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‘Our lives touched but now—’ Touched but nearly not connected—maybe it had been the sheer depth of his reaction that had made him show restraint, and it had required every ounce of self-control he possessed not to seek the glorious woman with endless legs and golden skin he had seen across the crowded theatre foyer, or at least find out her name…but he had walked away.
When, days later, he had found himself in the front row of the catwalk show of the hottest designer of the season with…he really couldn’t remember who he had arrived with, but he could remember every detail of the tall blonde under the spotlight drifting past, hands on her hips, oozing sex in a way that had sent a collective shiver of appreciation around the audience. She had been wearing an outfit that was intended to be androgynous but on her it really hadn’t been—it had felt like Fate.
He had allowed his companion to drag him to the sort of back-slapping, self-congratulatory, booze-fuelled backstage party that he would normally have avoided, where he got to know her name, Beatrice, and the fact she had already left.
His companion, already disgruntled by the lack of attention, had stayed as he’d run out of the place…in the grip of an urgency that he hadn’t paused to analyse.
An image of her face as he’d seen it that day supplanted itself across her features. She’d stood too far away then for him to see the sprinkling of freckles across her nose. But they’d been visible later, when he had literally almost knocked her down on the steps of the gallery where the fashion show had been held. She’d looked younger minus the sleeked hair and the crazy, exaggerated eye make-up and he had decided in that second that there was such a thing as Fate—he had stopped fighting it. Never before had he felt so utterly transfixed by a woman.
She didn’t fit into any stereotype he had known. She was fresh and funny and even the fact she’d turned out to be virgin territory, which ought to have made him run for the hills, hadn’t.
A clattering noise from downstairs cut into his reminisces and made Beatrice jump guiltily.
‘How is Maya?’ he asked.
‘People are finally recognising her artistic talent.’
Her sister might think that talent spoke for itself but Beatrice knew that wasn’t the case. That was where she came in. She had done night classes in marketing during her time modelling, while everything she’d earned during that period had gone into their start-up nest egg for their own eco-fashion range.
Dante grunted, in the act of fighting his way into his shirt. Beatrice willed her expression calm as his probing gaze moved across her face.
‘Will you be all right?’
‘I’ll be fine.’ She would be; she wasn’t going to let her Dante addiction of a few months define her or the rest of her life. She had accepted that it would be painful for a while, but she was a resilient person by nature, strong. Everyone said so.
So it must be true.
When her dad had died people had said how strong she was, what a rock she was. Then when Mum had married Edward she had been there for Maya, who had been the target of their stepfather’s abuse. For a time, she had been the only one who had seen what the man was doing, because there had been nothing physical involved as he had begun to systematically destroy her sister’s self-esteem and confidence.
For a while their mother had chosen the man she had married over her daughters, believing his lies, letting him manipulate her, controlling every aspect of her life. It had been a bad time and for a long time Beatrice, more judgemental than her sister, had struggled to forgive her mother her weakness.
The irony was that marriage to Dante had shown her that the same weakness was in her, the same flaw. Dante hadn’t lied, which perhaps made her self-deception worse. She had wanted to believe he was something he wasn’t, that they had something that didn’t exist.
She pushed away the memories, focusing on the fact that she and Maya had forgiven their mother; their bond had survived and so had they. Now all they both wanted was their happily divorced mum to stop feeling so guilty.
‘And how are your parents?’ She felt obliged to enquire but could not inject any warmth into the cool of her voice.
‘Pretty much the same.’
She lifted her brows in an acknowledgement as the memory of that first-night dinner in the palace with his parents flashed into her head. The shoulder-blade-aching tension in the room had taken her appetite away, and, if it hadn’t, the unspoken criticisms behind the comments directed her way by the King and Queen would have guaranteed she was going to bed hungry.
And alone.
It had been two in the morning before she’d sat up at the sound of Dante’s tread. She remembered that waiting, checking the time every few minutes. In the strange room, strange bed, in a strange country it had felt longer.
She had switched on the bedside light.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.’
She remembered so clearly the empathy that had surged through her body when she saw the grey hue of exhaustion on his normally vibrantly toned skin. Her throat tightened now as she remembered just wanting to hold him. If that day had been tough for her, she had told herself, it must have been a hundred times worse for Dante.
‘I wasn’t asleep,’ she’d said as he’d come to sit on the side of the bed.
‘You were waiting up.’
She’d shaken her head at the accusation. ‘You look so tired.’ She’d run a hand over the stubble on his square jaw—he even made haggard look sexy as hell.
‘Not too tired.’ She remembered the cool of his fingers as he’d caught the hand she had raised to his cheek and pulled her into him, his whisky-tinged breath warm and on his mouth as he’d husked against her lips, ‘I just want to…bury myself in you.’
She pushed away the memories that were too painful now. They reminded her of her own wilful stupidity—for her that night it had gone beyond physical release. Dante had always taken her to a sensual heaven, but this connection had gone deeper, she had told herself as she’d lain later, her damp, cooling body entwined in his, tears of emotion too intense to name leaking from the corners of her eyes. She had felt so…complete.
But it had been a lie, her lie, and the cracks had started to appear almost immediately—before their heated, damp bodies had finished cooling in the velvet darkness.
