“They won’t care”, Sash insists, but even she’s doubting herself now.
“Call Tess”, Dante says. “She’ll tell you what I told her last week. Believe me, I don’t want to be with anybody else. I don’t want to hurt you anymore.”
Dante holds out his hand. “Please come back to the hotel, Sash.”
She looks at him for a moment. What choice does she have? Maybe he’s right, and if they let the world know then they’d shut her out. But then if they shut her out, at least she’d still have him. Is the rest worth the risk, just to be sure?
“Come on”, Dante says. “Let me show you how much you mean to me.”
Eventually, without another word, Sash reaches up and takes her stepbrother’s hand.
Chapter 2
Dante’s phone has been ringing all morning, and all morning he’s purposely avoided it. If trying to find his runaway stepsister wasn’t hard enough, he has to deal with the complexities of a ransom demand now too. Finally, in the taxi on the way back to the hotel, his stepsister back in his arms and placated, at least for the moment, he decides to deal with the problem.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Alex barks into the receiver, so loudly Sash can hear it.
Sat in her office, the same room in which Sash waited to see Dante for the first time in three years, his legs crossed and his gaze directed out of the floor-to-ceiling length window, is the man Dante tasked with finding Jason Walker.
“I thought I’d lost something”, Dante says, his eyes trained on Sash, “but I’ve found it now.”
Dante moves his hand over Sash’s thigh, the tips of his fingers under her dress. At his touch, her eyes sparkle with the promise of what’s to come.
“Caulder is here”, Alex says. “I’ve called him in.”
Caulder turns his mouth up into a smile, but he doesn’t look over to Alex.
“Good”, Dante says. “Then there is nothing to worry about.”
“Nothing to worry about?” Alex says. “Have you seen the photos? If this gets out Dante, we’re ruined.” There is a slight edge of panic in her voice that Dante picks up on.
“Nothing is going to get out”, Dante says calmly. “Caulder will deal with it like he deals with everything else.”
“Right.” She doesn’t sound so convinced.
“Relax, Alex. I’m not worried about this at all, because I know I’m not going to pay a penny of that demand, do you understand me?”
“Yes, of course, I understand you, but-.”
“Good”, Dante says. In his eyes Sash can see another storm brewing. When he looks at her she wants to melt. He reaches up to the line of her dress, running his finger along the edge of the fabric where it meets her skin. Gentle, purposeful strokes. “Don’t bother me for the rest of the day unless it’s urgent.”
Alex sighs. “Urgent? Dante, with all due respect, this is pretty fucking urgent right now. What else do you have that is more important than this? You could lose everything if this gets out. Absolutely everything. You are aware of that right?”
“Then make sure it doesn’t”, Dante says. “Give it to Caulder, he’ll know what to do.”
Dante cuts the call before Alex can respond. In her office, she slams the phone down angrily. Caulder looks over to her finally.
“You better sort this”, she says.
Caulder smiles. “That’s what I do”, he says.
Back in the taxi, Sash snuggles up to her stepbrother. “Problems with work?” she asks, unsure if she wants to know more.
“Someone is trying to blackmail us”, Dante says. “It happens quite often. A disgruntled employee, a member of the public trying to get rich quick. It’s nothing. It’ll go to the police, the police will handle it. Alex is just pissed off because I’m here on holiday and she’s there in the thick of it. She hates it when I go away.”
“I know how she feels” Sash says.
“Yeah well not anymore you won’t”, Dante promises.
“Who is Caulder?” Sash asks after a while.
Dante wears a wry smile. “Caulder is my head of public relations”, he says. “I wouldn’t be where I am today without him.”
“He sounds pretty important”, Sash says.
“Oh he is. He’s invaluable.”
They are in a part of the town Sash hasn’t seen yet. For a while she’s had the feeling that they were moving away from the center of the city, but wasn’t sure enough about it to ask. When the taxi pulls up outside what looks like a college, and the driver turns around to tell them that they are here, Sash turns to Dante.
“I thought we were going back to the hotel.”
She’s not angry, just a little confused.
“I didn’t want to ruin the plans I’d already made for you because of what happened earlier”, Dante says. “It didn’t seem fair.”
“My surprise?” Sash guesses. “Where are we?”
“You’ll see, come on.”
“But-“, Sash complains. “I look a mess. I’ve been crying.”
Dante regards her for a moment. “You look beautiful, Sash. I probably haven’t told you that enough times, but you really do look incredible.”
“I’ve got to agree with that”, the taxi driver says, already turned around to form part of the conversation, “you look hot.”
Chapter 3
This is not what Sash expected at all. A shopping spree, followed by a champagne lunch, perhaps. A ride on a helicopter, maybe. This? Not a chance. She didn’t even know this was possible. She looks at Dante as though the whole thing’s a joke. When she realizes that he’s deadly serious, she feels the gut punch of shock almost knock her over. How could he even think this was something romantic?
For the second time today, Sash feels like running away.
“What the fuck, Dante?”
“Sash, think about it for a moment.”
Sash puts her hand over her mouth and shakes her head. Dr Chaudrey looks at her with barely concealed concern and then back up to Dante. “The procedure is very safe”, he says, hoping to settle her.
“I can’t believe this”, Sash says.
“Hear me out”, Dante says.
Sash is still shaking her head.
“This is your idea of a surprise?”
“I’ll leave you to it for a moment”, Dr Chaudrey says, already on the way to the door. “We’ll be ready whenever you are.”
Without any signs on the building, Sash had no idea where she was being led. Even when she was sat down at the desk and introduced to him, by the way he dressed and the look of his office, she had no reason to believe this was his surgery. When she found out he was a doctor, she still had no reason to believe she was being brought here for an operation. She thought they were meeting one of Dante’s friends at his private house who happened to be in that profession. Why they were here was still unclear until Dr Chaudrey starting explaining the procedure and asking for her consent. Hymen reconstruction. Again, Sash shakes her head in disbelief.
“Dante, what the fuck?” she says again, clearly in shock. If she wasn’t rooted to the spot by it, she’d be half way back to New York by now. If it wasn’t such a strange concept to grasp, she might have reacted in a different way. Stunned silence is pretty much all she can manage right now, especially on top of everything else that has happened. The pregnancy test, Oliver, Dante’s myriad secrets. Her stepbrother has done some outrageous things in the past but this tops them all. She can’t believe that he’s spent the last week organizing for her to have her hymen reconstructed, thinking it would be something she’d jump at the chance to do. It’s unbelievable. The dancing was one thing, but this is a whole other level of deception. Just having the words hymen reconstruction go around her head seem so ridiculous, she can’t even associate herself with them. Is this really happening?
“Sash, listen to me, don’t you see how perfect this is? We can do what we always wanted to do and were never able to.”