No Parking zone where he’d been waiting and pulled to the curb. Dante signaled him to stay put, opened the passenger door himself and handed Gabriella inside. “Let’s go home,” he said. The driver nodded, closed the privacy partition and headed uptown as Gabriella snuggled into the curve of Dante’s arm.
“Did you have a good time?” he said, pressing a kiss to her temple.
“Mmmm. A wonderful time.” She smiled. “We’ll try salsa next.”
Dante gave a mock groan. “You just want to see me make a jerk of myself on the dance floor.”
“Stop fishing for compliments, senhor. You’re a fine dancer.”
“Salsa means moving parts of the human body never meant to be moved.”
A playful glint came into her eyes. “Ah, but I have seen you move those parts exceedingly well.”
Dante drew her onto his lap. “But not on a dance floor,” he said, his voice suddenly husky.
Gabriella threaded her hands into his hair and drew his face to hers.
“Perhaps we should test those moves when we get home,” she whispered.
What a good thing a privacy petition was, Dante thought, and then he stopped thinking about anything but the woman in his arms.
Saturday morning, early, a courier delivered a package.
Dante insisted Gabriella watch as he opened it.
It was a long length of woven fabric with an adjustable closure. “It’s a baby sling,” he said, as he draped it over his shoulder and arm, then snugged Daniel securely within its soft folds. “I researched it online. Seems lots of tribal people have carried babies this way for centuries. It gives the babies a real sense of security. What do you think?”
“I think it’s a great idea,” she said, but what she really thought was that she was living a miracle.
The man who’d been one of New York’s wildest bachelors, who had not even suspected he had a son less than two weeks ago, had become the world’s most amazing father.
“You mean it?” He grinned as Daniel cooed. “Daniel, my man, what do you think?”
The baby laughed. So did Gabriella. Dante looked at her and smiled.
“I guess the vote’s unanimous.”
It was. She and her son both adored this man—but she couldn’t tell him that. Not until he said the words she longed to hear. Instead she kissed the baby, rose on her toes and kissed her lover, too.
“Unanimous,” she said brightly.
“Okay. Let’s take it for a trial run. How’s a trip to the Bronx Zoo sound?”
It sounded perfect, she told him. Dante smiled, handed Daniel to her and put aside the baby sling. “Let me just check my e-mail. I haven’t looked at it all week and Monday, much as I hate to do it, I’m going to have to go to work.”
Her face fell; he loved the fact that it did. She didn’t want him to leave. Hell, he didn’t want it, either, but life had to return to normal sometime.
“Five minutes,” he said softly, kissing her. “Not a second more, I promise.”
But he was in his study longer than that and when he came out, she knew something had happened.
“Dante? Is everything all right?”
He assured her that it was.
It was not. His expression was closed; he was unusually silent during the drive to the zoo. Preoccupied, but by what?
Dante carried the baby in the sling as they made their way from exhibit to exhibit. He spoke to him the way he always did, as if the little guy understood every word he said about the seals and the monkeys and the giraffes.
But his behavior was subdued.
It was unsettling.
Eventually they took a break. Daniel had fallen asleep; Dante stood staring off into the distance, one hand curved around the baby, the other tucked in the pocket of his leather windbreaker.
He was quiet, his eyes impossible to read.
Gabriella felt her throat constrict.
Something was happening. What? It was as if the Dante who had gone into his study this morning had emerged a different person. He had changed. Everything had changed. She could feel it.
What if he’d decided he’d had enough? The zoo was filled with families. Was it a graphic lesson in what his life had become?
She and the baby were both novelties. It was a crude way to put it but it was accurate. He’d never had a son before, and he’d never had a woman live with him, either. He’d made it sound like something wonderful when he’d told her that, but viewed with clinical detachment, it simply meant this experience was new for him.
Ocean kayaking had once been new to him, and back-country skiing and probably a dozen other things. Oh, she knew he cared far more for the baby than for any of that, but still, “newness” intrigued him.
It wasn’t that he was self-indulgent. Or perhaps he was, just a little. It made him seem larger than life. It was one of his charms.
It also meant he was the kind of man who grew bored easily.
He’d told her that himself, just yesterday, though not in those exact words, when he’d gotten a call telling him some much-coveted kind of automobile was for sale somewhere out of state. His excitement had been palpable; he’d whooped with glee, caught her up in his arms and kissed her, and when she’d laughed and said only a man could get so worked up over a car, he’d tried to explain how it was, that he loved fast cars, that he’d been hunting after this one for a long time. And that was when he’d mentioned kayaking and skiing and all the rest, how he’d loved them and more or less still did but how cars like this one had supplanted his interest in other things.
Daniel had awakened just then, fussing for his dinner, so the conversation had ended before she could ask him the reason. Not that she had to ask.
She knew the reason.
Tides changed but the ocean was still the ocean. Snowfall changed, but a mountain was still a mountain. Not so with automobiles. They were always different. When you grew bored with one kind, there was always another to pursue.
Was she his latest acquisition? Even more vital, was Daniel? Would her son learn to love his father only to have Dante turn into a stranger?
The thought terrified her.
Dante felt the warm weight of his sleeping son pressed against his chest.
He curved his hand over the child’s bottom. He loved holding his son. The baby was so small, so trusting. He’d never imagined being a father could make a man’s heart swell with pride and joy.
The zoo was full of families.
