by Dani Collins
“He?” Dante spun. “We’re talking about Cami Fagan. Aren’t we?”
“She’s the victim, yes.” Vito nodded. “But Arturo is the criminal who has been representing himself as Benito and taking her money.”
* * *
How the hockey playoffs were still on when summer tourists were invading the city, Cami didn’t know, but she didn’t complain. She needed the tips, and this working-class pub, with its big screens and loyal regulars, was brimming with generous fans.
She was tending bar and still run off her feet. At least they mostly drank beer, which meant about a million draft pours, but not a lot of time-consuming mixed drinks. Wings and margaritas night was a nightmare.
Either way, dropping a full tray of clean glasses was not helpful.
She did it anyway, when she turned from the pass-through and saw Dante at the end of the bar, looking right at her. He wore a leather jacket, sunglasses and a five o’clock shadow. His mouth was a grim line that sent a numbing sear of adrenaline shooting to her fingertips and toes.
I’m not ready, was her only thought before the tray hit the floor in front of her toes. The smash crescendoed above the din, and shards of glass peppered her pant legs.
The crowd roared as if she had scored a goal.
Her shift partner in the narrow space, Mark, said, “Nice job, kid,” and reached past her for the second tray, then continued filling orders, double-time.
Cami did what many a server had done in such battle conditions. She swept the glass into the space behind the garbage bin, silently promised a proper clean up later, put the broom away, washed her hands and got back to work.
She was shaking like she’d been through a war, though. Or was still on the battlefield. What was he doing here?
Trying to ignore Dante was impossible, but she gave it a go, continuing to work, but taking a moment to get Mark’s attention. “See that guy at my end of the bar? Can you serve him?”
“You got it, kid.” Mark was a student friend of her brother’s, which was how she got the job. “He wants to know what time you’re off work,” Mark said after providing Dante a beer.
“Half past get out of my life,” she muttered, but didn’t expect Dante, or even Mark, heard her. The music wasn’t audible over the din of voices and sportscaster calls, and the servers were yelling to be heard across the narrow, scarred wooden top of the bar.
She would have to talk to Dante at some point, though. She had faced that two days ago, when she had used an over-the-counter test and learned her life would be intertwined with his forever.
Or not. It was still early days. Things happened, not that she wished for a miscarriage, but that was pretty much how her life always seemed to go, especially if something good had come along.
Was an unplanned pregnancy “good”? She hadn’t had time to process it, just knew that either way, it was a disaster of some proportion. She had expected to have time to put a plan in place before she had to face him. Never in her wildest dreams had she expected him to come looking for her. Why was he even here? She so wasn’t ready to talk to him yet!
She threw herself into work, feeling the loss acutely when Dante disappeared. Had it been an accident, his coming upon her? Maybe he didn’t want to see her, which now made her perversely anxious to speak with him.
Minutes later, she spotted him where he’d found a seat and nearly dropped another glass. For the rest of her shift, each time she glanced over, he was looking in her direction.
When the game finished and patrons filed out, leaving free seats at the bar, he took one, saying, “Cami.”
That voice. That accent. How was this man her complete undoing in every way?
“Mind walking me home?” she asked Mark as the servers came up with their last call requests. “Or should I text Reeve?”
“I’ll walk you home,” Dante said in a low growl. “My car is parked outside your house.”
“Stalker,” she started to say, then did a double take as she realized how truly awful he looked. When he wore stubble, he usually cleaned it up around the edges, but this looked like two days without shaving. Or sleep. His eyes were sunken pits, his hair disheveled, his face lined with weariness.
Not Bernadetta. She had been running a damp cloth over the marble top of the bar, but stopped. “What happened? Is your grandmother—”
“She’s fine. But I have to talk to you.”
She flinched at the granite in his tone and went back to her closing rituals. “You need to accept my transfers.”
“It’s about that, Cami.”
Of course it was. She had stupidly pined for him all this time while he was here to talk bank balances. Again.
She shook her head, but when the lights came up, she said good-night to Mark and the rest of the staff, collected her purse and the fleece she’d stolen from her brother, and let Dante hold the door for her.
“What?” she prompted as they started down the sidewalk. Her guilty secret quivered deep in the pit of her belly.
“This is a terrible neighborhood,” he said tightly, glancing into a dark alley as they passed.
“I didn’t ask you to come here.”
Grim silence was his reply.
She tried not to feel anything, but words, so many words, crowded her throat. She had had enough time to reflect on their affair and realize how badly she had been fooling herself, thinking they were friends. Or something. Maybe being a virgin had made her susceptible to seeing more than was there, but even before the blow up with Arturo, she had begun to realize she was nothing more to him than a paid companion. It had hurt so badly. His resurgence of suspicion had been a final nail in the coffin.
What would he think about her pregnancy? She didn’t know how to tell him. Didn’t think she could face his reaction. There was zero chance it would bear any resemblance to happiness.
She brushed a wisp of hair from her cheek with a shaky hand. “Where’s your cousin?”
He drew a long, deep, pained breath.
“Never mind,” she muttered. “I don’t even care. He did me a favor. You were treating me like—The whole thing was toxic and never should have happened.”
I don’t mean you, baby. She had to fight placing a protective hand over her stomach.
Dante swore and ran a hand down his face, not disagreeing.
She swallowed, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other when his next words had her stumbling.
“Arturo is negotiating a plea deal while investigations are underway into his bank fraud, industrial espionage and ties to organized crime. He’s the one who did it, Cami. Not your father.”
“What?”
Dante caught her elbow to steady her.
That tiny touch sent yearning shooting through her, blanking her mind for a millisecond.
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I.” She heard the rage in his voice and the pain that underscored it.
His touch tightened briefly, then he nudged her into motion. She walked on in stunned silence, afraid to believe. She couldn’t even try to comprehend what it meant for her, him, or them.
All of them.
“My father is innocent? That’s what you’re saying?” she finally had to ask. To hear it aloud.
“Yes.”
“But he signed a confession.”
“Desperate people do desperate things.” He wasn’t just talking about her father.
Would he think that’s what this baby was? An act of desperation on her part?
They arrived at the dilapidated house that had been converted to four separate apartments a generation ago. The landlord was decent enough. Leaks were fixed and there was always heat, but he didn’t put a penny into it that he didn’t have to.
A lot of students lived in this area, along with some struggling single parents and yes, some drug users and ne’er-do-wells. Cami had made do in places like this before without shame.
But Dante’s rented town car stood out like a gleaming, man
icured thumb from a weathered work glove, making her embarrassed of her circumstances. She was at an utter loss as to how to react to any of this.
“Is your brother up? I want to talk to him, too.” He reached to open the gate and hold it for her. The chivalry disconcerted her. She dumbly led him around the cluttered side of the house to the stairwell of their entrance.
She tried the door and found it unlocked, which Reeve often did when she was due home. He was in his room and called, “That you?”
“Yes. Can you come out?”
“Lemme finish this.”
She hung her brother’s fleece on a chair back as Dante came in behind her.
He closed the door and pushed his hands into his pockets, taking in the shabby furnishings and the corner shelf she’d claimed as a makeshift closet. Her backpack stood beside it. Her bedding was folded and stacked on the end of the sofa.
“That’s where you sleep?” he asked, glancing from the lumpy cushions back to her with an accusatory glance.
She ought to be feeling superior. Vindicated. Instead, she felt less than ever. She folded her arms, muttering, “Don’t judge, Dante. You’re in no position.”
“I’m aware,” he stated flatly, and took in the clean dishes by the sink, the cupboards long past needing painting, the mismatched furniture. “This is how you live? How you’ve been living all these years?” He met her gaze for one second before looking away, deep emotion contorting his face. “It makes me sick.”
Her heart tilted on its edge and she wanted to say, Whose fault is that? But she could see he was in the throes of disbelief and betrayal as much as she was. She didn’t want to feel compassion. He didn’t deserve it. But she still suffered for him. A desire to reach out, emotionally and physically gripped her.
“I can’t imagine how difficult this is for you,” she murmured. He’d always spoken about his cousin with such warmth.
“I think you can,” he said with weighty perception. “Having worn these shoes all these years. Wrongly.” His voice dropped into his chest.
Her own chest ached, unable to stand seeing such a strong man humbled.
“What happened?” She tucked her cold hands beneath her arms, still unable to believe he was even here, let alone with such a message.
“Arturo has gambling debts. Big ones. It’s been a problem from his twenties, not that I or anyone saw it. If he hadn’t colluded with Benito and taken my design and emptied the account, framing your father for it, he might have been killed at that time. As it was, the windfall put him back in good graces with his bookie. He burned through it, though, and fell into trouble again. That’s when he started badgering you to pay your father’s so-called debt.”
Reeve came out of his room. His scowl of confusion at having a visitor so late deepened as Cami introduced them.
“We’re not talking to you. Just take the payments and stay out of our lives,” Reeve growled.
Cami hadn’t told him all that had transpired in Whistler, only that Dante had refused to hire her and that the payments had been going to a fake account. He was beside himself over the whole thing. They’d stopped talking about it to keep the peace.
“Dad didn’t do it,” she said numbly, but stating it with her own mouth didn’t make it any less surreal. She explained, and Reeve swung his attention to Dante.
“When did you find this out?”
“A few days ago.” Dante rubbed his stubbled jaw. “A lot has happened very quickly, but I needed to inform you and...” He drew a heavy breath. “Express my deepest regret that your father was implicated. I will be compensating you as best I can.”
He reached into his jacket pocket for a narrow envelope and set it on the battered kitchen table.
“That’s a reimbursement of the amount you deposited to the Benito account. There are things to unravel in terms of the settlement your father paid before leaving Italy. It’s at least three times that, and you’re entitled to interest and damages. You’ll see in the letter from my lawyer that this is merely a deposit as a sign of good faith. More will be forthcoming. Hire your own lawyer and have them contact ours. Legal costs will be covered on my end.”
“You can’t be serious!” Cami exclaimed, thinking of Dante’s struggle to recoup his losses the first time. “Won’t that break you? I mean financially?”
Reeve made a choking noise. “Who cares? I’d like to break his face.”
“Reeve!”
Dante only looked at him as if to say, Go ahead.
Reeve looked tempted but shook his head. “I’m going to be a surgeon. I’m not going to shatter my hand no matter how much you deserve it.”
“It wasn’t him, Reeve. He’s as much a victim as we are.”
“He took ten years to look at anyone but Dad. He fired you without even blinking.”
Cami pressed her clasped hands against her navel, thinking that wasn’t all he’d done.
“I want you to come back to Sicily with me,” Dante said to her. A pang of fearful hope soared through her, abruptly falling when he added, “To make a statement.”
“Like hell,” Reeve muttered. “We’ll communicate through lawyers. Stay the hell away from both of us.”
“Reeve.” Her brother didn’t know there was another party in this who had some rights. Someone for whom she had to get things right to the best of her ability. How? She felt as though she was plummeting from an airplane without a chute, unable to grasp at anything solid.
“When are you leaving?” she asked Dante.
“As soon as you’re packed.”
“You don’t owe him a damned thing, Cam.”
“I have to give notice at my job. We owe rent in four days.” She dug in her purse for the tips she’d brought home, intending to put it in the jar, but Dante halted her by speaking to Reeve as he pointed at the envelope he’d brought.
“There’s enough to cover your tuition for the next few years along with significantly better housing. You sleep wherever you want, but she’s either coming with me, or going to a hotel. I won’t have her living like this one more night.”
“We’ve already started looking for something else,” Reeve said defensively.
It was true. He’d been pushing through exams and she’d been saving up for the damage deposit. His standards for himself were considerably lower than what he wanted for Cami, but now they were together and combining resources, they could afford something slightly better.
She hadn’t told him yet that they would need room for one more. It struck her that all of her plans, once again, were being shaken apart.
“My grandmother would like to see you,” Dante said. “She has never known anything about this until I had to tell her that Arturo was being arrested and why. She’s extremely upset that you were hurt and would like to apologize. I want to put her mind at rest sooner than later.” “That’s emotional blackmail,” Reeve interjected.
“Look.” Cami held up staying hands. “This is too much to take in. I can’t think when I smell like spilled beer and nachos. I’m getting in the shower, then going to bed. You go to your hotel or wherever you’re staying. I’ll text you in the morning.”
* * *
Dante was still there when she emerged fifteen minutes later. She hadn’t come up with anything fresh while she’d been under the weak stream of hot water. In fact, she’d only realized how exhausted she was. How worried and ill-prepared she was for a baby. How terrified she was of Dante’s reaction.
He and Reeve sat at the kitchen table, each with a cup of fresh coffee steaming before them. They had the paperwork open. The tension was so electric it crackled.
“You should have told me,” Reeve said as she searched out her hairbrush.
“What?” She rarely kept anything from him so couldn’t imagine—
“That you two were involved in Whistler.”
Her heart took a plummet into her bare feet. She glared at Dante. “Why on earth would you tell him that?”
“He asked.”
&
nbsp; “What made you—?” She shot a look to her brother, the budding doctor.
He glared at her, and she realized he was remembering this morning, when he had asked with concern, Did you throw up again? It was the second time he’d caught her, but probably the tenth time it had happened.
He looked ready to spit nails. “He wasn’t accepting your transfers. I couldn’t figure out why.”
Lovely. Now he knew the sordid depths she’d sunk to.
“I’m entitled to a private life,” she muttered, digging through her bag for moisturizer, wanting to cool her hot face.
“Cami.” Reeve waited until she looked at him. “We don’t need this.” He flicked a finger at the papers before him. “Whatever you think you have to do, you don’t. With this debt off our backs, we have options. I’ll take a couple years off school if necessary. We’ll figure it out. We always do.”
She had never loved him so much as she did in that moment. With a lump in her throat, she nodded. “Thank you. But... I should go. For Dad.”
She hadn’t consciously thought that through until the words left her, but she did want their father’s name properly cleared.
Reeve’s mouth tightened. “I’ll go, then.”
She shook her head. “No, I will.” She also had to think about what her child might need. Dante’s child.
She couldn’t look at him. Her hands shook as she began to pack.
CHAPTER NINE
ADRENALINE HAD KEPT Dante going until he’d seen Cami. When he finally had his eyes on her, his world shattered along with the glasses she had dropped. The cold fog he’d barely acknowledged, the one that had encased him in the last month, since finding her gown on the floor, had finally lifted—only to be replaced by a more poignant, misty one. She was every bit as beautiful as he remembered, radiating light and warmth, looking soft and natural and sweet.
Until she’d seen him.
She’d closed up like a flower, a trampled one, turning away and refusing to speak to him. He had hated Arturo, then, genuinely hated his cousin for costing him this. Her.
Much as he’d loathed watching her sling beer past midnight, he had ignored his own ale in favor of drinking in the sight of her.