‘As cruel as his behaviour was, finding them like that did you favour,’ he told her, his voice colder than he would have wanted.
He could not bring himself to say anything about her excuse of a mother.
What he knew was enough for him to know down in his marrow that Aislin must take after her father.
Sinead O’Reilly was as selfish as his own mother. It was a fine line between whose behaviour was the worst.
‘How do you work that out?’ she demanded.
‘It meant that you knew the truth. Better than being strung along on a lie.’
‘I should never have been stupid enough to believe in him in the first place. Believe me, I won’t be making that mistake again. The only people I trust are my family. Well, my sister and nephew.’
‘Trust no one.’ He’d trusted his father. Damn him.
Dante’s stomach roiled with fury but this anger was not now aimed at his lying father but at the people who’d left Aislin to deal with a burden no one should have to go through alone.
It was a misplaced anger that disturbed him.
He hardly knew Aislin. He had no reason to feel such deep fury on her behalf.
‘Has there been anyone serious in your life?’ she asked after an outbreak of awkward silence.
‘No.’ He expelled the bitterness sitting in his lungs and attempted a smile. The end result was tight on his cheeks. ‘Long-term relationships are not for me. I enjoy the single life too much.’
His standard answer to questions about relationships.
He saw no need to explain himself, not to Aislin or anyone.
They needed to know facts about each other. Nothing more.
‘If I wasn’t afraid of falling out of the hammock I’d raise a glass to the single life,’ she said, injecting some much-needed humour into the heavy atmosphere that had developed.
By unspoken agreement they stuck to neutral subjects for the rest of the evening.
If only he could force his body to remain neutral around her too.
Aislin dipped a cautious toe into the terrace pool and found the water heated, exactly as Dante had promised. Lowering herself into it up to her shoulders, she rested her head against the rolled side and gazed up at the night sky.
The muted city noise felt distant up here, a comforting rhythm of life, completely different from the rustle of trees and the hoots and calls of wild animals she heard when the weather was kind enough to sit outside in the evenings at home.
Ciro, the young lad who’d taken her battered suitcase into Dante’s house the morning before, sat at the bar playing on his phone but his was a silent presence.
She was glad of the peace. Dante had been called out on an emergency at his father’s villa just as they’d finished eating dinner. Aislin had snatched the opportunity to change into the swimsuit the personal shopper had talked her into buying that day on the off-chance she would need it that weekend.
She would never have had the courage to wear it in front of Dante.
Other than the sleeping hours, this was the first time they’d been apart since he’d collected her from his father’s cottage early the day before.
The two days they had spent together had been productive and she was confident they knew enough about each other that they could fool anyone into believing they were a genuine couple. Talk came so easily to them that she had to remind herself there was a purpose behind it.
Why she had brought Patrick up, she didn’t quite know. The only other person she had told about finding him in bed with Angela was Orla. Aislin had to assume it was a form of self-preservation taking control, the past rising up to remind her of the dangers a man like Dante posed.
Her growing feelings for him were inexplicable. She shouldn’t have any feelings for him other than gratitude at his generosity.
Patrick had hurt her badly.
Dante was cut from the same love-them-and-leave-them mould.