Her gratitude was obvious. She linked her hand with his and together they cut through the crowd.
Maggie watched them go, her eyes heavy with hurt. They’d come here together, so why was she surprised that they were still acting like a couple. What did she expect? That he’d break things off with Amelie to be with her? This was just a weekend thing. And she had no idea what was going on between Amelie and Dante.
Had she cared, though? She’d slept with him regardless of the model’s feelings. His marriage had fallen apart because he was an unfaithful womaniser, and she’d just become ‘the other woman’ in his relationship with Amelie. Panic flashed inside of her and she took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down. Cressida was approaching, and Maggie certainly didn’t want her step-mother-to-be to sense that there was a problem.
“Have you seen my god-daughter, Maggie? I wanted to speak to her about a benefit I’m organising.”
“Oh.” Maggie looked down at the floor and then back up at Cressida. “I think I just saw her leave. With her date.” Her words were bitter, even to her own ears, so she layered a smile on her face.
“Ah, quite a catch, that one.” Cressida had apparently not detected anything untoward in Maggie’s expression or tone. “Isn’t he simply gorgeous?”
“I suppose so,” Maggie affected a look of disinterest. “If you like that kind of thing.”
“Tall, dark, handsome, billions in the bank and a devil may care attitude? If I was thirty years younger, your father might just have competition on his hands.”
Maggie didn’t want to talk about Dante. She didn’t want to think about the way his body owned hers, completely and utterly. “I think they went that way.” She nodded to the door they’d exited via moments earlier.
“Thank you. And darling?”
“Yes, Cress?” Maggie bristled at the affectionate term and volleyed the diminutive back in return.
Cressida hid her grimace swiftly. “Go and dance. There are lots of nice men here tonight. Mistletoe abounds. Go and find a father for that sweet little girl of yours.”
“Cressida,” Maggie spun around, her heart beating so fast she thought it might conk out. Her face was pink, and a fine bead of sweat had broken out on her forehead.
“What is it? You look ill suddenly.”
“Oh.” She swallowed, her mouth parched. Could there be a worse way for Dante to learn that she had a child? How long would it take him to put two and two together? She squeezed her eyes shut. She hadn’t even thought of that. But being in the same house for a weekend, wasn’t there a risk he might hear someone ask after May? That her father might extoll his granddaughter’s virtues?
She blanched visibly. “I just realised I left the meringues in the oven. Excuse me.” It was a lie, but she needed to escape. She moved quickly through the crowd, but instead of going to the kitchen, she ducked left and cut through the ancient doors at the front of the building.
It was cold. She didn’t care. Her blood was running like fire through her body. The idea of Dante learning about May was horrendous. How could she justify her decision not to tell him? Would he ever understand? God, what if he wanted custody? She reached out and grabbed the trunk of an old Fir tree for support as her lungs seemed to heave with the pain of breath.
And what about May? What questions would she have, when she grew up? What would she want to know about her father? How would Maggie respond?
She sobbed with frustration.
She’d been right not to contact Dante. His messy divorce. His penchant for womanising. The way he’d made her feel. His declaration that he was not a family man. He was an untameable, dangerous, virile commodity; one that she had no business anchoring with a child.
Besides, May had everything she needed. Didn’t she?
More panic, so intense it made her stomach clench. She leaned forward and vomited, her insides churning, her brain tingling with pins and needles as all of her decisions in the last two years came tearing through her mind.
Why had she done it?
Why had she accepted that damned assignment?
“Oh, er, that’s gross.”
May pushed up, unprepared for the intrusion. Amelie and Dante stood, just meters away. They’d been hidden from sight at first by the tangle of ivy that covered the far end of the garden. She wiped a hand over her mouth and stepped back.
“Shit,” she rarely swore, but the moment called for it. Her eyes flashed with mortification.
Dante was watchful. His whole body alert. His first instinct, to rush to her and help her, was the wrong one. It spoke of an emotionalism he didn’t want to feel. He thrust his hands into his pockets.
“Amelie, go back inside. I will help Maggie to her room.”
“You know her?”
“Mmm,” he nodded. “We met years ago.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
Maggie squared her shoulders, and despite the fact she was shaking like a leaf, she managed to look almost regal. Her height was intimidating to most. “I am right here, you know.”
“How could we forget?” Dante replied coldly. “I daresay she’s had too much champagne. I will join you shortly.”
It was a dismissal, and both women saw it as such. Amelie squeezed his arm. “Thanks for everything, hun.”
“Any time,” he lied, thinking that dispensing romantic advice was, perhaps, his least favourite activity.
“What is the matter?” He demanded, once Amelie had disappeared. “Why were you ill?”
Words raced through her mind. Things she could say. Things she ought to say. Things she could never admit to. “I can’t …” She blinked her eyes shut and lifted a hand to her temple. “It’s… I…”
He put an arm under her elbow and steered her back towards the house. “I seem to remember you used to be better at getting sentences out.”
She shook her head and stopped walking. She was shaking now, from cold, from adrenalin and from shock. “I wasn’t prepared to see you again,” she said honestly.
Dante scanned her face, his own bearing a scowl. “No. Nor I, you.”
She looked down at the ground, her head fogged. “Are you involved with Amelie?”
He had wanted her to feel envious. It had been childish and unnecessary. “No.” He said succinctly. “Not any longer.”
“But you were?”
He shrugged. “Once upon a time.”
Maggie ran a hand through her hair. “You’re here with her.”
He did not wish to betray Amelie’s confidence by explaining that the model was embarrassed by her perpetual state of un-attachment. “So?”
“I know you cheated on your wife. But when we first, um, met, she was divorcing you. I didn’t feel that our being together was a betrayal to anyone.” Her cheeks flamed as she stumbled past the memory. “I thought you and Amelie might be serious. That I’d just become the ‘other’ woman.”
“No.” He grunted, not bothering to defend his marriage to her. She had got her information from the agency, who’d been fed a pack of lies from Veronika’s divorce lawyers. It didn’t matter to him what Maggie thought of him, anyway, did it?
She exhaled a slow sigh of relief but the question of May remained between them. Prickly and impossible to cross.
“I was surprised to see you yesterday.” She fixed him with a stare, desperate and miserable. “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought of you since that night. But it’s in the past. We should never have, um, done what we did this morning.”
He tsk-tsked and stepped closer. She was surprised when he bent down and picked her up, carrying her against his chest as though she weighed nothing more than a kitten. “Put me down,” she hissed crossly, kicking her legs.
“Do not make a scene,” he warned, “or I will march you through the ballroom.”
Her cheeks flamed. “Take the side entrance, please,” she begged, her face against his jacket.
“I intend to.” He shouldered the door open and moved towards the s
taircase. Mercifully, the foyer was deserted. He took the stairs with ease and deposited her on her feet just inside her bedroom
“Why were you ill?” He closed the door behind himself, and now, he reached out and touched her. Gently. He lifted his palm to her cheek and then her forehead, evidently feeling for a temperature.
“Shock, I think,” she said honestly. “Guilt, over having slept with you when you came with Amelie.”
“Unnecessary guilt,” he brushed it aside, wondering why he’d never noticed that she had this softness to her. “You should take a shower. You are clammy.”
She frowned, his concern not at all fitting with his persona. “Are you a doctor now?” She snapped back. She couldn’t allow him to be a nice guy.
His smile was thin. “I am the oldest of six children. I have looked after more blood noses, stomach bugs and fevers than you can imagine.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t known that. It made her feel worse, to know that he had the ability to be tender. That there was a part of him that was family minded.
“So go and shower.”
She nodded. Her stomach was in knots, as she looked at his face and saw only their daughter. She needed to tell him. Didn’t she?
No. She needed to go. To leave. Not to be there for the weekend. But what if someone still let something slip? Was there any way she could end this without him learning the truth?
She spun on her heel and moved to the ensuite without another word. She was too caught up in her thoughts to thank him. She showered, scrubbing her skin with the loofah as though it might erase her pain. Nothing could do that though. Afterwards, when the bathroom was steamed and her body was prune-like, she wrapped herself in the luxurious terry-towelling robe and padded back to her bed.
Dante was still there.
She stopped walking and looked at him, surprised and thrilled to see him lying in the middle of the bed. His fingers were linked on his chest, and his eyes stared up at the ceiling.
“I thought you’d be back at the party by now.”
He sat up, propping himself with his palms. “No.”
He lifted one hand and held it out to her. Wordlessly, she moved to him, and put her hand in it. He pulled her forward, and pressed his head close to her chest, against the fabric of the robe. Maggie hesitated a moment, then lifted her free hand and ran it through his hair.
He breathed deeply, and momentarily acknowledged to himself the hopelessness of his situation. For having rediscovered Maggie, he wasn’t sure he wanted to let her go. One weekend was unlikely to be enough.
“I did not expect you to give a shit about who you might end up hurting,” he said finally, snaking a hand inside her robe so that he could touch her flat stomach.
“Huh?”
He looked up at her, his eyes obviously reading hers. “Amelie. You were worried sick, literally, that you might have hurt her.”
“I’m not the mercenary cow you think I am,” she muttered, looking away from his penetrating gaze.
“Aren’t you?”
“No,” she said firmly.
He pulled at the belt and undid the robe completely, so that he could slide his hands around her naked back and press his lips to her body.
“So how does a woman like you end up sleeping with men, just to prove their suspicious wives right?”
“That’s not fair,” she said huskily. He ran his fingers along her back, then her sides, stroking and watching. Waiting for her to explain.
“Isn’t it?”
“Sex isn’t part of the deal.” She put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “I mean it, Dante. Before you, I had never slept with one of those guys.”
“I don’t believe it,” he said finally, shrugging as though it was of little matter. “You were too accepting of my proposition. Too comfortable making casual love to me.”
How could she explain that it had been about the way he, and he alone, made her feel? “Think about it,” she urged, taking a different tack. “They had the photos.” She flushed to the roots of her hair. “I mean, I gather you must have seen them? That that’s how you found out about me?”
He had. The picture of them at the table, her face contorting with ecstasy, while he kissed her neck. Mercifully, the table had been covered by a cloth, which concealed exactly what he was doing to her. But any idiot would have been able to hazard a guess.
“I had no need to go to your room.”
“There were photographs of you entering the lift with me.”
She nodded stiffly. “I didn’t know the photographer followed us.”
“And photographs of you leaving early the next morning.” How he’d stared at those pictures. The way her face had been cold and determined. Almost like she was mentally wiping her hands of him as she went.
“I didn’t know that,” she frowned.
“I woke up and you were gone.”
She was defensive. “I told you I had to leave early.”
He made a noise of assent, but his mind was wandering. Her skin was so warm. Her body so soft. “You disappeared into thin air. For a long time, I wondered if I’d conjured you from my dreams.”
Her stomach clenched. She hadn’t expected that. That he might have thought about her afterwards. “I’m sure you found someone to take my place very quickly.”
He pulled back his head, so that he could look at her properly. “Sit down, mi dolor,” he commanded firmly, patting the bed beside him.
She did as he said, her leg pressed against his.
“My wife said a great many things in our divorce that were not true.”
The look she slanted him was pure cynicism. “Are you claiming that you were the perfect husband?”
He winced. “Not at all. But I was not a cheating husband.” Her heart rate accelerated.
“You cheated with me.”
“Dios mio, Maggie. I did not cheat with you. Barring the rubber stamp on the papers, I was a divorced man. We had not lived together for months when I met you.”
She shook her head slowly, refusing to buy into one of his lines. He was a well-known womaniser, and still she couldn’t think straight where he was concerned. “Then I’m sure there was someone else. I have slept with you. I am intimately acquainted with your libido and stamina.” She flushed. “I can attest to the fact that you are a highly sensual person…”
His smile was rich with amusement. “Did I not strike you as a starving man who had been led to a buffet, the night I met you?”
Her pulse seemed to be thready. Her breathing irregular. “Are you trying to tell me that you hadn’t had sex in months?”
He lifted a hand and touched her cheek. “I’m trying to tell you that my ex-wife lied to hurt me. And my family. And you were… collateral damage, to some extent.” As he had been.
Maggie stared at his handsome face, and felt like she was falling from a great height. Gravity seemed to change its relationship to her and she lowered her hand to cling to his shirt. If what he was saying was true, then he had been an even easier target than she’d realised. No wonder he’d pounced on her instantly. She’d walked in there with one thing on her mind, and he’d bought the package, hook, line and sinker.
“You know,” he said, leaning forward and pressing his lips to her neck. “If I’d met you under different circumstances, I think this could have been an entirely different relationship.”
She cleared her dry, thick throat. “Oh? Different how?”
“More than just sex,” he grinned, pushing at her robe to reveal her beautiful body.
He made love to her with so much passion that his words almost ceased to sting. Almost, but not quite. For they would never be just about sex. They were parents, and she knew, but he didn’t. They were about sex, a baby, and a big lie.
4
Fast asleep, she was, perhaps, even more painfully beautiful. Her hair was a cherry colored stain on the crisp white pillow. Her lashes, long and soft against her alabaster cheeks. Her breathing was regular and rhythmic. How h
ad his hatred for her morphed, so quickly, into something else?
He stared at her thoughtfully, wanting to touch, aching to have, needing to hold. But something held him back. She was tired. Her eyes had a pale blue shadow beneath them, that hinted at dark nights and disturbed sleep. And there was a tenderness inside of him that made him pause.
But why? Why did he feel tenderness for this woman? How could he feel anything for someone so utterly mercenary? Who had taken a job that essentially involved hitting on men, for money?
She stretched, and he startled. Her eyes flared open, fixing him with a groggy, confused look. “You’re still here.” A smile. The cat that got the cream kind of smile.
He grunted in agreement, not sure what to say.
“I’m glad.” She was still sleepy. She lifted a finger and traced his scar, watching as his face closed off. “What happened?”
He refused to drop her gaze, though he hated to remember that day. “It was an accident. A boy-hood incident.”
“I gathered as much. What happened?” She probed, wriggling closer and taking a closer look.
“My brothers and I took a tractor for a spin. Literally. We flipped it. They somehow managed to free themselves, but I was trapped underneath.”
“How terrifying. How old were you?”
“Eleven.”
“You must have been so afraid,” she murmured, lifting her lips and pressing a kiss against his stubbled flesh.
“Not half as afraid as I was that my parents would murder me.” He winced. “I am the oldest. It was my job to look after the younger ones. I was not, at that age, very good at the task.”
Her smile was filled with dubious amusement. “What eleven year old is?” She traced the scar lightly, then moved to his lips, running around the outline.
His mouth twitched. “That tickles.”
“Does it?” She lowered her hand. “You said you have five brothers and sisters? I can’t imagine what that must have been like. I was an only child.”
“Which means you must have got to finish books in peace; to build Lego constructions and not have them ripped apart by grumpy toddlers.”