by Kim Lawrence
‘Our lives touched but now—’ Touched but nearly not connected—maybe it had been the sheer depth of his reaction that had made him show restraint, and it had required every ounce of self-control he possessed not to seek the glorious woman with endless legs and golden skin he had seen across the crowded theatre foyer, or at least find out her name…but he had walked away.
When, days later, he had found himself in the front row of the catwalk show of the hottest designer of the season with…he really couldn’t remember who he had arrived with, but he could remember every detail of the tall blonde under the spotlight drifting past, hands on her hips, oozing sex in a way that had sent a collective shiver of appreciation around the audience. She had been wearing an outfit that was intended to be androgynous but on her it really hadn’t been—it had felt like Fate.
He had allowed his companion to drag him to the sort of back-slapping, self-congratulatory, booze-fuelled backstage party that he would normally have avoided, where he got to know her name, Beatrice, and the fact she had already left.
His companion, already disgruntled by the lack of attention, had stayed as he’d run out of the place…in the grip of an urgency that he hadn’t paused to analyse.
An image of her face as he’d seen it that day supplanted itself across her features. She’d stood too far away then for him to see the sprinkling of freckles across her nose. But they’d been visible later, when he had literally almost knocked her down on the steps of the gallery where the fashion show had been held. She’d looked younger minus the sleeked hair and the crazy, exaggerated eye make-up and he had decided in that second that there was such a thing as Fate—he had stopped fighting it. Never before had he felt so utterly transfixed by a woman.
She didn’t fit into any stereotype he had known. She was fresh and funny and even the fact she’d turned out to be virgin territory, which ought to have made him run for the hills, hadn’t.
A clattering noise from downstairs cut into his reminisces and made Beatrice jump guiltily.
‘How is Maya?’ he asked.
‘People are finally recognising her artistic talent.’
Her sister might think that talent spoke for itself but Beatrice knew that wasn’t the case. That was where she came in. She had done night classes in marketing during her time modelling, while everything she’d earned during that period had gone into their start-up nest egg for their own eco-fashion range.
Dante grunted, in the act of fighting his way into his shirt. Beatrice willed her expression calm as his probing gaze moved across her face.
‘Will you be all right?’
‘I’ll be fine.’ She would be; she wasn’t going to let her Dante addiction of a few months define her or the rest of her life. She had accepted that it would be painful for a while, but she was a resilient person by nature, strong. Everyone said so.
So it must be true.
When her dad had died people had said how strong she was, what a rock she was. Then when Mum had married Edward she had been there for Maya, who had been the target of their stepfather’s abuse. For a time, she had been the only one who had seen what the man was doing, because there had been nothing physical involved as he had begun to systematically destroy her sister’s self-esteem and confidence.
For a while their mother had chosen the man she had married over her daughters, believing his lies, letting him manipulate her, controlling every aspect of her life. It had been a bad time and for a long time Beatrice, more judgemental than her sister, had struggled to forgive her mother her weakness.
The irony was that marriage to Dante had shown her that the same weakness was in her, the same flaw. Dante hadn’t lied, which perhaps made her self-deception worse. She had wanted to believe he was something he wasn’t, that they had something that didn’t exist.
She pushed away the memories, focusing on the fact that she and Maya had forgiven their mother; their bond had survived and so had they. Now all they both wanted was their happily divorced mum to stop feeling so guilty.
‘And how are your parents?’ She felt obliged to enquire but could not inject any warmth into the cool of her voice.
‘Pretty much the same.’
She lifted her brows in an acknowledgement as the memory of that first-night dinner in the palace with his parents flashed into her head. The shoulder-blade-aching tension in the room had taken her appetite away, and, if it hadn’t, the unspoken criticisms behind the comments directed her way by the King and Queen would have guaranteed she was going to bed hungry.
And alone.
It had been two in the morning before she’d sat up at the sound of Dante’s tread. She remembered that waiting, checking the time every few minutes. In the strange room, strange bed, in a strange country it had felt longer.
She had switched on the bedside light.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.’
She remembered so clearly the empathy that had surged through her body when she saw the grey hue of exhaustion on his normally vibrantly toned skin. Her throat tightened now as she remembered just wanting to hold him. If that day had been tough for her, she had told herself, it must have been a hundred times worse for Dante.
‘I wasn’t asleep,’ she’d said as he’d come to sit on the side of the bed.
‘You were waiting up.’
She’d shaken her head at the accusation. ‘You look so tired.’ She’d run a hand over the stubble on his square jaw—he even made haggard look sexy as hell.
‘Not too tired.’ She remembered the cool of his fingers as he’d caught the hand she had raised to his cheek and pulled her into him, his whisky-tinged breath warm and on his mouth as he’d husked against her lips, ‘I just want to…bury myself in you.’
She pushed away the memories that were too painful now. They reminded her of her own wilful stupidity—for her that night it had gone beyond physical release. Dante had always taken her to a sensual heaven, but this connection had gone deeper, she had told herself as she’d lain later, her damp, cooling body entwined in his, tears of emotion too intense to name leaking from the corners of her eyes. She had felt so…complete.
But it had been a lie, her lie, and the cracks had started to appear almost immediately—before their heated, damp bodies had finished cooling in the velvet darkness.
CHAPTER FOUR
BEA WAITED UNTIL he had finished dressing before voicing the question that had inserted itself in her head and wouldn’t go away. If she didn’t ask she knew from experience the anxiety would start to eat away at her.
‘I was wondering…’ She paused, wishing she possessed Dante’s enviable ability to distance himself from negative emotions. The world could be falling apart, panic endemic, but Dante, all calm, reasoned logic, would stand apart.
‘Wondering?’
‘Will last night affect the divorce?’ What was the legal take on sleeping with your almost ex-husband?
‘That’s what you’re worried about?’
‘Well, aren’t you?’
He gave a twisted smile. ‘Are you going to tell anyone about it?’
The colour flew to her cheeks. ‘Of course not, though of course Maya will—’
‘Will be waiting for our walk of shame.’
‘Maya doesn’t judge.’ Or blab, which was just as well when you considered the things she had told her sister.
‘Of course she doesn’t.’
She ignored the sarcasm and pushed him for an answer. ‘Well, will it?’
‘I see no reason it should.’
‘Right, so we can forget last night happened and get on with our lives.’
‘You seem to be already doing that…’
Underneath the smooth delivery she picked up something in his voice, an unspoken suggestion that she shouldn’t be. It brought a flare of anger and she embraced it, embraced anything that wasn’t the emotion
s of this slow, never-ending, nerve-wracking goodbye.
‘Well, I thought about sitting in a room and fading away, but then I thought there might be life after Dante and you know what—’ she widened her eyes in bright blue mockery ‘—there is.’
Jaw clenched, Dante viciously shoved a section of shirt in the waistband of his trousers and dragged a hand across his hair. ‘So, who is he?’
‘Who…what…?’ She expelled a little sigh of comprehension as enlightenment dawned. This time she didn’t need to jab her anger into life. ‘Oh!’
For a split second she was tempted to invent an active love life—after all, she seriously doubted a man with Dante’s appetites would have been celibate. His morals were certainly flexible enough for him to not allow something like a nearly ex-wife to keep him faithful.
Would he be jealous?
It was a sign that she had a long way to go in her journey to not caring to know that she wanted him to be.
‘Does there always have to be a man?’ she countered, viewing him with arch-browed disdain. ‘I don’t need a man to complete me! Any man! I am not my m—’ She stopped before she voiced the comparison that was in her head.
It took a moment for his muscles to unclench and banish the image in his head of a faceless male exploring the delights of Beatrice’s body. He’d get used to the idea, but it was too soon yet, which sounded like a rationalisation and was, which was new territory for a man who had never understood the concept of jealousy in relationships.
But now the idea of another man appreciating Beatrice’s long lush curves, beautiful face, the shape and intensity of colour of her wide-spaced sapphire eyes, the wide, generous curve of her lips and the smooth pallor of her flawless creamy skin filled him with an impotent rage.
The idea of the laughter in her eyes and her deep, full-throttle, throaty laugh being aimed at someone who was not him made his grip on his self-control grow slippery.
‘We should have had a wild passionate affair.’ Wild passionate affairs had a beautiful simplicity. They burned bright, they hit a peak and they faded. Controlled madness that was temporary, that left no regrets, no sense of unfinished business.
His words made her flinch. ‘Instead I got pregnant… The irony is, of course, that if we’d just waited there wouldn’t have been a baby to get married for.’
His expression darkened. ‘That wasn’t what I meant, and you know it. I know you blame me for the miscarriage but—’
‘I blame you?’
His lips twisted in a cynical half-smile that left his dark eyes bleak as he challenged, ‘So you have never thought that if you hadn’t been forced to transplant yourself to another country, an alien environment, being isolated from everything you knew, your entire support system, you might not have lost the baby?’
‘I thought none of those things.’ But it was clear from his expression that he did. Why had she never suspected that Dante felt guilt for the loss of the baby? ‘The doctors told us that a high portion of pregnancies end early on—a lot of women don’t even know there ever was a baby.’
‘Stress plays a part in these things. And an affair would inevitably have burnt itself out and we could have parted friends.’
‘I think we have already established that isn’t going to happen. You do realise that that was spoken like a true commitment-phobe.’
Dante shrugged. He had no problems with the description, though it implied that he had been running or avoiding something, which he hadn’t.
Dante had never felt anything that inclined him to believe that he was marriage material. He would, he had always suspected, make a terrible husband. Well, on that at least he had been proved right—he had been, and he was.
‘You need to leave.’ She caught her lower lip between her teeth, her eyes swivelling from him towards the door, recognising the danger, the anger between them often found release in a physical way.
‘Yes, I do.’
It had all gone quiet downstairs but the main thing was making Dante vanish and failing that…there was no way she could smuggle Dante out without Maya seeing him. She paused mid thought, almost wanting to laugh that she had been considering the smuggling option!
About time you took responsibility for your own actions, she told herself sternly, knowing full well it wasn’t Maya’s judgement she was trying to dodge but her own. She tightened the belt on her robe, causing the neckline to gape and drawing his eyes like magnets to the smooth swell of her cleavage.
Beatrice swallowed. His eyelids had dropped to half mast; the gleam below made her throat dry.
‘That’s the exact same colour as the top you were wearing when we first met. You had something in your eye.’
‘Did I? I don’t remember,’ she lied.
‘You were making it worse, stabbing your eyes with that tissue. And swearing like a sailor. You bumped into me.’
‘You bumped into me,’ she contradicted, her breath coming fast as she remembered him taking the tissue from her fingers, ignoring her protests. ‘Let me,’ he’d said and she had—soon she had let him do a lot more.
She’d begged him to do a lot more!
‘You looked so—’ Young, fresh and a million miles away from the sleek creature on the catwalk, but even more sexy without the dramatic make-up, her pale hair no longer sleeked back but loose. It had spilled like silk down her back. He should have realised then that she was an innocent but he hadn’t, and when he had, it had been too late.
You think it would have made a difference? his inner voice mocked as he dragged himself back to the moment and watched as Beatrice shook her head.
The effort to escape the memories in her head hurt but it was worth it. She had moved on and, more importantly, she would never become her mother.
‘So, we have an understanding. From now on any communication will be through our legal teams,’ she said, making her voice cold.
‘You don’t have a team. You have a solicitor who spends more time watering his roses than looking after his clients’ interests.’
Left to that guy Beatrice would be walking away from their marriage just as poor financially as she’d walked into it, if he had not issued some instructions that made his own legal team look slightly sick. There were some lawyers who recognised a moral scruple when they saw one, but none of them worked for the Velazquez family.
‘Bea, shall I bring the coffee up?’
Dante watched as Beatrice responded to the voice that drifted up the stairs with an ‘over my dead body’ expression on her face, which she backed up with a dagger look.
Not analysing his motivation, he walked past her and pulled the door open.
‘We’ll be right down, Maya!’ He let the door close with a snap.
Feet apart, hands on her hips, she fixed him with a glare of seething dislike. ‘Well, thank you for that.’
‘Call it a parting gift.’
‘I’d call it a cheap shot.’
He sighed out his irritation. ‘Would it be preferable for me to just appear? At least she’s had some forewarning. Unless you were going to smuggle me out?’
Beatrice felt the guilty wash of colour stain her cheeks. ‘Let’s just get this over with. Don’t say anything,’ she hissed.
‘Is there anything left to say?’
‘I suppose not.’
Her expression was as blank as her voice. Once, he had been able to read everything she felt because she had worn her emotions so close to the surface. Was this what palace life had done to her?
What you did to her.
He’d set her free, which ought to make him feel good. It didn’t, but then he’d always thought doing the right thing was overhyped.
Her sister, dressed in dark ski pants and a chunky cable sweater she wore with the sleeves rolled up, didn’t turn as she continued to stir the scrambled eggs on the stove.
&nbs
p; There was an unmistakable chill in the air.
‘Good morning, Dante.’
‘Dante was just—’
‘Let’s not go there, shall we?’ Maya stopped stirring and turned, spoon in hand. She blanked Dante, which was something not many people could manage, and slanted a wry look across at her sister.
Beatrice bit her tongue, though not sure of the words she was biting back. Would the jumble in her head have emerged as a defence or apology?
Maya turned back to her stirring. ‘Want some breakfast, Dante?’ she asked, still not looking at him.
‘No, he doesn’t,’ Beatrice said before Dante could respond. ‘He was just going.’ To emphasise the point she went to the door and opened it. The waft of cold, fresh, snowy air made her gasp but she stood her ground, appeal mingled with the determination in the glance she sent to Dante.
‘Nice to see you, Maya.’ The petite figure continued to stir, presenting her back to him, but he could feel the disapproval radiating off her in waves.
The door closed; the tension left Beatrice’s body. She grabbed the back of one of the dining chairs and lowered herself into the modern plastic bucket seat. ‘How’s your head? The migraine gone?’
‘Fine. All I needed was an early night, but it seems that things got interesting after I left.’ Maya took her pan off the stove and poured a coffee from the full pot. She placed it on the table in front of Beatrice, a worried frown puckering her brow as she scanned her sister’s face.
Beatrice cleared her throat. ‘You must be wondering.’ Now there was an understatement.
Maya shook her head. ‘Just tell me you’re not getting back together, you’re not going back to San Macizo…’
‘I’m never seeing him again,’ Beatrice said and burst into tears.
As for San Macizo, the last time she had left she had left behind part of herself. If she went back she knew she’d lose what she had left.
‘Thank God!’ Maya hefted out a deep sigh of relief.
Beatrice sniffed and dashed the moisture from her face with the back of her hand.