by Virna DePaul
Dante scrubbed one of his hands over his newly trimmed hair. Just like that his genius baby sister had shined a light on something he’d been trying to keep in the dark for two months now. He and Aurora were over, but his feelings for her weren’t. And he’d never told her how he felt. Not once. And as much as losing Aurora felt bad, he suspected what felt worse was knowing he’d taken the easy way out. He’d done it to protect himself. He’d figured ending things quickly, without hearing what she had to say or saying what he wanted to say, was the best. But two months later, he was still bleeding.
He’d let her walk away without expressing how he felt about her.
So maybe, just maybe, he needed to do something about that.
* * *
“Enough, Manman!” Aurora scowled as she pulled her face clear of the makeup brush her mother was dragging over her eyelids. For some reason, Cedalie had been primping Aurora for over an hour for the Von Willebrand’s fundraiser and it was annoying the heck out of her.
Maybe it was the late summer heat. Maybe it was the fact that she felt as big as a whale. Maybe it was that she was going stag to a fundraiser she’d planned to attend with Dante and Michelle. But her mother was about one more swipe of blush away from getting pushed into the ocean.
“I just want you to look perfect, child,” Cedalie said for what had to be the hundredth time. Cedalie knew how hard the last two months had been for Aurora. She’d been a shell of herself for almost three weeks of it. Until one day, a light had kicked on. She’d told Cedalie that she wasn’t wallowing anymore. She was following in her mother’s footsteps. Raising a baby on her own, and doing it well, if not exactly fearlessly.
She still ached for Dante. And for Michelle. And for what could have been for her baby. But she had a life to live, one with her baby, and she was going to live that life and be the best mother she could be.
“Why do you even care, Mama? It’s just a fundraiser. We have them three times a year and you’ve never cared before.”
“I have a good feeling about tonight. I think you’re going to get some romantic attention.” Cedalie did up the last of the zipper on the midnight blue satin dress that cupped her breasts and swept over her very pregnant belly. The dress had a long slit up one leg, the only feature on Aurora’s body she didn’t think looked whale-ish.
Aurora scoffed and started braiding her hair. “Romantic? Please. I look like I’m carrying triplets. No man is going to make a move on me tonight.” And Dante is still halfway around the world in Spain, the last she’d heard. But she didn’t add that part out loud.
“You never know,” Cedalie said in a sing-song voice as she arranged a thin necklace of small amethyst crystals at Aurora’s collarbone.
Aurora peeked out the window at the cab that had just pulled up. “Yeah. I know.” She turned to go, felt guilty for snapping, and turned back. “But thank you for the effort.”
Cedalie kissed her daughter’s cheek, laid a hand over her grandchild, and gently pushed Aurora out the door.
Aurora tried not to groan as they pulled up to the hotel where the fundraiser was being hosted. She knew that Gio and Rose were going to be inside, which, in a strange turn of events, was actually a comfort to her. When it had become very clear that the father of her child had not taken the news well, both Gio and Rose had reached out to her many times. She often found herself with some leftovers at lunch, chatting with Rose and Gio in one of their offices.
She’d never in a million years have thought that would be the case and she cherished her new friendships.
She arranged her dress, smoothing it down, and stepped into the grand ballroom. The space had been transformed with glittery decorations and rows and rows of items they’d gathered for the silent auction part of the fundraiser. The culminating event at the end would be a live auction, and one of the most generous items had been given by Gio himself—a year of his consulting services.
She wandered through the event space, tidying this and that and greeting the first guests who arrived. She couldn’t help the dull ache in her heart whenever she thought of Michelle. She’d put the whole thing together as a way of encouraging the little girl. Wanting to give her hope for a brighter future.
Aurora sighed. She’d really hoped to share the evening with her. But according to Gio, who still didn’t know that Dante was the father, he and Michelle had left town for an extended summer vacation over two months before. They were hopping from villa to villa in Spain.
Aurora had found herself insanely jealous of Spain for getting to be with them.
Ugh. She was so sick of being sad. Not for the first time, Aurora hoped that these kinds of feelings weren’t affecting the baby. Because if so, she was going to be raising one melancholy kid.
Minutes later, the band kicked on. The party started full swing, and Aurora pasted on the best smile she could muster up.
* * *
Dante was cranky, tired, starving, and thirsty. He’d been on four planes, a train, and two taxis in the last 24 hours. After two months of sandals and shorts, his tux felt like a prison jumpsuit, and it seemed like every person he ran into wanted to say five hundred things he couldn’t care less about.
When he and Michelle had gotten off the plane, the first thing Dante had done was call Aurora. But it had been Cedalie who’d answered the phone.
“You’re a stubborn one, Dante Callaghan,” she’d said.
Dante had raised his eyes to the sky, pinched the bridge of his nose, and then wondered idly if Cedalie was enough of a psychic to know that he’d done just that. “I really need to talk to her, Cedalie.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Can you put her on?” He attempted to summon patience from some deep, deep well that he sincerely hoped he had.
“She left her phone behind tonight by accident. But you could meet her at the gala, which you will, if you’re feeling impatient, which you are.”
“Right. What gala?”
“The Von Willebrand’s fundraiser that she’s been planning? Over at the Hilton Ballroom.”
Dante had felt as if he’d been punched in the face. Of course she’d still gone through with planning that fundraiser. Because she was such a good person with such a good heart.
“Right,” he’d said again. And hung up.
He’d stopped home long enough to grab a dress for Michelle and a tux for himself.
And now he was wading through the rich clientele of this fundraiser and desperately searching for Aurora. Michelle had floated over toward the buffet table the minute they’d come in, and that was fine by him. He’d rather not have an audience for the emotional ransacking he was sure he was in for.
Dante scanned the crowd yet again. Even though he didn’t see Aurora, however, something else caught his eye.
Giovanni Esposito pulling a little redheaded woman into a back hallway, crowding her up against a wall.
What. The. Fuck.
Dante saw red. Gio was still fucking around with Rose when he and Aurora were together? Or, even worse, had Aurora agreed to be his side piece?
Dante bowled through the crowd, not giving a royal fuck whose champagne he was spilling as he made a straight line for Gio.
Rose ducked through the bathroom door just as Dante rounded the corner of the hall. He found himself face-to-face with a smugly grinning Gio.
Dante cold cocked Gio right in his dumb, handsome face.
“Jesus fucking lord, Dante!” Gio doubled over, checked his lip for blood, and straightened. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Dante was vibrating with barely contained rage. “I cannot fucking believe you’d do that to Aurora.” He viciously pointed toward the door Rose had just walked through.
Gio looked behind him, seemingly completely confused. “What?”
“You’re out here, publicly messing around with Rose right in Aurora’s face? Can’t you see that she’s a person? She’s the best fucking person? She’s got a heart the size of the universe and she seems so calm
and cool, like she can handle anything, but she’s fragile too. And you can’t just treat her like this. Like she’s disposable.” Dante had Gio backed against the wall of the hallway, each word wrenching out of him like a knife.
“Yeah, I know everything you’re saying, asshole. But I still don’t know what kissing my wife at a party has to do with Aurora.” Gio shoved Dante backward. “Or what it has to do with your dumb ass.”
Dante blinked at Gio. “You’re actually trying to pretend you’re not hooking up with Aurora on the side? Stringing her along?”
Gio’s mouth fell dead open. “What. The. Fuck.”
Dante’s brow furrowed. That reaction had seemed genuinely shocked.
“I have never, nor will I ever, hook up with Aurora LeMonde. She’s my good friend and business partner. And I love my wife, you son of a bitch.”
Dante stepped back. Confused and irritated. “But I saw you.”
“You saw me what?”
Suddenly Dante’s evidence seemed very small. Irritatingly small. “I saw you hugging her in her office a few months ago. It looked like you were…”
He trailed off.
Gio squinted his eyes, looking for all the world as if he was wracking his brain. “Hugging Aurora in her office? I have no idea what you’re… Oh. That was the day I found out about her pregnancy. I was consoling her because she didn’t know how the father was going to react to the news.”
If Gio said more, if the world kept spinning, Dante had absolutely no awareness of it. He was stunned. Utterly and completely stunned.
The last few months replayed in his head in both slow and fast motion. He felt as if his life were a spinning top that someone had just flicked to the side.
Gio, reading Dante’s face, took a step back, a little stunned himself. “You?”
Gio took a step forward then, instantly furious on Aurora’s behalf. “You’re the asshole that left her without so much as a good luck?”
Dante scraped a hand over his face, wishing that his blood would start pumping again so that he could just think.
“Was she showing?”
“What?”
“That day in her office, was she showing? If I’d walked in and you hadn’t been blocking her belly, would I have known she was pregnant?”
“Yes, that’s how I found out in the first place.”
“Oh god. I didn’t see. I didn’t know.” Dante crouched down and dragged his hands through his hair. He needed air. He looked up at Gio in absolute horror at what he’d done. “She said ‘us’. She said ‘our lives’.”
“What?”
“I thought you two were together. That she was leaving me for you. She said ‘us’ and I thought she meant you two. But she meant her and the baby. She thought I knew she was pregnant and was throwing her away. FUCK.”
Gio, reached down and dragged Dante back to standing. “Okay man, that’s really bad. Jesus, really bad. But you’ve gotta find her and explain. Step one. Just explain. Okay?”
Dante was already tearing away from his hands and jogging back into the party. His eyes wild and his heart racing.
When he spotted her standing in the corner of the ballroom, sipping from a glass of ice water and politely nodding her head at something George Mills Junior was saying to her, Dante literally stopped in his tracks.
First it was her face that stopped him. Her precious, gorgeous face, all sharp lines and big eyes. Pregnancy had made her just a bit softer, but no less beautiful. And then his eyes travelled down. To the swell of her breasts. And further down, to her rounded belly. Full with child. His child.
Dante couldn’t breathe. He wished he could say it was because of how beautiful she was, how happy he was to take this next step with her. But there was a healthy dose of raw fear in there as well. A kid. His kid. Holy shit. Dante sidestepped to the bar, signaled for a glass of whiskey, took a quick slug. He glanced around the room, clocked Michelle talking with Rose over by the buffet, then set his sights back on Aurora.
He steeled himself. Nothing left to do but nut up and go talk to her.
* * *
“So I told him that’s a firm ‘no’. If he wants to mess around with my money then I’m just going to take it elsewhere,” George Junior said, snorting into his drink in a move he’d seen his father execute many a time. It didn’t quite have the same effect.
Aurora did her best not to yawn but she wasn’t sure she could handle another word from George Junior without passing out from boredom. The man was obviously trying his best to impress her with his newfound business acumen. He’d started the conversation with his eyes glued to her belly. From there, he’d talked nonstop about how responsible, competent, and reliable he was. Aurora was vaguely touched that George Junior was still interested in her, even with the baby on board. But she was also ridiculously annoyed that the ‘romance’ her mother implied she had in store for herself tonight was currently staring down the front of her dress.
Aurora pointedly cleared her throat and George Junior blushed, right down to the shiny bald patch at the crown of his head.
He took a deep breath. “You know, Aurora, I’m a very rich man.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“I could make it so you’d never have to work again,” he plowed on.
Aurora shifted on her feet, which were really starting to kill her. She thanked god that Gio was starting to jog toward the stage. The second he auctioned off his consulting services, the night would pretty much be over and she could get the hell out of here and face-plant into her bed. No wait, she thought, looking down at her large belly… She could side-plant onto her bed. Then George Junior’s words filtered up to her. This guy was a real class act. Not.
“Are you offering to pay me for my services, Mr. Mills?”
George Junior opened and closed his mouth like a fish out of water. “Not exactly. I’m just saying that if we were to be… close, then you’d have access to certain resources.”
Bile rose in Aurora’s throat as she took a decisive step backward. Smack into a solid, warm wall that pressed one hand against her lower back in the most familiar, delicious way. Her heart stopped.
“How many times am I going to have to tell you to quit while you’re ahead, Junior?” Dante’s voice washed over her.
George Junior’s eyes narrowed. “Callaghan. I thought you skipped town. Left all your business deals in the breeze?”
Aurora willed her heart to start beating. She willed herself to turn and make sure he was truly there. But nothing happened. Her body was completely frozen in place.
“Well, I’m back now. And I’d appreciate it if you’d stop looking down Ms. LeMonde’s dress.”
George Junior balled his hands up and jammed them in the pocket of his suit. “You’re such a fucking prick, Callaghan. And you just lost yourself a valuable client.” He turned and stomped into the crowd.
“For all his sudden interest in his father’s business, he doesn’t even realize that he was never your client in the first place,” Aurora mused, her brain latching on to any detail that she could right now. Because suddenly Dante was there, in front of her. Deep blue eyes and short hair. He was a toasty tan with a short, full beard. God, he looked good enough to swallow whole.
But his eyes were pained, horrified, desperate.
He stood in front of her, gripping her shoulders. “Aurora—”
“You came back.” She felt as if she were in a dream, her words floating out of her and toward him on a lazy river.
“Yes. Michelle and I came back. I have to talk to you right now. Can we go outside?”
Aurora took a deep breath. Her vision blurred everything but his face, which was in bright, sharp definition, almost painful to look at. He wanted to talk with her. He had things to say. After two months of complete silence, the thought of actually having a conversation with him was like starving for weeks and then sitting down to a plate of filet mignon.
She’d have settled for a text.
But here he w
as, in full living color.
“Dante,” she started, lifting a hand to her hair in a lost, absent gesture. “I—”
“Aurora, will you join me on stage?” Gio’s voice carried through the banquet hall. She was dimly aware that he’d been speaking to the crowd through the microphone, explaining about Von Willebrand’s and thanking people for their generous donations. He must be about to auction off the consulting services. Is that why he needed her onstage?
Dazed, as if she were wading through hip deep water, Aurora stepped away from Dante and toward Gio onstage.
* * *
She was walking away. Dante’s breath came fast. She was walking away from him. But not before she’d looked at him like he was the fucking Ghost of Christmas Past. Stunned. Wrecked. He’d never seen Aurora look that caught off guard. And he didn’t blame her. Her baby daddy shows up out of nowhere and she’s supposed to what? Leap for joy?
He watched as Gio helped her up onstage. Dante glanced down at Michelle pulling on his pocket.
“What happened? Did you tell her? Did you know she was pregnant?”
Dante scrubbed a hand over his face. “I had no idea she was pregnant and no I didn’t tell her I love her yet.”
Then, with surprising strength for a ten-year-old girl, Michelle reached up and tugged his face down toward hers. “I swear to god, Coco. The first chance you get, you tell her everything. All of it. And you better be crystal fucking clear.”
Dante blinked at her, straightened up and stared at Aurora, so gorgeous she made his heart contract. “Got it.”
He glanced back down at Michelle. “And we’ll talk about your use of the F-word later.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She waved a hand through the air. “You can ground me later.”
Dante cocked an ear, listened to what Gio was saying.
“Not only has Ms. LeMonde planned this entire event, but the final item up for auction tonight is actually Ms. LeMonde herself.” Whispers and cheers broke out in the crowd as Aurora went sheet white on stage. She tugged Gio’s shoulder, furiously whispering in his ear.