I couldn’t sleep.
I’d collapsed into bed three hours ago, my body exhausted but my mind racing like I’d injected it with a dozen shots of espresso.
I’d tried counting sheep, fantasizing about Asher Donovan, and listening to my alarm clock’s built-in white noise feature, but none of it worked.
Every time I closed my eyes, images from the engagement party played on a broken loop.
Dante’s hand around my wrist.
The graze of his fingers along my spine.
The low rumble of his voice in my ear.
Welcome to the truce, mia cara.
Tingles erupted over every inch of my body.
I groaned and turned on my side, hoping the change in position would shake the persistent memory of Dante’s touch and rough velvet voice.
It didn’t.
Honestly, I was surprised he’d agreed so readily to the truce. We hadn’t exchanged more than a dozen words since I left him on the sidewalk bench after our engagement shoot, but actively ignoring him was more draining than I’d expected.
The penthouse was massive, yet we somehow ran into each other multiple times a day—him coming out of his bedroom while I walked to mine, me catching a breath of fresh air while he took a call on the balcony, us sneaking into the screening room for a late-night movie at the same time.
One of us always left when we saw the other, but I couldn’t turn the corner without my heart rate jumping in anticipation of colliding with Dante.
The truce was the best option for my sanity and blood pressure.
Plus, the one unguarded conversation we’d had so far had been…nice.
Unexpected, but nice. There was a heart somewhere beneath Dante’s grumpy, scowly exterior. It may be black and shriveled, but it was there.
The numbers on my clock flipped from 12:02 a.m. to 12:03 a.m. My stomach emitted an angry growl at the same time.
After subsisting on nothing except a handful of hors d’oeuvres and champagne all day, it was finally rebelling.
I groaned again.
It was technically too late to eat, but…
What the hell. I couldn’t sleep anyway.
After a moment’s hesitation, I tossed my covers off and tiptoed out of my room and down the hall.
I hadn’t had a midnight snack in years, but I was suddenly craving an old favorite food combo.
I flipped on the kitchen lights, opened the fridge, and scanned the contents until I located a jar of sliced pickles and a bowl of chocolate pudding on the bottom shelf.
A-ha!
I set my bounty on the kitchen island before I hunted for the last ingredient.
Dried pasta, condiments, cookies, seaweed crisps… I opened and closed the endless row of cabinets, searching for a distinctive cardboard tube.
The cabinets were so high I had to stand on tiptoes to see into the back, and my arms and thighs were starting to ache. Why did Dante have so much storage space? Who needed an entire cabinet of cooking oils?
If I didn’t—
“What are you doing?”
I jumped and stifled a scream at the unexpected voice. My hip banged against the counter when I whipped around, sparking a jolt of pain whose reverberations matched the suddenly frantic beats of my heart.
Dante stood in the doorway, his gaze bemused as it traveled between me and the open cabinet.
For once, he wasn’t wearing a suit and tie. Instead, a white T-shirt stretched across his shoulders, emphasizing the sculpted planes of his muscles and the deep bronze of his skin. Black sweatpants hung just low enough to elicit dirty thoughts before I quashed them.
“You scared me.” My voice came out breathier than intended. “What are you doing up?”
It was a stupid question. Obviously, he was up for the same reason I was, but I couldn’t think straight through the fog of adrenaline.
“Couldn’t sleep.” The rough drawl drifted toward me and settled low between my legs. “Guess I’m not the only one.”
His eyes held mine for a brief moment before they flicked over me.
A sense of deja vu spilled down the length of my spine, but unlike at our first meeting, I detected a crack in Dante’s indifference.
It was tiny, just a shadow of a flame, but it was enough to fill my stomach with flutters.
His perusal paused at my midsection. The shadow expanded, darkening his eyes from rich brown to near obsidian.
I looked down, and my heart stumbled when I saw what caught his attention.
I slept hot, so I usually wore some variation of a silk camisole and boy shorts to bed. It was fine for the privacy of my bedroom but completely inappropriate when faced with company.
The shorts stopped an inch above mid-thigh, and my top had ridden up sometime during my cabinet foraging, revealing a generous expanse of bare skin.
When I looked up again, Dante’s gaze had returned to my face.
I held still, afraid to breathe as he moved toward me with the languid, powerful grace of a predator stalking its prey.
Every soft footfall was another lit flame in the space between us.
He stopped when his body heat enveloped mine. Inches away, so close I could count the individual stubble shadowing his jaw. “What are you looking for?”
His casual tone clashed with the tension brewing in the air, but I simply said the first thing that came to mind.
“Pringles. Classic.”
There was no answer like the truth.
I discreetly tugged my top down while Dante reached into the cabinet above my head. The tiny breeze from his movement brushed my skin.
Goosebumps pebbled, and something hot coiled in my stomach.
He retrieved an unopened can of chips and handed it to me without a word.
“Thank you.” I clutched the tube, unsure what to do next.
Part of me wanted to escape to the safety of my room. The other part wanted to stay and see how long I could play with fire without getting burned.
“Pringles, pickles, and pudding.” Dante saved me from a decision.
“Interesting combination.”
Relief loosened the knot in my chest. My breath came out easier now that I had something to focus on other than my body’s unwilling reaction to his.
“They taste good together. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.” I took control of my limbs again and sidestepped him on my way to the island.
The touch of his gaze followed me, an insistent pressure on the small of my back.
I opened the can of Pringles. Don’t turn around.
“Apologies. Far be it from me to question your snack choices.” A trace of dry amusement ran through his voice.
I heard the fridge open behind me, followed by the clink of silverware and the click of a shutting cabinet door.
A minute later, Dante slid onto the stool beside me.
My mouth parted when he began assembling his snack.
“You make fun of me for my food choices but you’re pouring soy sauce over ice cream?”
The earlier tension retreated in the face of my shock.
Forget the way his muscles flexed with each movement or the way his shirt hugged his torso.
He was committing a crime against humanity right before my eyes.
“Drizzling, not pouring. And don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,” Dante mocked, throwing my earlier words back at me. “I bet it tastes better than the abomination you put together.”
His brow hitched at the chip in my hand, which I’d dipped in pudding and topped with a pickle.
My eyes narrowed at the silent challenge.
“I doubt it.” I lifted his hand and dropped my lovingly assembled snack in his open palm. He stared at it like it was a piece of old gum stuck to his shoe. “Let’s swap and see who’s wrong and who’s right.”
I pulled his bowl toward me with a small grimace.
I loved ice cream and I loved soy sauce… separately. Some things weren’t meant to mix, but I was willing to choke it down to make my point.
Namely, I was right, and he was wrong.
“I’m always right,” Dante said. He eyed me and then my snack with a hint of intrigue. “Fine. I’ll bite. On the count of three.”
I almost asked if the pun was on purpose before I remembered his sense of humor was more underdeveloped than a toddler’s vocabulary.
“One,” I said.
“Two.” His grimace matched mine.
“Three.”
I spooned a serving of ice cream into my mouth at the same time he bit into my chip.
Silence filled the room, interrupted only by the crunch of food and the hum of the fridge.
I’d braced myself for a wave of revulsion, but the combination of French vanilla and soy sauce was…
That can’t be right. Maybe my taste buds were broken.
I helped myself to another scoop just to make sure.
Dante’s mouth curled into a knowing grin. “Going back for seconds already?”
“Don’t act so smug. It’s not that good,” I lied.
“In that case, I’ll take the ice cream back—”
“No!” I pulled the bowl closer to my chest. “I’ve already eaten from it.
It’s…unhygienic to share food. Get your own bowl.”
Dante’s grin widened.
I let out a sigh. “Fine. It tastes good. Are you happy?” I shot a pointed look at the island top. “I’m not the only one who was wrong. You’ve finished half the chips in the past five minutes.”
“That’s an exaggeration.” He dipped another pickle and chip combo in the pudding. “But this isn’t as terrible as I thought.”
“See? I’ll never steer you wrong when it comes to food.” I dug my spoon into a fresh scoop of vanilla and relaxed into the unfamiliar but not unpleasant ease between us. Maybe the truce had been a good idea after all.
“How did you come up with this combo, anyway?”
I couldn’t imagine Dante sampling different food pairings in his free time until he found a winner like I had. From what I saw, he barely had time to eat.
He was silent for a long moment before he said, “Luca and I hung out in the kitchen a lot as kids. We had a game room, pool, all the latest toys…
pretty much everything anyone under the age of twelve could want. But sometimes, we wanted company other than each other, and the chef was one of the few people in the household who treated us like actual people. He let us play around in there when he wasn’t cooking.” Dante shrugged. “We were kids. We experimented.”
My insides warmed at the mental image of little Dante running around the kitchen with his brother.
“You two must be close.”
I’d met Luca at the engagement party. He’d been polite enough, though I got the sense he wasn’t thrilled about my marriage to his brother. We’d only talked for a few minutes before he abruptly excused himself.
Dante’s face shuttered. “Not as close as we used to be.”
I paused at the strange note in his voice. For some reason, his brother was a sore subject.
“Does he work for the company?” I ventured when he didn’t offer any more information.
I didn’t want to push Dante too hard and have him shut down when we were finally making progress, but I couldn’t contain my curiosity. I didn’t know much about him beyond what was public knowledge.
He came from a very old, very wealthy family that made its fortune in textiles before his grandfather founded the Russo Group and expanded the family empire into what it was today. He’d graduated top of his class from Harvard Business School and increased his company’s market value
fivefold since taking over as CEO. He eliminated his competition with shocking effectiveness, either by crushing or acquiring them, and the ruthlessness of his security team had catapulted him to mythical status.
I may have read up on Dante while he was in Europe.
“He does now.” Dante’s tone suggested the change had not been Luca’s choice. “He interned at the company in college. It was a disaster, so our grandfather allowed him to ‘pursue his passions’ instead of taking on a corporate role. He already had me as an heir; he didn’t need Luca. But giving my brother too much freedom was a mistake. Luca bounced around from job to job for a decade. He was a DJ one day, an actor the next. He sank half his trust fund into a nightclub that folded within eight months of opening. He needs stability and structure, not more time and money to burn.”
It was the most words I’d heard come out of Dante’s mouth since we met.
“So you gave him a job,” I surmised. “What does he do now?”
“Salesman.” The corner of Dante’s mouth kicked up when I gave him a skeptical look. “He doesn’t get special treatment because he’s my brother.
When I started at the Russo Group, I worked as a stock clerk. It was one of the greatest lessons my grandfather taught me. In order to lead a company, you have to know the company. Every facet, every position, every detail.
Leaders who are out of touch are leaders who fail.”
Somehow, Dante managed to surprise me every time we talked.
I’d expected him to run his company from the top down with no care for his employees and blatant abuse of nepotism the way many of his peers did, but his philosophy made sense.
Since I couldn’t say that without offending him, I stuck to the topic of his brother.
“I get the sense Luca doesn’t like me,” I admitted. “Every time I tried to talk to him at the party, he made an excuse and left.”
Dante paused. Tension dampened the air for a second before his shoulders relaxed and the clouds disappeared.
“Don’t take it personally. He gets moody at those types of things.” He smoothly switched subjects. “Speaking of the party, you never told me who’s on your dream husband list.”
Oh, for God’s sake.
I’d mentioned the list as a joke. I didn’t know why he was so fixated on it. But since he was…I might as well have some fun.
“I’ll tell you if you promise not to get an inferiority complex,” I said sweetly. I ticked off the names of my favorite celebrities. “Nate Reynolds, Asher Donovan, Rafael Pessoa…”
Dante looked unimpressed. “I didn’t realize you were such a big soccer fan.”
Asher Donovan and Rafael Pessoa both played for Holchester United in the UK.
“I’m a soccer player fan,” I corrected. “There’s a difference.”
I’d watched a total of three sports games in my life. I’d only mentioned Asher and Rafael because I saw them in an ad campaign yesterday and they were fresh on my mind.
“Reynolds is married, and Donovan and Pessoa live in Europe,” Dante said silkily. “I’m afraid you’re out of luck, mia cara.”
“True.” I heaved a long-suffering sigh. “In that case, I guess you’ll have to do.”
A laugh bubbled in my throat when he narrowed his eyes. “You’re baiting me.”
“Just a little.”
My laugh finally spilled out at his scowl. I could practically see the bruises forming on his ego.
I didn’t have any romantic notions about him being interested in the list because he liked me. He probably hated the idea of not being number one on anyone’s list.
We didn’t talk much after that, but the silence between us was less jagged than those from the early days of our engagement.
I snuck a glance at Dante as he methodically spread a layer of pudding on the last chip, his brow wrinkled in concentration. It was strangely adorable.
I almost laughed again when I pictured how he’d react if he found out anyone described him as adorable.
I hid my smile as I swirled my spoon through my melting ice cream.
I was suddenly glad I couldn’t sleep earlier.
