by Tara Pammi
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, it was time to rewrite how Dante saw her. Time to stop expecting things from him from some unwritten script in her own head. “One dinner. No more.”
She’d almost walked away.
“Why does it bother you so much to be around me?”
Her face burned and it had nothing to do with the last of the day’s heat. “It doesn’t.”
“No? Isn’t that why you avoid your family home, why you never come to London? You avoid your extended family, your old friends, you move from place to place like a nomad.”
You took everything that should have been mine, she wanted to say, like she’d done once. But it wouldn’t be the truth.
Dante hadn’t taken anything her father hadn’t been more than happy and willing to give him. Dante hadn’t shattered her family. Her father had.
But when it came to him...she was still that morass of anger and attraction and something more that she was terrified to discover. “That mansion, even London, they haven’t been home to me in a long time.”
That silky, slick smile tugged up the corners of his mouth again. “It’s a relief to know then that your life’s not revolved around avoiding me then, si. See you tonight, Alisha.”
He was gone before she could blink, before she could counter the arrogant assumption. As she went home, Ali couldn’t shake off the sense of dread that settled in her gut.
She and Dante couldn’t stand each other. So why the hell was he insisting on an intimate dinner? And how would she get through it without compromising her dignity?
CHAPTER TWO
OF COURSE THE infuriating man couldn’t simply text her the name of the hotel when he’d ordered her to dress appropriately, Ali thought, as the black Mercedes weaved through the heavy traffic, leaving the bustle of the city behind.
But having known Dante since the age of twelve, Ali had made a guess.
Dante was a man who expected, no, demanded the best of everything in life. He had a reputation for being a perfectionist with his employees but then no one complained because he rewarded hard work and ambition. God, she’d really gone looking for reasons to hate him back then.
The luxury Mercedes pulled smoothly into the courtyard of
the latest on-trend, five-star resort that had been renovated last year to look like it could proudly belong in any posh European city, with the boat-filled canals of the Chao Phraya river offering a lovely view. The seafood at the restaurant was to die for, Mak had informed her, and he’d heard it from one of his many connections in high places.
Okay, so the worst thing that could come of this meeting was that she could walk away having had a delicious dinner at a lovely restaurant. And to prove to Dante that she could fake class and poise with the best of them.
She smoothed her hand over her stomach as she stepped out of the car and was pleased with the light pink sheath dress that she’d chosen to calm the butterflies. In the guise of studying the hotel’s striking exterior, she took a moment to study herself in the reflection of the glass facade.
Her long hair, freshly washed and blow-dried to within an inch of its life, fell to her waist like a dark silky curtain, her only jewelry a thin gold chain with a tiny diamond disappearing into the low V-neck of her dress. The linen dress was a cheap knockoff of a designer brand she couldn’t afford on her erratic income. But she looked like a million bucks, the fabric clinging to every dip and rise of her toned body as if it were custom designed for her.
The light pink was set off perfectly against her dusky skin and she’d let Kiki do her makeup—smoky eyes, gold bronzer and pale pink lip gloss. Tonight, she would be the sophisticated, poised Ali her mother had raised her to be, even if it killed her.
Another glance at the financial papers of her mother’s charity hadn’t changed reality. Other than a huge influx of cash, there was nothing anyone could do to save it. So, if Dante had something that could help, Ali would listen. She would treat this as a meeting with a professional.
Her beige pumps click-clacked on the gleaming cream marble floor as she walked up to the entrance to the restaurant. Soft yellow light fell from contemporary chrome fixtures. Beige walls and cream leather chairs gave the restaurant an utterly decadent, romantic atmosphere. Her belly swooped as Ali caught sight of Dante’s bent head, the thick jet-black hair glittering in the lights.
Gripping her clutch tighter, Ali looked around. Every other table was empty. She checked her knockoff watch and saw it was only seven in the evening, nowhere near closing time.
The setting was far too intimate, far too private. Just far too much a scene plucked right out of her adolescent fantasies. But before she could turn tail and run out of the restaurant, that jet-black gaze caught her.
The mockery in those eyes made Ali straighten her shoulders and put one foot in front of the other.
He stood up when she reached their booth—a cocoon of privacy in an already silent restaurant. He’d exchanged the white shirt for a slate-gray one that made his eyes pop. With his jaw freshly shaved, thick dark hair slicked back half-wet, he was so...no, handsome was a lukewarm word for Dante’s fierce masculinity.
The scent of his aftershave, with an aqua note to it, was subtle, but combined with the warmth of his skin, it sank into Ali’s pores. Every cell in her body came alive.
“Where is everybody?”
“Everybody?” he said, standing far too close for her sanity.
Ali sat down with a plop, hand smoothing over her stomach. “Yes, people. Other Homo sapiens. Who might want to partake of the delicious food I’ve heard they serve here.”
There was no mockery now when he looked down at her.
Heat swarming her cheeks, Ali ran her fingers through her hair. “What?”
His gaze swept over her face, her hair, the low V-neckline, but went no farther down. A shiver clamped her spine. “You clean up nice.”
“Oh.” The one syllable hung in the air, and she looked away, pretending to smooth her dress, putting her clutch down.
He took his sweet time sitting down, not opposite her, but on the side of the table, to her left. Ali shifted her knees away to the far right.
“If you scoot any farther down, you’ll fall off the seat. Why are you so jumpy?”
Ali stilled, clasped her restless fingers in her lap. “I’m not.”
“No? Really?”
His accent got thicker any time he got a little emotional. It was one of the tells Ali had picked up a long time ago. Pulling herself together, she met his gaze. Did he really have no idea what being near him did to her equilibrium? Did he really not feel the charge in the air around them, the pulse of undercurrents in every word, every look...? God, how was it that she was the only one who felt so much?
Not that she wanted Dante to be attracted to her. Her shoulders shook as a shiver of another kind traveled down her spine.
“If you’re jumpy around me, it means you’ve arranged a little something for me. A surprise.”
Ah...that was what he attributed it to. She closed her eyes and counted to ten. She couldn’t even blame him because back then she’d been a little devil all right.
She’d lit sparklers in his room one Diwali night that had put holes in the new suit her papa had bought him. And that had almost lit the entire house on fire.
She’d taken a hammer to his new cuff links—Vikram’s present—and minced them to so much dust.
Oh, and let’s not forget the documents for an important merger she’d taken from his room and shredded.
When he’d brought his girlfriend to meet her papa... Ali groaned at the memory. And those weren’t the half of all the destructive things she’d done to show how much she hated him.
She cleared her throat. “I told you. I’ve changed.” When he raised a brow, she sighed. “I didn’t know where we were dining. How could I arrange anything? I was just surprised to see no other patrons, that’s all.”
“I had my secretary book the entire restaurant for us.” When her mouth fell open, he shrugged. “If you were going to cause a public scene—which given my knowledge of your character seemed like a high probability—I wanted to minimize the public part.”
“Fair enough,” she replied back with all the sass she could manage. Other people would have been a buffer, other people would have distracted her from this...whatever made her skin prickle with awareness.
Luckily, before her sudden awkwardness could betray her, the maître d’ arrived.
“A bottle of your best white wine and the shrimp salad for both of us.”
Ali lifted her chin. “I don’t want shrimp.”
“No?”
His fingers touched her wrist, and again, Ali pulled back as if he were a live current.
His jaw tightened, a flare of heat in his eyes. “Even though it’s what this restaurant is famous for and you made that soft moan when your eyes came to that item on the menu?”
Her cheeks aflame, her heart pounding, Ali stared down at the menu. The words blurred, the tension between them winding round and round.
“Madam?” His expression set into a pleasing smile, the maître d’ spoke up. “If you don’t want the seafood that Mr. Vittori has ordered,” he said, “might I suggest something else?”
“No.” Ali took a deep breath. It wasn’t the poor man’s fault that Dante was playing with her. And she had played into his hands like she was still that irrational, impulsive hothead who wanted to hurt him for everything that was wrong in her world. “I’ll have the shrimp, thanks.”
“Don’t,” she simply said, once the man left.
Don’t manipulate me. Don’t rub me the wrong way. Just don’t...be in my life.
Dante leaned back, his stare intense. “Don’t make it so easy.”
Before Ali could launch into another argument, he placed a rectangular velvet case on the table. Ten minutes into the dinner and she felt like she was already emotionally wound up. She fell back against her seat. Of course, he was the master manipulator, playing on weaknesses, while he had remained untouchable.
“What now?”
“Open it.”
<
br /> Just get it over with. Just get it over with. And walk away.
Ali opened the clasp. She caught sight of the tiny, exquisitely cut diamonds set into flowers with such delicate white gold that it always took her breath away, as it glittered under the soft lights. She rubbed the necklace back and forth with the pads of her fingers, compulsively, a balloon of ache in her chest. As if the gentle love of the woman who had worn them might have rubbed off on the stones.
It had taken everything she’d had in her to sell her mother’s precious piece.
She pulled the box to her and clasped it so tightly that her knuckles showed white.
First, he had dropped the word about her mother’s charity, now the necklace. Dante never did anything without some kind of payoff. He hated her just as much as she did him, and still he had sought her out. The hair on the nape of her neck prickled while her belly went on a swan dive.
“Why do you have this? What do you want, Dante?”
* * *
What do you want, Dante?
Dante stared at the tears shimmering in Alisha’s large brown eyes, his breath punching into his throat.
It was the equivalent of a punch to his gut. He had borne enough of those in Sicily in his teenage years. Boys he’d known all his life had turned against Dante overnight; calling him names, roughing him up.
All thanks to his father’s crime.
Those boys’ punches had lit a fire in him back then, fueling his ambition to build a name for himself, separate from his father’s. They had turned his young heart into a stone that never felt hurt again.
He had craved a fortune and a name all of his own. He had decided never to be weak like that again; never to be at anyone’s mercy, least of all be controlled by a woman’s love. And he had turned it into reality.
But the candid emotion in Alisha’s face as she touched her mother’s necklace, the havoc it wreaked on him, was a thousand times worse than any harm that had been inflicted on his teenage self.
When he’d delved into those reports on Alisha, he’d been shocked to find that Alisha had visited London several times over the last five years.