He swung his arm to slap my ass but I dodged.
“That’s enough,” the officer said sharply.
Luis shrugged and sneered smugly at me. “I’ll post your bail,” he assured me. “And I’m a lawyer, so this’ll all be done and over with in no time. You know. Assuming.”
“Assuming what, exactly?” the officer questioned, pinning Luis to the spot with his gaze.
“Assuming she’ll work with me. Cooperate and all that,” Luis said.
His predatory gaze was all the interpretation the officer needed. A vein popped out on his forehead as his jaw worked. He glanced from Luis to me and back again, growing more red in the face and tense with every passing second. My fury was the only thing keeping me from slinking away from his intimidating presence, rooting me to the spot.
After a long moment, the officer reached forward, grasping Luis’s wrist and spinning him around.
“Hey! What’s the big idea?” Luis bellowed.
“Luis Greg, you are under arrest for falsification of a police report, sexual coercion, blackmail, and harassment. Ex-boyfriend my ass. Ms. Ramos, does he stalk you?”
“He’s always in the hallway when I am,” I answered, my voice shaking.
“I like to people-watch!” Luis whined.
“And stalking. Anything else?” The officer looked around at his colleagues and me, then back to the short, greasy man he was cuffing. “Ah, that’ll do for now. Good thing you’re a lawyer, Luis! You’re gonna need one!”
“No, wait! You don’t understand! She is a prostitute! Out at all hours, wearing practically nothing! Men in the house! You should have heard the noises coming from her room this afternoon!”
“Can we add eavesdropping? Is that a crime?” one of the officers asked gleefully as they led Luis out of my apartment.
The last officer shot me an apologetic smile as he shut the door. My racing heart slowed abruptly, my blood pressure tanked, and I slid weakly to the floor as black rings clouded my peripheral vision. I sat, just catching my breath, for a full minute.
A door opened behind me and I gasped, choking off a scream. Joel appeared, fully dressed and looked sheepish. He sat beside me on the floor and nudged me with his shoulder.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Not really,” I said shakily. “Dante thinks I’m a prostitute. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life.”
I groaned, folding over on myself until Joel squeezed me in a firm embrace.
Panic slowly seeped out of my body, replaced by a bone-level exhaustion. It was only six o’clock, but I didn’t even know if I had the energy to drag myself to bed.
Exhaustion left me numb, except for the sharp cut of Dante’s abandonment. How could he believe that, even for a moment? Didn’t he know me at all?
No, I realized. No more than I knew him.
Chapter 19
My shrieking phone ripped me out of a nightmare filled with stormy seas. I groggily reached for the place where I usually set my cell, but my hand landed on nothing but empty table. I rubbed my face vigorously and pushed my hair back, blinking up at the ceiling. The phone stopped ringing before I managed to wrestle myself out from under my covers.
“Probably wasn’t important anyway,” I mumbled as I slipped and stumbled to the floor.
When had I gone to bed? The clock said it was only 9:30, but I felt like I had been dreaming for days. I scrunched my forehead, batting away the cobwebs in my brain until the whole previous day came into focus.
“Oh, God,” I groaned. Dante still thought I was a hooker.
I had to call him.
I eventually found my phone on my desk, a breath away from a dead battery, and I plugged it in. Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and ignoring the growling in my stomach, I unlocked the phone. One missed call, from Dante.
My heart raced and my breath caught in my throat. My thumb hovered over the “call back” button as butterflies flipped my belly like a pancake. Before I had convinced myself to press the button, the phone rang again, startling me into dropping it.
“Hello?” I answered breathlessly, saving the phone from the floor at the last possible second.
“Livia!” Dante sounded relieved, which made me instantly and irrationally irritated. “Look, I need you to come to the rink. It’s important.”
I was in no mood to be reasonable. Whatever it was he wanted to say to me, he could darn well say it over the phone.
“I have a lot of work to do today,” I told him icily. “You know, lots of johns to pleasure.”
He sighed but it sounded like an almost-laugh. That only irritated me further.
“Just come,” he told me. “I need you to come.”
I needed you to stay, I thought.
“As far as I can tell, your needs are none of my concern,” I said.
I knew how I sounded. I was too hurt and defensive to care.
“Livia, damn it, get your fine ass down here and let me talk to you,” Dante growled.
I raised a brow, though he couldn’t see it, and crossed my legs defiantly.
“You can talk to me over the phone. I’m busy.”
“The hell you are. I’m not going to say this over the phone. Will you just come down here?”
There it was. That almost pleading tone I was looking for. But I wasn’t going to be satisfied until I heard him verbalize it.
“What’s the magic word?” I asked with saccharine syrup in my tone.
“Livia…!”
“Nope, wrong word. Buh-bye, now.”
“Livia wait!”
I waited.
“Are you still there?” he asked plaintively.
“For the moment.”
“All right. Will you please come down to the rink?”
“There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“No comment.”
I actually laughed, which I think surprised us both.
“Fine,” I said with as much reluctance as I could muster. “When?”
“As soon as you can,” he said insistently. “Now, or sooner.”
“Sooner than now? What kind of superpowers do you think I have?”
“Just come.”
He hung up before I could answer, and a sharp twist of anxiety curled up with my hunger, souring my belly. A large part of me still didn’t want to go; he had been so quick to leave, so eager to abandon me without hearing my side of the story.
Why did I owe him anything? But the rest of me was dying of curiosity. What did he need from me that he couldn’t ask for over the phone?
“If curiosity doesn’t win, you’re in the wrong business,” I told my reflection in my bedroom mirror. “But first…let’s handle this disaster.”
Chapter 20
I spent half an hour putting myself together. Just long enough to look like a competent human. Any more, and he might have gotten the impression that I was dressing up for him.
Which I most certainly am not, I lied to myself as I wriggled into a scoop-necked royal purple shirt which set off my eyes and breasts in equal measure. My stomach growled. I was not going to see Dante in this condition, I decided.
“Pastry, fruit, or…ooh! An avocado omelet. With…tomato and onions. That’ll take up some time.”
I allowed myself a rather witchy cackle as I dawdled over the stove. Making Dante wait gave me a sick sort of pleasure, but damn it, he shouldn’t have left me like that yesterday. It was just disrespectful. Completely understandable, perhaps, considering the shallow nature of our pseudo-relationship, but rude nonetheless.
My one mistake was adding caramel creamer to my coffee. As the cream swirled into the black liquid, it took on his exact coloring. I gazed into the cup, watching scenes and flashes from our few intense dates play out before my eyes. His hands, his chest, his gorgeous face, his incredible body.
I swallowed hard, suddenly quivering deep in my center.
“Damn you, Drake,” I said with less venom than I wanted.
I added more cre
am, but it didn’t help. It just made me wonder what our kids would look like. My mind drifted down this parallel reality, into a universe where Dante wasn’t irritating me—a universe where we had fallen in love and gotten married and had a bunch of beautiful kids.
The smell of over-cooked eggs dragged me back into this reality, and I snapped out of it with another furious curse.
“Well fine then, Dante. You get one last chance. Show me what you’re made of.”
I directed my comments at the wall, where a small girl in a blue dress gazed benignly back at me from a painting. I wondered what an apartment would look like if it combined his tastes with mine….
“Stop it,” I ordered firmly. “All right, it’s time to go. If I don’t get this over with, I’ll be scribbling Livia Drake on everything like a darn school girl.”
I left my breakfast half-finished and grabbed my jacket. The realization that Luis wouldn’t be waiting in the hallway gave me a bit of relief, and I felt unstoppable as I walked to the elevator.
Whatever Dante had to say to me, I could take it, ball it up, and shoot it right back at him twice as hard. With that thought as my armor, I drove through the morning traffic to the rink.
The security guards were expecting me, and let me in without any trouble. The one guarding the inner door smirked at me as I passed, as if he knew something I didn’t, which didn’t help my mood any.
I had spent the entire drive conflicted with myself. I alternated between being angry enough to forget that Dante Drake ever existed, and dreaming of falling into his arms over and over again. The mystery of why I was even there only exacerbated my conflict.
The rink was busy. The coach stood at one side, blowing a whistle and shouting instructions. The guys raced across the ice, a great synchronized wall of white and blue. They turned at the goal and started back the other way, weaving in and out of each other in a perfect rhythm, leaving trails like intricate braids on the ice behind them.
During the drills, I couldn’t pick out Dante or Joel (assuming Joel was even there); the team was seamless, like a single organism waving its phalanges around.
“Did you bring me here just to show off, or what?” I muttered in the general direction of the players.
Curiosity piqued, I sat on the wall in front of the penalty box and watched them work. Back and forth, in and out, around and around they went. The coach blew the whistle again, and the team instantly split into two groups. Coach dropped a puck, and they were off, playing as fiercely as they had when they were surrounded by screaming fans.
Now, Dante made himself known, taking the lead of his half. The team leader of the other side played hard, but Dante’s skill was undeniable. I wished they had been wearing their names on their jerseys, but the flashes of face that I could see through his helmet made me think that the other leader must be Joel.
Intrigued, I watched Dante signal to the other team leader half a second before charging through his defensive line and whacking the puck directly into the net. Dante skated back around, talking and gesturing to the opposing team leader. Joel (I was pretty much convinced that it was Joel, now) shifted his shoulders angrily, but nodded as Dante talked.
Could they actually be working together now?
Practice lasted another hour, and by the end of it, I could see significant improvement on Joel’s part. He won a quick round, earning a whoop from Dante which made me grin.
The cold had just begun to make me stiff when the coach called them all into a sort of loose huddle. I couldn’t hear what was said, but his tone sounded positive and encouraging—a huge difference from how he had sounded while berating Dante and Joel, I imagined.
Once the huddle broke, Dante skated over to me, beaming.
“So? What did you think?” he asked.
My defenses had relaxed watching him play, but they snapped back into place when he came over.
“I think you’re ready for a game. Why am I here?”
“To see the fruits of your labor,” he said, gesturing at the team. “This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t interfered.”
“Ah,” I said.
Disappointment? What on earth was I disappointed about? I knew the answer, but I refused to acknowledge it. I stood, twisting to break the stiffness in my back, then nodded.
“Happy I could help,” I said coolly. “If that’s all…?”
“It’s not,” he said, his grin fading. “We need to talk about yesterday.”
My lips pursed even as I nodded, and I waited in silence for him to continue.
“So…” He skated in a little circle in front of me, searching for words. “Here’s the thing, Livia. I’m not the most mature man in the world. Obviously. It took three people yelling at me before I quit with the locker room crap.”
He skated in the opposite direction, drawing a circle around what he wanted to say. Curiosity could only hold me for so long, and I was getting restless.
“Do you have anything new to tell me, or are you just going to keep explaining what I already know?” I asked.
He stopped and looked at me with a somber expression which made my breath catch.
“My point is that if I had thought about it for a second, I wouldn’t have believed it. But I got stuck thinking about you…how good you would be at that, you know…profession.”
“You really aren’t helping your case,” I said wryly.
“No, no, I mean…look at you, Livia. You’re gorgeous. Not just gorgeous, you’re damn sexy. And you’re a powerhouse under all that soft feminine exterior. If you wanted to go that route, you would be running a chain of brothels from here to Arizona.”
One of my eyebrows had been steadily creeping upward as he babbled. I wasn’t prepared to accept that as an apology, but it made for a decent explanation. It was almost flattering. He looked up at me tentatively, and I kept my expression firm.
“I’m sorry,” he said clearly and quietly. “I shouldn’t have left you there, regardless of what I thought or heard. It was wrong for me to leave you like that.”
“Yes it was,” I said, beginning to soften. “So why did you?”
“Because I had spent all day imagining that you were mine,” he said awkwardly. “And the idea that you weren’t cut my heart. I thought we had potential for something good.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. Was this argument really the hill I wanted to die on? No, no it wasn’t.
“I accept your apology,” I said finally.
“Thank you,” he said, blowing out a relieved breath. “Making me sweat on the ice. That’s talent.”
That earned him the ghost of a smile. He took it as an invitation, and skated up to the wall. He stood nearly eye-level with me in spite of the sunken rink, and I was reminded all over again just what a mountain this man was.
“You look cold, so I’ll make this quick,” he said. “I want to tell you what you’ve done for me, for the team. I want to thank you for it. Will you let me take you out to dinner tonight? On a real date. No tape recorders, no bets, no games—just you and me. What do you say?”
His nervous eyes touched my heart, and the way he bit his lip apprehensively the second the words were out of his mouth. He was really afraid I was going to say no, I realized with a shock. The possibility was strong, given the circumstances, but I never would have expected the legendary Dante Drake to fear anything. Not even rejection. It soothed my wounded ego that he would feel so strongly about my acceptance.
“Okay,” I said. “You can take me out. Pick me up at my place.”
“Fantastic,” he said with a brilliant grin. “I’ll see you at five?”
“Five’s a bit early,” I said hesitantly.
“It’s just early enough for where I’m taking you,” he said with a wink. “Trust me; you’ll love it. Wear dancing shoes.”
He blew me a kiss and skated away before I could respond, leaving me chuckling to myself. Joel skated past, giving me a goofy open-mouthed grin and double thumbs-up. I laughed
at him outright and waved my thanks as he disappeared into the hallway to the locker room.
Shaking my head at myself, I left the rink. I had a date to get ready for.
Chapter 21
For the first time since high school, I was nervous before a date. I had been out dancing before—even if it had been a while—but I doubted that Dante was intending to do the sort of dancing I was accustomed to. Gyrating in one spot with a drink in my hand had gotten very old, very fast in college, and I couldn’t visualize Dante participating in that sort of boring cliché.
I still had the recording of our first date, and replayed the part of the conversation in which he had discussed dancing. Women too old or too young for him—definitely not the kind of party I was used to. I almost backed out, but managed to push through my nerves.
By five o’clock, I had decided that if it was too overwhelming, I would feign a headache. It wasn’t the most original excuse in the world, but having an out in mind allowed me to relax regarding my inexperience.
“Ready?” he asked when I answered the door.
“Wow,” I breathed, looking him over.
He wore dark slacks and a fitted jacket over a V-neck shirt. A thin gold chain glittered invitingly over his chest, drawing my eye to the sharply defined muscles there. I looked him over twice, and his eyes crinkled at the corners with barely-disguised amusement.
Dante offered me his arm and I took it. His scent hit me—some sort of very subtle cologne clung to his natural aroma, spicing the air, enticing me.
“So, where are we going?” I asked breathlessly.
“The Dancehall Revival,” he said warmly. “It’s a great place. You’re going to love it.”
His excitement was infectious, and the last of my nerves settled to give way to my own heady anticipation. He kept the radio on in the car again, and this time, it didn’t bother me. He seemed to live with rhythm in every movement, every breath; it only made sense for him to live with music, too.
Wanna Puck? Page 9