by Dani Collins
At night—oh, the nights. Could she spend the rest of her life joining her naked body to his every single night? There, at least, she had no doubts.
In fact, as the days wore into high summer, and her new doctor confirmed her pregnancy was coming along with textbook perfection, and her brother’s flight was booked so he could give her away at her wedding, she almost began to believe they had a chance.
She almost believed that someday, somehow, Dante might come to love her as she had come to love him.
Was she fooling herself all over again? Doubts crept in when she was alone like this, flicking through wedding dress images on the terrace. She lifted her gaze from the tablet to the idyllic view toward Mount Etna, astonished to find herself in the middle of a fairy tale.
She had learned the hard way not to believe in them, so how was she here, living one? How long could it really last?
Desperate for reassurance, she went looking for her intended. He had a lot of pressures on him right now, but no matter how busy he was with work or anything else, he always looked pleased to see her. Sometimes he took a break for coffee with her, occasionally a flirty kiss turned into a sexy tussle on top of his desk. If nothing else, his physical infatuation with her kept her heartened for their future.
Today, however, he had someone with him. She paused beyond the cracked door, not wanting to interrupt, then freezing to the floor when she heard her name.
* * *
If one of his more passionate relatives had confronted him, Dante might have taken it less seriously, but his uncle Giorgio was a tax auditor, one of the steadiest, most analytical and logical men Dante knew. He was also a neutral party, being married to Noni’s fourth daughter and never having shown favorites among his many nieces and nephews. He’d always been the ultimate egalitarian mediator, in fact.
“Arturo’s behavior aside, her pregnancy is awfully convenient.”
“You’re a bit late for ‘the talk,’ zu.”
“Have you had a paternity test? This wedding is very rushed. It’s not like you to be so impulsive, Dante.”
He was aware. When he had gone to Canada, he’d been driven by a need to provide restitution for Arturo’s crime against Cami and her family. Yes, he could admit that deep down he had longed to see her again, but given the circumstances, he hadn’t expected her to get on a plane with him, let alone into his bed. Her pregnancy had been a convenience for him, allowing him to pull her back into the intimate relationship he wanted.
Needed.
Damn, that scared him.
“You don’t even know for certain that the baby is yours. We already have a lot to lose. Insist on a paternity test before you marry her and wait until Arturo’s guilt is proved in court. You aren’t responsible for his actions or anyone else’s, but you are responsible for your own. Do your due diligence. Be certain this time that you’re not just seeing what you want to see.”
That stung because it was true. He had never once suspected Arturo’s involvement because it was too great a betrayal to consider. He had let himself see Stephen as the thief instead.
“Keep your eyes open,” Giorgio continued. “Even if the baby is yours, you have to question her motives. She was in a tight spot with you. It’s not as if this is a love child.”
Dante burned under that remark, trying to shutter himself to such a possibility because the idea of being in love meant being even more vulnerable to her than he already was.
“Point taken,” he acknowledged, only wanting his uncle to leave before he betrayed himself further. “I’ll give it more thought.”
Once he was gone, Dante stood at the window, only realizing as her lounger stayed empty that he was waiting to see Cami come back to it. He was entirely too susceptible to her. Too dependent.
But the piece of the puzzle that his uncle didn’t have, Dante realized, was that Cami had never lied to him. He had begun their association with condemnation of her and her family, yet she had proved herself again and again as truthful and trustworthy.
Sweat popped onto his brow as a disturbingly vivid memory came over him of that first time she’d proved it. Her first time. She had trusted him with herself. Then, when she had had a chance to walk away from him with perhaps not riches, but certainly a bonanza by the standards she’d been forced to live under, she had left it on the floor of his hotel suite.
She had tried to pay her father’s debt in good faith and, even more shocking, when she had learned her father was innocent, she hadn’t taken a stake to Dante’s heart. She hadn’t hidden his child from him. She had agreed to marry him, despite all the ways he’d damaged her life.
At no time had she betrayed him. She was the most steadfast, loyal, lovable—
A flash of blue caught his eye. His chauffeur was carrying her battered, full backpack to the car.
Oh, hell, no.
* * *
What could she possibly say to Bernadetta except, I’m sorry?
Hovering the pen over the paper, Cami almost wrote, I’m not brave like you, but that just made her feel ashamed of herself for running away. What was she supposed to do, though? Put up with having an ax over her head forever? She couldn’t. If today wasn’t the end, then something else would come up.
Something always happened. She would far rather be the one to choose how she and Dante parted than invest more of herself and feel the break that much more deeply in the future. It already hurt so badly she could hardly breathe.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Dante asked, coming into the library and shutting the door with a firmness that was very close to a slam.
The sharp noise cut into her, making the agony she had been holding off flood through her in a wave. She tried sitting straighter in his grandfather’s antique rolling chair, but when Dante came to lean on the desk and glare at her over it, she wanted to wither. She pushed to her feet, chest tight.
“My Sicilian isn’t great,” she told him, hearing the strain in her voice “But I got the gist. You want a paternity test. Fine.” She threw down the pen. “But I’m not going to marry a man who won’t take my word on something so basic.”
“You’re going to let one ugly accusation destroy the life we’re trying to make? Which one of us is having trouble trusting?”
“Oh, come on, Dante. One accusation is all it took the first time. My entire life is still being destroyed by one ugly accusation.”
Through the moisture gathering in her eyes, she saw his head snap back as though he took her words as a blow on the chin. His face contorted with emotion. Something that might have been despair shadowed his eyes.
“And you can’t forgive me for believing my cousin instead of your father.”
How was it that she could withstand her own pain, but not his?
“It’s not about forgiveness. I wanted to believe my father was innocent despite the evidence.” She tapped her chest. “I completely understand why you didn’t imagine your cousin could have done it. We want to believe in the people we love.”
“That tells me how you feel, then, doesn’t it?” His face was sharp and tight, his lips white.
How could she admit to her own love when, “You don’t love me!”
That was the excruciating heartbreak she was trying to escape, unable to face it when her own heart was so completely his.
“You will never believe in me, despite how much I’ve tried to prove...” She had to bite her lips to steady them. Swallowed past the tightness in her throat. “I can’t live my life like that. If you don’t trust me, I can’t trust this.” She waved between them. “I won’t build castles on clouds.” She started to walk around the desk and out of the room.
“I love you,” he ground out.
The words went into her as an arrow, making her suck in a deep breath. “Don’t. At least keep truth between us.”
“You dare to suggest I would lie about that?” He grasped her by the shoulders, swinging her to face him. “I should have—” His hands tightened briefl
y on her, revealing the deep emotions gripping him. “I should have said it when we were still in Whistler, but do you think I knew what it was when I’ve never felt this kind of love before? Passionate and intense and so quick to rip me apart I still can’t take it in?”
“Dante.” She pleaded for him not to make this harder. “I don’t get happily-ever-after. My life never works out. It always falls apart, and I can’t bear that I’ll start to believe the things you’re saying only to have it all disappear. I have to go now, before it’s more than I can survive.”
“It’s already too late. Leaving would kill us both.”
She teared up and he smoothed his hand over her hair, soothing her as he drew her stiff body into his chest and pressed his mouth to her temple.
“This is my fault. I’ve destroyed your ability to believe in the future, but you have to give me a chance to fix that. To prove we have one.”
“We’re always going to be who we are.” She set her hands on his waist, not sure if she wanted to embrace him or push him away. “The past is always going to have the power to rear up and destroy us. I can’t live like that, waiting for it to happen. I can’t build something that means everything to me, then lose it.”
“So you want to throw it away now? No. Listen to me.” His arms tightened and his breath stirred the hair near her ear, sending tingles down her nape. “We are who we are, but not who you think. We aren’t enemies. We were meant for one another, Cami. If you leave today, we’ll only come back together later. It’s inevitable. Your father invited me to come see you ski, did you know that?” He drew back to look her in the eye. “I made an excuse, but if things hadn’t gone to hell, I would have come one day and watched you and fallen for you then, because you’re that amazing and wonderful.”
“I was fourteen,” she scoffed, closing her eyes against the alternate reality where she crushed on the young man who so impressed her father and he loved her back. She won medals while he designed futuristic cars. They married and had children who grew up knowing their grandparents.
“I would have waited for you. I did wait.” He growled. “You didn’t find anyone else, either. It took far too long, but we came together again under yes, difficult circumstances, but we came together. What are the chances of that? Hmm? And that we would fall for each other even with this mess between us?”
He combed her hair back from her face, tilting up her chin and letting his gaze wander the delicate line of her jaw, grazing gentle fingertips against her cheek and the sensitive hollow beneath her ear.
“We scare the hell out of each other, our feelings are so strong. So yes, our trust needs time to grow deeper roots. It’s been rocky, but even if you aren’t ready to believe in me, you have to believe in us.”
Her chin crinkled. She searched his eyes for some evidence he was being fanciful, but he wasn’t a man to make up nonsense.
“Can you really look past...everything?”
“I already did, when I kissed you the first time in Whistler. Can you?”
“I want to.”
The tension in his hand, where it had slid to the side of her neck, eased into a gentle caress. “Because you love me?”
She could hardly take in that he was using that word. With her. Her chest felt too full, like it would split from the pressure swelling her heart. “I do,” she admitted with a scrape in her throat. “I love you a lot.”
He grew very somber. “You humble me with your capacity to forgive. Your generous heart. I will never take you for granted. You can believe in me. I will prove it to you.”
He started to kiss her, but her hand went to the middle of his chest, holding him off. “But what about the paternity test?”
His expression softened. “Of course you’re carrying my baby,” he chided. “I could hardly tell my uncle I remember exactly when we conceived, in vivid detail, could I? My only regret is that you were angry with me that day. Unsure of us. But we were already in love, Cami. Damn right that’s my child you’re carrying.”
He placed his hand over the very slight bump that was really only visible to him because he knew her shape so well. She blushed, but teared up, too.
“It was a very small chance we took that day, yet look how it’s binding us together,” he said, lifting his gaze to hers.
Perhaps they were fated.
As the light in his eyes continued to pour through her, she began to believe it. With a shaky smile, she lifted onto tiptoes and let the love on his lips absorb into her soul. She didn’t imagine she could taste it. She knew it as a tangible thing that filled her with growing joy and a euphoric certainty that was so sweet and precious, her tears sprinkled past her lashes onto her cheeks.
Three weeks later, she took her brother’s arm. He was terrifically handsome in a morning suit. Her dress had an empire waist to hide her small bump.
“I don’t want to give you away,” Reeve said with a rueful smile. “You’re all I have. But you look so happy...”
“I am, Reeve. I really am,” she said, still stunned by it herself. The fragile trust between her and Dante had been growing exponentially, concentrating into something that centered both of them on a foundation that brought her peace for the first time in her adult life.
She spoke her vows a short time later, basking in the light of her husband’s gaze. She looked to their future without trepidation and told him as much in their candlelit honeymoon suite.
“I don’t know what our life will look like in ten years, but I can’t wait to find out.” He drew her into his arms.
Their kiss began sweet and unhurried, so tender she grew choked with emotion. He was every bit as thorough as he usually was, ringing pleasure through her again and again, but with a new quality to each touch, each kiss, each caress.
It was commitment and worship and love. So much love.
EPILOGUE
SOME MIGHT CALL it spoiling, but Dante held their son until he fell asleep.
Leo was tall for two, all arms and legs as he dangled against Dante’s shoulder. His chubby limbs dropped to the mattress as Dante gently put the boy into his toddler bed.
Cami hadn’t said a thing as her husband had spent the evening doting on their son, bathing him and getting him into his pj’s, then reading and finally holding him and rubbing his back until the boy’s head had been heavy on his shoulder.
Leo wasn’t upset or ill. No, Dante was the one who had had a very difficult day. Arturo had been sentenced and taken to prison.
When Dante had come home drained and withdrawn, seeking comfort by coddling their son, Cami had done her best not to intrude. She knew how healing a child’s love was, so innocent and unconditional and pure. Anytime her own ghosts reared their head, she looked at her son and fell in love with her husband all over again for giving her their child.
Children.
This entire week had been busy and difficult, so she had kept the news to herself. They weren’t consciously trying for another one, and she wasn’t entirely sure how he would react. With his mind in turmoil along with his heart, she hadn’t wanted to put something else on him. Maybe it was even a bit selfish of her. She didn’t want something that brought her so much joy to be linked in his mind with something that was nothing but pain.
He turned and saw her watching him from the doorway to Leo’s room. He checked briefly, then hitched his shoulder in a rueful shrug.
She smiled her understanding. It was the sort of telepathic communication that came between parents who didn’t dare risk waking an infant by speaking aloud.
As he carried the baby monitor from their son’s room and closed the door, he caught her hand and drew her toward their own room.
Her heart took the skip and jump it always did when he touched her. A warmer, more tender emotion flowed through her. It was her turn. He needed her now.
They didn’t speak when they entered their room. He only closed the door and drew her into his arms. The baby monitor clattered onto the dresser top so he could use both hands
to remove her clothing.
His urgency sent a surge of need through her. She needed this, too, she realized as their mouths met in a clashing kiss. She hadn’t felt threatened by these latest events exactly, but it had been a test, taking up Dante’s time and attention. She needed this conflagration to fuse them back together again.
It was frantic and quick against the wall. He exploded with a muffled cry at the same time that she did, which wasn’t like him.
As he stood panting and damp against her, he said, “That was a lot more intense than I meant it to be.”
With a lurch that seemed almost drunken, he straightened, pulling her with him so she clung with her thighs to his waist, keeping them joined as he took them to the bed.
“I don’t mind,” she told him, kissing his jaw and neck. “I like knowing you can’t resist me. That I can still undermine your control.”
“But you’re pregnant. I should be more careful.” He lowered her to the bed and came down on top of her, hardening afresh within her.
“You know?”
He frowned. “You think I don’t know your body as well as you do?”
“I wasn’t sure how you’d feel,” she admitted, revealing the tiny wrinkle of doubt on her heart. “If you were ready for another.”
“Past ready. Elated. Aren’t you? Is that why you haven’t said anything?”
“I’m thrilled, but I was worried it was, I don’t know, more than you wanted to hear when you were dealing with so much this week.”
“Are you kidding? Having good news was the only thing that kept me going. If anything, I needed to know that you and I were stronger than ever.” He cupped her head in two hands, touching his lips to hers. “I needed to know you were tied even more tightly to me, so you wouldn’t let the past cause you to give up on us.”