dropped his hands to his sides and stepped back.
“Tell me about Ferrantes.”
Her eyes flashed.
“No,” he said quickly, “I don’t mean—Tell me what’s happening. De Souza says he’s bought this place. Has he contacted you?”
Gabriella shivered and wrapped her arms around herself.
“Sim. He was here this morning.” She touched the tip of her tongue to her lips. “He gave me—he gave me an…an—I do not know what you call it. A decision I must make.”
“An ultimatum?”
“Yes. Either he gets what he wants,” she said, so softly Dante had to bend his head to hear her, “or he will sell Viera y Filho to the rancher who owns the adjoining 50,000 hectares.”
Dante nodded. “And what he wants,” he said tonelessly, “is you.”
She looked up, eyes bright with determination. “I told him what he could do with his ultimatum. And he told me—”
“He told you…?”
She shrugged, turned away, began taking books from the shelves. “He said it was my choice, that I could do as he demanded or I had until this evening to leave this place.”
A string of Sicilian profanities, learned on the streets of his childhood, fell from Dante’s lips. “He can’t do that.”
Gabriella swung toward him. “Of course he can!”
She was right. Ferrantes could do any damned thing he wanted, or so it seemed.
“But where will you go?”
Another shrug, her face once more averted. “Yara can take us in for a few weeks.”
“Yara. The guard dog?”
“She is a good woman. She all but raised me.”
“She has a house you can share?”
Gabriella thought of Yara’s house. Small. Very small. Smaller still, these last months since Yara’s daughter, son-in-law and their three small children had come to live with her and her husband.
“Yes.”
It was the least certain “yes” Dante had ever heard. He stepped in front of Gabriella, took a book from her hands, set it aside and clasped her shoulders.
“To hell with that.”
Her eyes, filled with defiance, met his.
“I will do what I must.”
“There’s no room at Yara’s for you and the baby,” he said flatly, “is there?”
“I will do what I must,” she said again.
He nodded. She would. She had done what she had to do all these months, returning to Brazil to have her child, living out here in the middle of nowhere with nothing but the barren land for company.
“Is your clothing packed?”
Her eyebrows rose. “Why?”
“Dammit, just answer the question. I can hire someone to pack this stuff, whatever you don’t want to leave behind.”
“I am perfectly capable of doing it myself.”
He took a deep breath. “I’m taking you with me. To New York.”
She stared at him as if he’d lost his sanity. “Why would you do that? Why would I permit you to do that?”
“Because I say so.”
She looked up into his eyes. He meant every word; she knew it. The blood of his ancestors flowed within him. He was a man who would not tolerate any obstacles once he had decided he wanted something.
There had been times he’d been like that in bed.
The tender Dante, the sweet lover she’d adored, would vanish. His lovemaking would turn hot and hungry. He’d clasp her wrists, hold her arms above her head, say things, tell her things while he was deep inside her, while his body moved within hers, and at those moments she would come and come and come…
“I do not take orders from you,” she said, forcing the unwelcome memories away.
A muscle knotted in his jaw. “Listen to me, I can’t leave you here alone, and I can’t stay with you. You must come with me. You and the baby.”
“The baby.” Her voice broke. “The baby you still think does not belong to you.”
He knew what she wanted him to say, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. “There’s no other solution.”
She shook her head. “It is all happening too fast,” she whispered. “Much, much too fast. I need time to think. To plan.”
She was right about everything happening fast. He’d come back to Brazil to make careful arrangements. Give her the fazenda, arrange for paternity tests, set up funds for her and the child, do all the right things but do them logically and slowly.
Taking her with him flew in the face of all that.
His plan had turned into no plan at all, certainly not one Sam or any other good attorney would advise, much less approve.
And yet, what else could he do? Leave her to the not so tender mercies of Ferrantes?
“It is quick,” he said, because what good would it be to lie? He framed her face with his hands and slowly raised it to his. “We’ll work out the details later. And it will all work out. You’ll see.”
She hesitated. He could almost see her weighing his words.
“Dante,” she said, “I do not think—”
“Good,” he said softly. “Don’t think. Just trust me. Say you’ll come with me.”
She wanted to trust him. At least, her heart did. Her head said something else…but then he bent to her and kissed her and, like a fool, she agreed.
DANTE stood on the wraparound terrace of his two-story Central Park West penthouse, a cup of rapidly cooling coffee in his hand.
Was it possible he’d been away from New York for only two days?
It felt more like weeks.
Either autumn had suddenly overtaken the park or he simply hadn’t noticed it, now that the leaves of the maples, oaks and sycamores far below were turning rich shades of crimson, brown and gold. Up here the mums and asters and who-knew-what-else
