. What her opinion of him was. Not a single, solitary reason.
More than that, he wasn’t doing this to hash out things between them. He told himself he didn’t care. This was about the child she’d hidden from him. That was the only reason he hadn’t flown back to New York the moment he’d had those damned earrings in his possession.
He’d made a plan and he had every intention of carrying it out to the letter, and it didn’t make one bit of difference what she thought of him or what she called him or anything of the sort. None of that mattered at all.
Why was he finding it so hard to remember?
* * *
Anais couldn’t handle the way he looked at her then, so she turned away and walked toward the open doors that led out to his private lanai, with its gloriously unobstructed view of the sea and the fiery red sun sinking toward the distant horizon. He had his own beach if he wanted it, at the far end of a winding little path. She could see the white sand gleaming in the last of the daylight, and the waves rocked gently against the shore as if it was doing it for them alone.
And somehow, she managed to wrestle that great ache inside of her into something more compact as she stood there and gazed out at the water, the sunset. Something she could breathe through. Something that wouldn’t betray her even further.
Dario was quiet for a long time, but she didn’t turn back to see why. She felt him approach, though she wasn’t sure she could actually hear him move, and then he was beside her, buttoning up a shirt made of the same lush linen as his trousers. It was also in black, and she didn’t know what was worse. Him bare-chested before her like a thousand desserts she didn’t dare touch, or him dressed like some kind of debonair lover, conjured straight up from the darkest part of the dreams she pretended she didn’t have.
Both, maybe.
“I’m sorry,” Dario said, and that was so shocking she whipped her head around to see if he was pulling her leg. But his moody blue gaze was focused on the sea, not on her. “I didn’t mean for this conversation to descend to that level. That’s not why I wanted you to come here.”
“I imagine you wanted to beat me over the head a little bit with your might and glory,” she said, her voice more bitter than she wanted it. More obviously affected. But she couldn’t seem to control it the way she should. “This villa has to be at least five thousand dollars a night.”
“Are you concerned about how I spend my money? I’m touched, truly.”
“Only if it affects Damian.” She made herself smile, as if this was an easy little talk. Or as if she was in some way light and airy herself. “That’s the beginning and the end of everything, isn’t it?”
She saw something move across his beautiful face, ruthless and determined, but then it was gone. She didn’t think she’d imagined it, but she couldn’t work out what his game was here, so she told herself it didn’t matter either way.
“There’s no need for us to fight, surely,” he said, his voice low. Something like agreeable, which she found instantly alarming. “Six years is a long time. I don’t see any reason why we can’t have a calm discussion about what’s best for Damian. We were rational once. Surely we can be again.”
And that was exactly what Anais had told herself she wanted. That was more than she’d dreamed would ever be possible with Dario. So why was it she didn’t quite believe him?
“I’d like that,” she said. And then, despite that lingering sense that this wasn’t real, she tried to be the generous person she thought she ought to be. The one she thought her son deserved. “I’d like Damian to get to know you, of course. But you do understand that he’s an entire little person all his own, don’t you? He came into this world on his own schedule and he’s stubbornly stuck to it ever since. If you have some fantasy in your head about an angelic creature who will gaze at you and call you Daddy and serve as some kind of appendage to your whims, that’s probably not Damian.”
“It didn’t occur to me that I would ever be a father until you told me I had a son yesterday,” Dario said in a voice that sounded a little too close to grim for Anais’s peace of mind. “I have no expectations that require modification.”
She realized how close they were standing then, and worse, how obvious it would be if she leaped away from him the way she wanted. How he’d read into that and worse—how he’d be absolutely correct in what he read.
Anais didn’t want to be so close to him she could feel the heat he generated, the way she did now, as if that black linen was a radiator even here in the tropics in August. She didn’t trust herself.
Around Dario, she couldn’t.
The sad truth was that she’d fallen in love with him a very long time ago. Not quite at first sight, but not long after, and nothing had changed that since. Not the way he’d broken the lonely heart she’d only ever shared with him. Not the way he’d abandoned her so cruelly, as if she’d been unworthy of a backward glance. Not the way she’d tried to hate him in all these years since, and failed, again and again.
How could she hate this man when she saw so much of him in her little boy’s face? In that bigger than life laugh that was one hundred percent Dario in her son’s body? It wasn’t possible. She’d thought she’d come to a place of acceptance with that a long time ago. But of course, that had been when she’d never expected to see Dario again.
She still didn’t want to stand this close to him. It made her entirely too aware of her own, eternal weakness where he was concerned.
“Great,” she managed to say now, and she eased herself back and put a little more space between them, the better to look him in the eye, as if that would cut him down to size somehow. “Then when he throws a full-scale fit on the floor because he wants to wear a blue shirt instead of a red one the way he did this morning, I’m sure you’ll handle it calmly.”
Dario’s mouth curved, and that wasn’t helpful. It only reminded her all over again how susceptible she was to him. How badly some part of her wanted to believe that this—whatever this was—was real. God, how she wanted to believe that.
“If I can handle fractious board members and morally dubious CEOs, one small child shouldn’t be a problem.”
“I’m glad you’re so confident.”
The air between them felt taut then. It shimmered like heat. Dario thrust his hands in his pockets in a way that suggested he wanted to do something else entirely with them, and Anais had to fight to conceal her delicious—and traitorous—shiver
