“You know Phillip came by the other day,” her father said.
“Oh yeah?” Adrianna rolled her eyes upward. Why would he think that information was relevant? Did he think she’d forgotten the real reason she’d married Phillip Wright in the first place? It was because of her father. She’d married Phillip to save his good reputation so he could run for governor again. The fact that she loved and was pregnant with another man’s baby was inconsequential.
Marry Phillip or else I will disinherit you and you will be left penniless to take care of your bastard child.
Those words still rang in Adrianna’s mind as if he’d just spoken them to her. Her dying father was the reason why she’d lost the one man she’d ever truly loved: Dante Moore.
“Let’s not talk about this now, Daddy,” Adrianna replied, sitting down in the chair by his bedside and taking his hand in hers. It was amazing how frail he was given how larger-than-life he once was. She remembered cowering to his six-foot presence as a child and now here he was bedridden.
“Why did you never give Phillip the chance?” her father questioned. “He could have made you happy.”
“Daddy, must we get into this now?” Adrianna replied. She’d barely been back a few weeks and he was already bringing up a sore subject.
“You know how much Phillip loved you. Hell, still does. It’s not too late if you want to make things right.”
“Make things right, Daddy?” Adrianna rose from his bed and walked over to the window to look out over the courtyard. The overcast sky reflected how she felt. “Things were wrong the moment you threatened to cut me off if I didn’t. They were wrong because I didn’t love Phillip. I never did and I never will.”
“How can you know that? You never gave the marriage a chance.”
“After I lost the baby, there was no reason to go on with the marriage,” Adrianna returned tersely. “I’d lost the best part of me and there was no reason to continue living a farce, but I did, Daddy. I continued for three long years until you got reelected and he won the congressional seat—or did you forget that fact?”
“No, I haven’t forgotten what you did for me then or now. I’m just grateful to have you home, baby girl. This house has been empty since your mama passed.”
Adrianna felt guilty. That was the last time she’d been home for any significant period of time to see her father, which was nearly two years ago. She’d never truly forgiven him for his betrayal. She hadn’t been able to help him grieve the loss of her dear mother, probably because she felt as if she’d been living in her own private hell for years—unable to move forward, yet unable to go back, to claim a life, a love, that was denied her.
Adrianna swiftly turned around. “I know. It’s why I’m here now, Daddy. Get some rest and I’ll be back later.” She strode to the door and closed it behind her. She was walking down the hall when she collided with her cousin Madison Mitchell.
“Ohmigod! You scared the bejesus out of me,” Adrianna commented, clutching her chest.
Up until she’d moved to Chicago, Madison had been more of a sister to Adrianna than a cousin. From the time she’d been six until she’d turned twenty, they had confided all their deepest, darkest secrets to each other. Yet they couldn’t be more different. Adrianna was much more reserved than free-spirited Madison. Adrianna guessed that was why being a publicity agent suited Madison. She could go with the flow. If anyone had been expected to get pregnant at twenty, it would have been Madison, not Adrianna. She could still remember the look of absolute horror on her father’s face when he’d discovered she was pregnant.
“Sorry, cuz, I’d heard you were back in town and wanted to see how you were doing. Coming back to the scene of the crime after all these years couldn’t have been easy.”
Adrianna rolled her eyes upward. “Thanks for the reminder, Maddie.”
“Well, you haven’t lived in New York in nearly a decade so it would stand to reason you might be apprehensive about coming home.”
“Well, I’m not,” Adrianna replied, not looking her in the eye and stalking down the hall to her bedroom where somehow her bags had been miraculously unpacked. She was sure she could thank their butler, Nigel, for unpacking her belongings.
“You sure about that?” Madison asked, plopping down on her bed.
“Yes,” Adrianna said confidently. “You are looking well.” She eyed her cousin’s flamboyant blond hair, which she was sure had some weave in it, big hoop earrings, bright-colored kimono and knee-high boots. She was every bit the New York fashionista and made Adrianna feel dowdy in comparison, wearing black slacks and a pink-and-black sweater.
“Thank you, doll. So, catch me up. What are your plans while you’re here in town?”
“Well, for starters I intend to reclaim my life,” Adrianna replied. “I want to get back into cooking again and there might be an opportunity at Lawrence Enterprises.”
“Sounds promising,” Madison said, “though I have to tell you Ian Lawrence is no longer available. His attorney snapped him up and he’s head over heels.”
“I’m not interested in him in a private capacity, only a professional one,” Adrianna returned. “I hear he’s going to start a new food show on his network.”
Madison chuckled. “I never did understand your fascination with getting your hands dirty, especially when you could afford a chef, but to each his own. Is work the reason you’re back?”
“I’m here for Father. In case you hadn’t noticed, he’s dying.”
“Is that the only reason?” Madison searched her cousin’s eyes for some semblance of the truth, but saw none.
“Yes.”
“Really?” Madison raised an eyebrow. “Because I enjoyed your glowing review of Renaissance, Dante Moore’s new restaurant in Harlem. Matter of fact, I can’t wait to eat there.”
“Madison, don’t go there!”
“What?” Madison asked innocently, even though she knew that saying Dante Moore’s name out loud was sacrilege in this house.
“I said I don’t want you to go there, so drop it.”
“Fine,” Madison returned. “If you want to continue to bury the name of your first love, then fine. It’s your life.”
“Yes, it is. And Dante Moore is no longer a part of it.”
Dante put the finishing touches on the gourmet basket he was making to bring to Foodies magazine on Monday afternoon. He owed Riley Ward for the wonderful review and Dante intended on bringing this token of his appreciation for the man to enjoy for lunch.
“Wow! You’ve put together quite a lunch,” his sous-chef, Marvin Diaz, stated as he quartered several quails in preparation for the special on tonight’s menu.
“Renaissance wouldn’t be on the map if we hadn’t gotten that great review.” Dante added some truffle sauce over his roasted duck which included a savory bread pudding.
When he was finished, he packed the tinfoil containers into a basket along with a bottle of his best white wine and headed to Foodies, located in midtown Manhattan. The Foodies corporate office was a bustling hub of activity. As soon as Dante stepped through the doors, his nose instantly smelled sautéed garlic and fresh basil wafting through the air. Someone was cooking something good, perhaps for the cover?
Confidently, he strode to the reception desk. “Dante Moore here to see Riley Ward.”
“Do you have an appointment?” the receptionist, an older woman with a perfectly coiffed chignon asked.
“No, but I brought goodies.” Dante held up the woven basket.
The woman eyed it suspiciously at first, but then the aroma must have wafted through the basket because she commented, “That does smell good. But I’m sorry, our reviewers must remain impartial.”
Dante’s brows furrowed in a frown. He had come there with a purpose in mind, to show his gratitude to the man who had jump-started his new restaurant, and he had no intention of allowing the receptionist to deter him from speaking his mind. A courier approached the desk at just that moment, distracting he
r with the delivery of several large packages. Dante saw an opportunity and slid past him and into the interior offices. Dante glanced at the plaques outside each doorway until he came to Riley Ward’s. The door was closed, so he knocked.
“Come in,” a voice said from the other side.
Dante twisted the door knob and burst into the room with his basket of gourmet entrees and a large smile. Then he saw the inhabitant of the room.
“Adrianna?” Dante took in her round face, petite nose, big almond-shaped brown eyes, high exotic cheekbones and pink-tinted lips. Although her hair was longer than he remembered and hung in luxurious big waves down her shoulders and she was dressed maturely in a red streamlined sheath dress with cap sleeves, she still looked like the girl he’d fallen in love with all those years ago at culinary school.
He’d been so full of hope and promise for the future back then. After several odd jobs, he’d finally realized his talent lay in cooking, and he dedicated himself to the craft. Although he was in his mid-twenties and Adrianna had been so young and innocent, barely twenty when they’d met, the year they’d spent together had been the best year of his life and one he’d never forgotten.
“Dante!” Adrianna’s heart nearly leaped out of her chest. Coming face-to-face with the man she’d dreamed of for nearly a decade was startling. He was just as handsome, but much more muscular with a broad chest and ripped arms. The Dante she remembered was slim and clean-cut, not this edgy creature standing in front of her with a close-cropped haircut and goatee, who wore Armani and Ferragamo shoes and smelled woodsy. The Dante in front of her now was all man and looked like he had just stepped off the runway.
For a moment the last decade washed away and all Dante could do was stare into Adrianna’s eyes as images of the two of them cooking and sampling each other’s food and bodies crossed his mind, images of the two of them picnicking in Central Park or ice skating at Rockefeller Center washed over him. Then, just as swiftly they all came to a screeching halt as the memory of him coming to the apartment she’d shared with her cousin Madison and learning that she’d eloped with another man came to mind. That’s when he said, “What the hell are you doing here?”
Chapter 2
“Excuse me?” Suddenly Adrianna snapped out of her reverie as if she’d been slapped. “I could ask you the same thing. You did just burst into my office.”
Dante stepped back to take another glance at the plaque on the wall outside the door. It read Riley Ward.
“The plaque out there says Riley Ward,” Dante returned, turning the full force of his anger directly at her, “not Adrianna Wright.”
“Riley Ward is the pseudonym I use.”
“Why the cloak-and-dagger?” Dante shut the door and placed the picnic basket on the coffee table near her desk. “Why not write under your real name? Or did you do this on purpose so I wouldn’t know who you really were?” His voice was cool and disapproving.
“For your information, I didn’t want anyone to think I was using my name and influence as a way to get ahead in the business. I wanted to stand on my own two feet.” She didn’t want to use the prestige of her father being governor of New York to sway anyone to hire her.
“Oh, really? That didn’t seem to matter much to you when you ran away a decade ago to marry someone more acceptable. You were all about name and prestige.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Adrianna returned.
“Why don’t you enlighten me?” Dante had been dying to know the answer to that question for ten years and it was high time he got some answers. “Because I swore it was to marry another man even though you were spending your days and nights making love with me.”
Adrianna started to speak, but then realized she didn’t have a smart comeback. She couldn’t tell Dante the real reason she’d left Manhattan, which was that she’d been carrying his child.
Dante smirked as he walked toward her. “What? No witty retort?”
Adrianna stepped backward until her bottom was pinned against the desk. There was something dangerous about this version of Dante and she admitted she was both nervous and excited by it. His eyes were unfathomable, yet she couldn’t resist staring into them. As he approached, Adrianna’s stomach began to flutter uncontrollably and she blinked several times to stop herself from acting like a silly schoolgirl, but she couldn’t. Dante was getting to her just as he had when she was twenty years old, except this time she was supposed to be a sophisticated divorcée, not a girl. No such luck!
When he finally came to stand mere inches from her, Adrianna thought—no, hoped—he would kiss her. She’d missed the touch, the feel of those warm, full lips on hers and the swirling, dizzying, mind-blowing emotion Dante could evoke from her. She’d never felt that way when her ex-husband, Phillip, kissed her. Instead Phillip’s kisses had merely been bearable. But Dante was a whole other story.
Dante looked intently into Adrianna’s face, saw the longing in those brown depths and was close to giving in to temptation. How easy it would be to relive the past and just live in the moment, taking all she had to give. But his pride wouldn’t let him. Adrianna had made a fool of him once and he wasn’t about to let her do it again.
He caressed her cheek and leaned down until his lips were near hers. Adrianna’s back arched as she waited for him to plant one on her, but instead he said, “I know you want me to kiss you, but you know what? I’m not going to give you the satisfaction. I’m not your boy toy that you can use for a while then when you’re done toss aside for someone more acceptable.”
His head popped up just as Adrianna’s hand came toward his face and he escaped a smack to the jaw. “Ah, so there is still a spitfire in there and not some poised society wife.” He’d seen society photos of her and her ex-husband in the newspapers and magazines. She’d completely altered herself to fit a certain image. He hadn’t been surprised when he’d heard of the marriage’s demise because she wasn’t being herself.
“Damn you, Dante!” Adrianna said, straightening and walking toward the window. He’d gotten to her and he knew it. It was evident she was longing for his kiss and she was irked by her body’s response to him after all this time. She’d thought if she ever saw him again that he would have no effect. Clearly, she’d been wrong.
“No, damn you, Adrianna,” Dante replied. “So what I played with you just then. It’s no more than what you did to me ten years ago. You played with my heart and then you tossed it aside like a ragdoll.”
“I never meant to hurt you.”
“You made me believe that you loved me, only to find out you never really loved me at all. And to find out from your cousin of all people? My God, you didn’t even have the guts to tell me to my face. You were a coward!”
“I’m sorry about that, Dante, truly I am.” Adrianna turned away and faced the window. Afraid he’d see the tears forming in her eyes. He had deserved to hear the words from her, but at the time she’d been afraid to for fear she wouldn’t be able to go through with her father’s orders and Dante would see the truth in her eyes.
“Sorry? Sorry?” he yelled, coming toward her. “You snuck off like a lying, deceitful, two-timing harlot. What were you doing with me, Adrianna? Slumming? You couldn’t get your thrills from Boy Wonder so you had to go slumming in the hood with the poor orphan?”
“No!” Adrianna spun on her heel at the hurtful words coming out of Dante’s mouth. She knew she deserved them after the horrible way she’d treated him, but they were still hard to hear. “That’s not true. I loved you, Dante.”
“So now we get to the truth.” Dante’s eyes grew wide as he spoke. “You loved me, just not enough, right? I didn’t come with all the trappings of wealth like Phillip. I was just some poor struggling sous-chef, not an upcoming congressman being groomed into politics. I had nothing to offer you back then. And you were accustomed to a certain lifestyle. Or so your father told me when I confronted him.”
“You confronted him?” Why had her father never told her
?
“Yes, because I just couldn’t believe that the woman I loved would treat me that way.”
“I’m sorry, Dante. I had no idea.”
“Your father had no problem filling me in on exactly who you were. He explained that you never truly loved me and that you were taking up with me, just to get back at him. It was teenage rebellion, he’d called it. And since I was older, I should be able to understand, a child getting back at their parents. But you know what, Adrianna? I didn’t understand it one damn bit.”
Tears sprung to Adrianna’s eyes. “Dante, you are so wrong.”
“You know, Adrianna, I don’t see you giving me another explanation, but what I don’t get is why come back at all? Why give my restaurant a glowing review? Why not give the review to someone else?”
“You’re right. I could have given your review to another reviewer, but I didn’t want to. I felt I owed it to you.”
“So you didn’t think my food was great?” Dante’s temper rose slightly. Now, he was insulted. “You just felt guilty. Were you lying in the review?”
Adrianna shook her head vehemently. “Of course not. I would never compromise my reputation. The food at your restaurant and the service was impeccable. I tasted it myself. That’s why you got a good review, nothing more.”
Adrianna had come to his restaurant? When? Why hadn’t he seen her? It was hard to believe she would have ever gotten past him. Had she been in disguise? “And you’re back now? Why?”
Adrianna’s head hung low. “My father is ill. Cancer.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Dante responded softly. Howard Wright was not one of his favorite people. He remembered the first time they’d met. He’d come bursting into the restaurant Dante had been working in at the time, demanding that Dante end the affair with his daughter. He’d been quite insistent that Adrianna was better off with Phillip Wright, a man more suited to someone of her class and education, but Dante had said he wouldn’t give her up. He had no idea that six months later Adrianna would betray him. Despite that, Dante didn’t wish illness on the man.
Two to Tango (Harlequin Kimani Romance) Page 2