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CHAPTER FOUR
BEAWAITEDUNTILhe had finished dressing before voicing the question that had inserted itself in her head and wouldn’t go away. If she didn’t ask she knew from experience the anxiety would start to eat away at her.
‘I was wondering…’ She paused, wishing she possessed Dante’s enviable ability to distance himself from negative emotions. The world could be falling apart, panic endemic, but Dante, all calm, reasoned logic, would stand apart.
‘Wondering?’
‘Will last night affect the divorce?’ What was the legal take on sleeping with your almost ex-husband?
‘That’s what you’re worried about?’
‘Well, aren’t you?’
He gave a twisted smile. ‘Are you going to tell anyone about it?’
The colour flew to her cheeks. ‘Of course not, though of course Maya will—’
‘Will be waiting for our walk of shame.’
‘Maya doesn’t judge.’ Or blab, which was just as well when you considered the things she had told her sister.
‘Of course she doesn’t.’
She ignored the sarcasm and pushed him for an answer. ‘Well, will it?’
‘I see no reason it should.’
‘Right, so we can forget last night happened and get on with our lives.’
‘You seem to be already doing that…’
Underneath the smooth delivery she picked up something in his voice, an unspoken suggestion that she shouldn’t be. It brought a flare of anger and she embraced it, embraced anything that wasn’t the emotions of this slow, never-ending, nerve-wracking goodbye.
‘Well, I thought about sitting in a room and fading away, but then I thought there might be life after Dante and you know what—’ she widened her eyes in bright blue mockery ‘—there is.’
Jaw clenched, Dante viciously shoved a section of shirt in the waistband of his trousers and dragged a hand across his hair. ‘So, who is he?’
‘Who…what…?’ She expelled a little sigh of comprehension as enlightenment dawned. This time she didn’t need to jab her anger into life. ‘Oh!’
For a split second she was tempted to invent an active love life—after all, she seriously doubted a man with Dante’s appetites would have been celibate. His morals were certainly flexible enough for him to not allow something like a nearly ex-wife to keep him faithful.
Would he be jealous?
It was a sign that she had a long way to go in her journey to not caring to know that she wanted him to be.
‘Does there always have to be a man?’ she countered, viewing him with arch-browed disdain. ‘I don’t need a man to complete me! Any man! I am not my m—’ She stopped before she voiced the comparison that was in her head.
It took a moment for his muscles to unclench and banish the image in his head of a faceless male exploring the delights of Beatrice’s body. He’d get used to the idea, but it was too soon yet, which sounded like a rationalisation and was, which was new territory for a man who had never understood the concept of jealousy in relationships.
But now the idea of another man appreciating Beatrice’s long lush curves, beautiful face, the shape and intensity of colour of her wide-spaced sapphire eyes, the wide, generous curve of her lips and the smooth pallor of her flawless creamy skin filled him with an impotent rage.
The idea of the laughter in her eyes and her deep, full-throttle, throaty laugh being aimed at someone who was not him made his grip on his self-control grow slippery.
‘We should have had a wild passionate affair.’ Wild passionate affairs had a beautiful simplicity. They burned bright, they hit a peak and they faded. Controlled madness that was temporary, that left no regrets, no sense of unfinished business.
His words made her flinch. ‘Instead I got pregnant… The irony is, of course, that if we’d just waited there wouldn’t have been a baby to get married for.’
His expression darkened. ‘That wasn’t what I meant, and you know it. I know you blame me for the miscarriage but—’
