AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He was waiting at a table by the window—though he’d asked to pick her up, she’d insisted on meeting him there. She needed to maintain low expectations, to protect herself. When she entered, he stood, and her heart kerthunked against her ribs, low expectations be damned.
He smiled.
Really smiled.
In a way that made his eyes shimmer and his whole face change, so her body trembled in response.
“Hello.” Her voice quivered.
“You look so beautiful.”
His words were like warmed butter on dry toast, sinking right in. She wished she could ignore him, resist his charms, but he was under her skin, damn him.
She slid into the seat opposite, greeting a waiter with a tight smile.
“Would you like to hear our specials?”
“Could we have a minute?” Georgia asked. She still wasn’t sure she’d stay. He’d made an excellent case for dinner that afternoon, but once he’d left, Georgia had nursed her broken heart, had remembered how awful she’d felt for months, and she wasn’t sure she could just let it go and start over.
“Sure. Just wave when you’re ready.” The waiter left the table.
“How are you?” Dante asked, but there was a watchfulness in his eyes now.
“I need you to tell me what happened,” she said with soft determination. None of this made sense and Georgia needed it to. “A week ago, when I was in Como, you didn’t love me.”
“I didn’t know how to love you,” he contradicted. “I didn’t know how to love you in a way that wouldn’t be a betrayal to Bianca.”
She ground her teeth. “And now?”
“I know I have to work it out. I know that I did love her and that I still do love her. I know those feelings can coexist with what I feel for you. Because I love you too. You’re different to her in so many ways, but the same in one very important one: you make me happy. You make me feel as though I’ve been doused in sunshine, as though I am breathing in solid gold. You make me feel as though I could do anything, be anything. I can’t lose you, Georgia. I can’t lose you and I especially can’t lose you because I’ve pushed you away.”
She glanced towards the window, not trusting herself to reply.
“Would you like some pasta?” There was uncertainty in his voice. He reminded her of the twins, when they’d done something wrong and weren’t sure if she’d be cross with them or not. Not that she’d ever been cross, really, but they hated to disappoint her. “Or the chicken breast?”
She turned back to him, sighing. “What changed, Dante?”
He looked wary. He looked worried. Terrified, in fact. She was still summing him up, working out what to do, and he knew that. He understood that his whole future was hanging by a thread. In another situation, she might have enjoyed the rush of power she felt. After being pushed away by him so often, she could clearly see now how terrified he was of losing her for good. Worried that he’d already lost her.
“Nothing and everything,” he admitted with a shake of his head. “I woke up and saw clearly.”
“But why?” She pushed, needing more. Needing a reassurance that it might have been out of his reach to offer.
“I missed you,” he admitted. “I missed you and I was so angry with you for leaving, even when a part of me knew you’d done the right thing.”
She glanced away, her eyes moist.
“And I was miserable without you in my life. Every day I had to choose not to go to you, I had to remind myself why I couldn’t have you; it has been a form of torture.”
She blinked quickly.
“And then Portia got involved.”
Georgia grimaced. The last thing she wanted to think was that the other woman had manipulated Dante into coming back to Georgia. Had guilt-tripped him into doing what he perceived to be the right thing.
“She called Rocco. You remember my cousin?”
She nodded once.
