Wealthy and single. She refused to acknowledge the sinking feeling in her stomach.
‘And I’m more than happy to make the funds you need available to you now.’
Her lips tightened. If people called her a gold-digger that was fine, so long as she knew she wasn’t. ‘I don’t want your money. I don’t want anything—’
I want to go back to the person I was, she thought forlornly, aware that it was not going to happen. She might only have been married for ten months, and been separated for six more, but she could never be the person she was before, she knew that.
‘Well, then, cara, you chose the right lawyer. Yours seemed more interested in golf than your interests.’
‘Could you pretend, even for one minute, that you don’t know every detail of what’s going on in my life? I repeat, why are you here?’
Good question, Dante thought as he dragged a hand through his hair, leaving it standing in sexy tufts across his head.
He’d told himself when Beatrice left that it would be easier if he could focus on his new role, without the distraction of worrying how she was coping, of knowing that behind her smile she was unhappy, resentful or usually both. That no matter how tough his day had been, hers had probably been worse.
Dante had never been responsible for another person in his life. He’d lived for himself, and now he had an entire country relying on him and Beatrice—that really was irony, of the blackest variety.
Except now she wasn’t relying on him. The reports that landed on his desk all said as much. She was doing well…he had just wanted to see for himself. It was an option that would soon not be open to him. The list of potential successors to fill the space in his life Beatrice had left, candidates who would know how to deal with life inside the palace walls without his guidance, was already awaiting his attention. His stomach tightened in distaste at the thought of the breeding stock with good bloodlines.
‘There are a few papers for you to sign,’ he said, inviting her scorn with his lame response and receiving it as he skated around the truth in his head.
‘And now you’re a delivery service?’
He sighed out his frustration as his dark, intense gaze scanned her face hungrily. She was still the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life and for a while their lives had meshed. But things had changed. He had another life, responsibilities, duty. At some level had he thought coming here would offer him some sort of closure?
‘We never actually said…goodbye.’
She blinked, refusing to surrender to the surge of resentment that made her heart beat louder. ‘Didn’t we? You probably had a meeting, or maybe you left me a memo?’ She bit her lip hard enough to raise crimson pinpricks of blood. Could she sound any less like someone who had moved on?
‘You felt neglected?’
‘I felt…’ She fought to reel in her feelings. ‘It doesn’t really matter. This was a conversation we never had, let’s leave it at that. Let’s call last night closure.’
He shook his head, the antagonism leaving his face as he registered the glisten of unshed tears in her eyes. His shoulders dropped. ‘No, it wasn’t planned. I just… I’m sick of receiving any news about you through third parties.’
‘I miss…’ She stopped, biting back the words she couldn’t allow herself to admit to herself, let alone him. ‘I think it’s safer that way,’ she said quietly.
‘Who wants safe?’
The reckless gleam in his eyes reminded her of the man she had fallen in love with. There was an irony that she had to remind him he wasn’t that man any more. ‘Your future subjects and, frankly, Dante, I have all the excitement we can handle without…’
She closed her eyes and pushed back into the wall until the pressure hurt her shoulder blades. It was true—after she had walked away from the royal role she had never been equipped to fulfil, she had thrown herself into her life, and there were new, exciting and sometimes scary challenges to fill her days. She had recovered some of her natural enthusiasm, though these days it was mingled with caution. A caution that had been sadly missing last night. Dante walked into a room and all those instincts and hungers he woke in her roared into sense-killing life.
Senseless,she thought, underlining thesecond syllablein red in her head. Last night had had nothing to do with sense. Her insides tightened as the warm memories flooded her head. It’d had everything to do with passion, craving and hunger!
So she had a passion for chocolate, but if she gave into that indulgence Beatrice knew she’d need a new wardrobe. Exercise and a bit of self-control meant she could still fit into last year’s clothes.
The trouble was Dante was a perfect fit, in every sense of the word, and he always had been.
When in one of her more philosophical moments she had told herself that she would take away the good bits from her marriage, she had not intended it this literally. Though even when everything else was not working in their marriage the sex had still been incredible. The bedroom was one place they always managed to be on the same page. Unfortunately, you needed more than sexual chemistry and compatibility for a marriage to work, especially when it had hit the sort of life-changing roadblocks theirs had.
With a self-conscious start she realised that during her mental meanderings her glance had begun to drift across the strong sculpted breadth of his chest, and lower, to the ridged muscular definition of his belly, before she realised what she was doing, and brought her lashes down in a protective sweep. Not that they provided much protection from the raw sexual pulse he exuded, or his unnerving ability to read her mind.
‘Do you regret it?’
Her response to the question should have been immediate, a reflex, and of course she did regret what had happened, on one level. But on another, shameful level she would not have changed a thing, because Dante bypassed her common sense. She only had to breathe in the scent of his skin to send her instincts of self-preservation into hibernation.
I really have to break this cycle!