had been strangely jarring.
Initially, before their association had gone so very wrong, he’d looked on Stephen Fagan as a sort of mentor. Dante’s grandfather had been a devoted surrogate after Dante’s father died, and an excellent businessman willing to bet on his grandson, but he hadn’t had the passion for electronics that Dante possessed.
He’d found that in Stephen, which was why he had trusted him so implicitly and felt so betrayed by his crime. Maybe he’d even believed, in the back of his mind, that one day he would have an explanation from the man he’d thought of as a friend. Damaging as the financial loss had been, the real cost had been his faith in his own judgment. How had he been so blind? Something in him had always longed for a chance to hear Stephen’s side of it, to understand why he would do something so cold when Dante had thought they were friends.
Hearing Stephen was dead had been... Well, it hadn’t been good, despite his claim otherwise. It had been painful, stirring up the other more devastating loss he’d suffered back then. All the losses that had come at once.
As he’d been processing that he would never get answers from Stephen, someone had knocked insistently, informing him his grandmother was unwell. Rushing outside, what had he found?
Cami.
In the confusion, she’d slipped away, but she’d stayed on his mind all the while his grandmother was treated. The moment she had recovered, his grandmother became adamant that she thank the young woman who had helped her.
Back when she’d been grieving the loss of her husband, Dante hadn’t dared make things worse by revealing how he’d put the family’s security in jeopardy. It was one of the reasons he hadn’t pressed charges against Stephen—to keep his grandmother and the rest of the family from knowing the extent of their financial woes. He hadn’t wanted anyone worrying more than they already were.
Instead, with the help of his cousin, he’d worked like a slave to bring them back from the brink.
That silence meant Noni didn’t understand why he was so skeptical of Cami’s altruism. He didn’t want to tell her he would rather wring Cami’s neck than buy her a meal, but he wasn’t about to let his grandmother go hunting all over town for her good Samaritan, possibly collapsing again. He also sure as hell wasn’t going to give Cami a chance to be alone with his grandmother again. Who knew what damage would be done this time?
So, after a restless night and a day of putting it off, he’d looked up her address from her CV and had come here. He’d walked up the stairs in this very dated building, wondering what sort of debts her father had paid off since he clearly hadn’t left much for his daughter, and knocked.
Then Smash! She had opened the door, plunging him into a blur of pale pink top that scooped low enough to reveal the upper swells of her breasts and thin enough her nipples pressed enticingly against it. Her red shorts were outright criminal, emphasizing her firm thighs and painting over her mound in a way that made his palm itch to cup there. The bright color stopped mere inches below that, covering the top end of a thin white scar that scored down past her knee.
He’d barely processed the old injury when she whirled away in response to a buzzer. The fabric of her shorts held a tight grip on her ass as she turned and bent to retrieve something from the oven, making his mouth water and his libido rush to readiness.
He had spent the night mentally flagellating himself for being attracted to her at all, let alone so intensely. Cami was beyond off-limits. She was a hard No. Whatever he thought he might have seen in the first seconds of their meeting had been calculated on her part. Had to have been.
She had known who he was.
And now he knew who she was, so how could he be physically attracted to someone who should repel him? It was untenable.
Yet the stir in his groin refused to abate.
She turned from closing the front door, and her wholesome prettiness was an affront. A lie. He curled his fist and tried not to react when she crossed her arms again, plumping that ample bosom of hers in a most alluring way. Deliberately?
“I don’t know how to convince you that I had no ulterior motive yesterday, but I didn’t.” Her lips remained slightly parted, as though she wanted to say more but was waiting to see how he reacted first.
“You can’t. She wants you to come to the hotel anyway. To thank you. Not the Tabor. The one where we’re staying.”
Surprise flickered across her face, then wariness. “And you’re here to intimidate me all over again? Tell me not to go anywhere near her?”
“I’m here to drive you.” Was she intimidated? She wasn’t acting like it. “But it’s true I don’t want you near her. That’s why I’ll supervise.”
“Ha. Fun as that sounds—” She cut herself off with a choked laugh. Her ironic smile invited him to join in the joke, then faded when he didn’t.
Something like hurt might have moved behind her eyes, but she disguised it with a sweep of her lashes, leaving him frustrated that he couldn’t read her as easily as he wanted to.
She moved into the kitchen to transfer the last batch of cookies onto the cooling rack. “Too bad you didn’t put it off until Monday. I would have been gone. Tell her I’ve left town.”
He moved to stand on the other side of the breakfast bar, watching her.
Such a domestic act, baking cookies. This didn’t fit at all with the image he’d built in his mind of her family living high off his hard work and innovation. Nothing about her fit into the boxes he’d drawn for Fagans and women, potential hires or people who dined with his family. Nothing except...
“Unlike you, I don’t lie, especially to people I care about.”
“Boy, you love to get your little digs in, don’t you? When did I lie to you?”
When she’d mentioned he was being paid back, for starters, but, “Forget it. I’m not here to rehash the past. I’ve moved on.” Begrudgingly and with a dark rage still livid within him.
“Really,” she scoffed in a voice that held a husk. Was it naturally there? An emotional reaction to his accusation? Or put there to entice him? “Is that why you fired me without even giving me a chance? Is that why you said it was ‘good’ that my father is dead? My mother died in the same crash. Do you want to tell me how happy you are to hear that news?” The same emotive crack as yesterday charged her tone now, and her eyes gleamed with old agony.
He wanted to write her off as melodramatic, make some kind of sharp comeback so she wouldn’t think she could get away with dressing him down, but his chest tightened. Whatever else had happened, losing one’s parents was a blow. He couldn’t dismiss that so pitilessly.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” he allowed, finding his gaze dropping to the scar etched onto her collarbone. She had that longer one on her leg, too. Had she been in the accident? He tried to recall what he had known about Stephen Fagan’s family, but came up with a vague recollection of a wife and a forgotten number of children.
Why did he find the idea of her being injured so disturbing? Everything about this woman put him on uneven ground. He hated it. There was already a large dose of humiliation attached to her father’s betrayal. He’d been soaked in grief over losing his grandfather, but guilt, as well. The old man had
