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“Dante,” she said, breathlessly, “What are you doing?”
“I’m not having this conversation in the middle of the goddamned street, Georgia. Fasten your seatbelt.
Her jaw dropped.
It hadn’t occurred to her—stupidly—that getting into his car and asking him to start the bloody thing would render her in some way his prisoner. Her pulse was gushing and she was shocked and terrified even when there were other feelings too, feelings she daren’t analyse.
“Well, I’m not having this conversation, or any other, with someone who’s basically kidnapping me.”
“You think?” He responded, throwing her a sidelong glance. “Seatbelt.”
A heady rush of fury flashed in her veins as she reached for the safety device. “I hate you so much.”
“Wonderful.” His voice was low and gruff. “I can’t think of a better way to start our life as co-parents, can you?”
CHAPTER SIX
IT BECAME CLEAR TO DANTE somewhere around Primrose Hill that he’d had gone way too far. Reasonableness seemed a long, long way in his rear vision mirror. He was acting on instincts, and those instincts were making him do something even he acknowledged was not only criminal, it was just utterly and completely wrong.
But what could he do?
Every word she uttered had struck fear into his heart. Not just fear, but something so much worse.
Everything about this situation was an abomination but it was also clear cut. It had taken him two days to get his head around that. Or perhaps it had only taken two seconds, and he’d spent the next two days running from that reality. But running didn’t change a damned thing.
He was going to be a father.
This wasn’t about him, or Georgia, just like she’d said. They were going to be parents and he had to start thinking like a dad again.
Bitterness filled his mouth, and a thousand memories seared his heart all over again. Livvie’s birth, her angry, determined little face, shock of black hair, jet black eyes, perfect little bow-shaped lips, and those fingers, already so capable and affectionate, reaching out and curling around one of his fingers as though she was trying to communicate with him, even then. The joy in her face even from birth, the way she laughed in a way that was gurgling and all-consuming, so that he couldn’t help laughing with her. Livvie’s first steps which quickly became a run, the treehouse they’d built her at his parents’ home. Every breath he took filled him with more and more memories until he wanted to punch something for the injustice of what life had taken from him.
“I’m serious, Dante,” Georgia’s voice drew him back to the present and when he glanced over at her, acid swirled in the back of his throat. They’d barely known one another and yet somehow, without his knowledge nor permission, everything about her had become burned into his brain, so just a quick glance at her made him very, very aware of the way her breasts were bigger and her stomach lightly rounded. His fingertips ached with a desire to reach out and touch her belly—not because it was Georgia, but because his child was growing inside of her.
Livvie, running across the lawn with the sunlight behind her, Bianca sitting cross-legged on the grass, camera poised to take photos, her own smile infectious and huge, so Dante could have wept for how badly he wanted to step back into those memories and grab hold of them.
Then, he’d thought it was just normal life, but he knew better now. Now he understood that those fleeting moments of perfection had been all too rare. He wished he’d appreciated them more, instead of taking for granted the permanence of their places in his life.
He wished he’d loved them more, better. Done something, anything differently.
At a red light, he squeezed his eyes shut, and Georgia evidently mistook it as a reaction to something else.
“You really are a piece of work.”
His eyes opened, pierced her.
“You think you’re the only one affected by this?”
He turned back to the road, stared straight ahead, and when the light changed, took pleasure in accelerating again.
“I haven’t said anything of the sort.”
“No, but you’re acting like it. And where the hell are you taking me?”
The memories in his mind were like sand in a storm, blowing away from him, so he couldn’t catch them. He wanted to punch something, to shout at the top of his lungs that he didn’t want this.
“Somewhere we can talk.”
“We were talking outside my hotel.”
