“Let’s eat a meal like civilized people. Let’s talk to each other.” That curve in his mouth deepened, and the truth was, Anais wasn’t strong enough to resist him. She never had been. And just then, with all his deep blue attention trained on her, she couldn’t remember a single reason why that should change. Why she’d want it to change. “Let’s do this the right way.”
MUCH LATER THAT NIGHT, Anais pushed back from the table in the private corner of the resort’s outdoor restaurant and tried, yet again, to caution herself. To go slow, to keep her perspective—something.
The night had been perfect. Anais was a local, yet she felt like some kind of princess tonight, immersed in old Hawaiian magic on all sides. They’d been whisked to this romantic corner of the hotel restaurant, where there was nothing between them and the sea but a strip of volcanic rock, any other diners lost in the darkness behind them. Torches danced in the thick air all around, and the breeze tugged strands of hair free from her easy chignon to slide over her cheeks like a lover’s soft fingers.
But Anais had only ever had one lover, and his fingers were hard, tapered and demanding, no matter how soft his caress.
The meal had been exquisite. The typical Hawaiian fusion of unexpected flavors and marvelous tastes, artfully arranged and beautifully presented, and Anais tried. She tried to sternly keep her attention on her son, not on his father. She tried to withstand the insidious magic of all this grace and ease and quietly luxurious wealth, and the man who had made it happen. She tried her best to keep her walls high, to read nothing into any of this, to stay the glacier she should have been no matter how enticing each bite of food.
No matter the far more worrying beguilement of the man across from her.
Dario had undergone some kind of transformation during the walk from his villa to the restaurant. Gone was that harsh, unforgiving man she’d met at the Fuginawa estate yesterday. In his place was, if not the man she’d married years ago exactly, certainly the closest thing to him she could imagine after these six long years apart.
And what the sound of Dario’s laughter after all this time didn’t manage to do to her heart, the fine wine he kept pouring did to her head.
She regarded him from across the table now, watching the way the light from the flickering torch flames caressed his beautiful face and made him seem that much more like the many dreams she’d had all these lonely years. That much more the man she’d begun to think she’d made up from the start.
They’d talked about everything and nothing over their meal. She’d talked about Damian—who he was, funny things he did, the sort of stories that highlighted what a delightful little kid she thought he was, most of the time. Dario had talked about the work that clearly consumed his life, in a way that made it clear he was doing exactly what he should. He’d asked her about practicing law and how she enjoyed it all these years into it. She’d asked how he liked becoming so well-known in his own right, having nothing to do with his family. They talked as easily as they ever had, in and around all the submerged rocks and treacherous undercurrents that lurked between them, dancing over the surface of things instead of slamming into the obstacles.
It was all real enough, she supposed. Even...nice. It was lulling her into what she knew damn well was a false sense of security. What she didn’t know was what she could do to make her traitorous heart pay attention to warning signs and potential alarms when all it saw—all it wanted to see—was the only man she’d ever loved here with her at last, treating her the way he had when she’d imagined he might love her back.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked softly.
“Eating dinner?” He leaned back in his own chair. “I try to do it at least once an evening. It’s an odd personality quirk of mine.”
“No.” And it terrified her how much—how strongly—she didn’t want to do this just then. How terribly she wanted to simply drift off into this fantasy world where there was nothing but faint Hawaiian music on the sweet night air and where Dario, still her husband, looked at her as if he’d never hated her and never could. As if the six years of separation had been the dream, not what had preceded it. “You know what I mean.”
He didn’t answer. He stood instead, smoothing a hand over the front of his soft black shirt, and Anais’s heart sank. She’d ruined it, hadn’t she? Would it have really mattered all that much if she’d let this keep on going for another few minutes? An hour? If she’d let herself bask in this no matter how much of a dream it was? Who would it have hurt?
But she already knew the answer to that question. Not Damian—she’d protect him with her last breath. Only her.
Only and ever her.
And yet there was something about the sweet night air that made her imagine she could take it. That a few stolen moments with Dario would be worth whatever pain followed.
Dario stood beside her chair and she braced herself for him to say something hideous and cutting, to slap them both back down to that place they’d been in earlier. His face looked harder than before, no trace of that laughter of his that still split the night open with its rough joy and was clearly where Damian’s came from, but she made herself hold his gaze no matter how difficult it was. She owed herself at least that much.
His hard, beautiful mouth moved as if he meant to speak, but he didn’t. Instead, he held out his hand.
And Anais knew better. Of course she knew better. She’d been a single mother all this time, while he’d been off building empires and never looking back at all to see what destruction he’d left in his wake. She could have recited the reasons why this—any more time spent with him, especially time spent touching—was a terrible idea the same way she could rattle off pertinent case law when necessary at work.
Here, now, none of that seemed to matter.
Nothing seemed to matter except the way he looked at her over his outstretched hand, as if he’d command her to take it if he could but was instead waiting for her to do what he wanted because, deep down, he knew she wanted it, too. She had the strangest feeling he knew exactly what battles she waged inside her head.
And worse, she thought he could see straight through her and deep into her chest, where her poor, battered heart felt swollen and broken at once, all over again—as if this was all something new, these things he conjured up in her.
Anais took a deep, shuddering breath, and then couldn’t seem to keep herself from slipping her hand into his.
She didn’t gasp out loud at the instant electric surge, at that hot touch as his hard fingers curled around hers, but she thought he felt the jolt of it as it seared through her. He tugged her to her feet and she went to him willingly, and for a moment they stood there with barely a whisper of the sultry summer air between them.
Her shoes were high enough to put her almost at eye level with him, and that made her veins thrum with something that was half music, half delight. His blue eyes looked much too dark, especially when they dropped to her mouth, and she felt that same wild current in him, too, lighting her up from the place their hands were clasped together.
Dario stepped back, though he kept hold of her hand. There was a rueful curve to his mouth and a hard hunger in his gaze, and then he started to walk, pulling her along with him so she fit there at his side.
It
