his crisp white shirt, which did wonders for his olive complexion, and tailored black pants, he looked like he’d stepped out of a GQ magazine cover and casually strolled into the colorful street.
His Patek Philippe watch—a gift from her father when he’d welcomed Dante onto the board of Matta Steel, yet one more thing Papa had given Dante and not her—gleamed on his wrist as he stood leaning carelessly against the door, a silky smile curving that sculpted mouth. “Running away again, Alisha?”
He was the only one who insisted on calling her Alisha. Somehow he managed to fill it with reprimand and contempt.
All thoughts of pad thai were replaced with the cold burn of resentment as that penetrating gaze took in her white spaghetti strap top and forest green shorts and traveled from her feet in flip-flops to her hair bunched into a messy bun on top of her head. It was dismissive and yet so thorough that her skin prickled.
Chin tilted, Ali stared right back. She coated it in defiance but after so long, she was greedy for the sight of him. Shouts from street vendors and the evening bustle faded out.
A careless heat filled her veins as she noted the aristocratic nose—broken in his adolescence and fixed—the dark, stubble-coated line of his jaw and deep-set eyes that always mocked her, the broad reach of his shoulders, the careless arrogance that filled every pore. He exuded that kind of masculine confidence that announced him as the top of the food chain both in the boardroom and out of it.
And his mouth... The upper lip was thin and carved and the lower was fuller and lush, the only hint of softness in that face and body. It was a soft whisper about the sensuality he buried under that ruthlessness.
Her heart was now thundering in her chest, not unlike Mak’s boom box. Heat flushed her from within. She jerked her gaze to meet his, saw the slight flare of his nostrils.
Christ, what was she doing? What was she imagining?
Ali moved her tongue around in her dry mouth, and somehow managed to say, “I have nothing to say and I want nothing to do with you.”
To do with you...
The words mocked her, mocked the adolescent infatuation she’d nursed for him that she now hated, morphing into something much worse. Everything she despised about him also attracted her to him. If that weren’t a red flag...
He halted her dignified exit with his fingers on her wrist, the calloused pads of his fingers playing on her oversensitized skin.
She jerked her arm out of his grip like a scalded cat. His mouth tightened, but whatever emotion she had incited disappeared behind his controlled mask. “I have a proposal that I’m sure you would like to hear.”
God, how she wanted to do or say something that made that mask shatter completely. How she wished she could be the one who brought the arrogant man to his knees. Her sudden bloodthirstiness shocked even her.
She’d always liked coloring outside the lines, yes, but not to the point of self-destruction. And that was what Dante made her do. Always.
At some point, hating him had become more important than trying to build a bridge to her father, than reconnecting with Vikram.
No more.
No playing to his point by doing something he would hate; no trying to stir up that smooth facade and burn her bridges.
You’re a necessary nuisance, Alisha. I put up with your mind games for his sake. Only for his.
A calm filled her at her resolution. “What do you want from me?”
A brow rose in the too angular face. There was that tightness to his mouth again. In a parallel universe, Ali would have concluded that that assumption pricked him. In this one where she knew Dante Vittori had no emotions, she didn’t.
“Why are you so sure that I want something from you?”
“You’re thousands of miles away from your empire. From everything I know, there’s no steel plant in this area, nor a lot of demand for it. Unless you’re scouting the area to build a new plant with cheap labor, then you’re not to check up on me.”
“I’ve always known where you are, Alisha.”
She swallowed.
“However much you like to pretend that there are no ties between us, however far you run in pursuit of your little hobby, you are, at the end of the day, his daughter.”
His statement put paid to any emotional extrapolation she was still stupid enough to make from his previous one. As if he worried she might read too much—or anything at all—into him keeping tabs on her.
He had always been loyal to her father; would always be loyal to him. Keeping track of her fell somewhere under that umbrella. Nothing at all to do with the woman she was.
Nothing.
“I’m not interested in trading insults with you,” she said, unable to stop her voice from cracking. “I’m not... I’m not that impulsive, destructive Ali anymore.”
“That would be a nice change of pace for us, si? So we’ll have dinner and not trade insults tonight.”
“I said no insults. That doesn’t mean I want to be anywhere near you for more than five minutes.” It was her own confused emotions and this...blasted attraction that made her want to avoid him even now.
“Ah...” With a graceful flick of his wrist, he made a big show of checking his watch. “That lasted about thirty seconds.” His gaze caught hers. “I’m not and have never been your enemy, Alisha.”
And just like that, her attraction to him became a near tangible thing in the air. Her hating him became the only weapon in her armor. “Eating out is a pleasure for me and somehow I don’t see that being the primary emotion if we’re forced together for too long.”
A calculating glint appeared in his eyes. “There’s something you want in my grasp. When will you learn to act guided by your goals and not by your emotions?”
She could feel herself shaking. “Not everyone is an ambitious, heartless bastard like you are.” There went her resolution to be polite. “Just tell me what your proposal is. Now.”
“It has to do with your mother’s charity. That’s all you’ll get now. My chauffeur will pick you up at six for dinner. And, Alisha, dress appropriately. We won’t be eating hunched over some street vendor’s stall in the market. Neither will I appreciate the half-naked, wrapped-around-a-has-been-rock-star look you sported the last time around for my benefit.”
How she wished she could say it hadn’t been for his benefit, but they both knew it had been. Her eighteenth and his twenty-eighth birthday party would be etched on her memory forever.
“Arrogant, ruthless, manipulative, controlling, yes, but I never thought you were a snob,” she threw back at him.
“Because I want to have a civilized dinner at a place where you won’t throw things at me?”
Another bad night. Another bad memory.
No,
