The early morning light cast soft shadows on the floor. Stillness weighed heavy in the air, and every movement sounded too loud as I inched my way off the mattress.
It was five after seven, the earliest I’d woken up on a weekend since my crack-of-dawn flight to Eldorra for Agnes’s wedding years ago, but I needed to leave before Dante woke up.
My feet grazed the rug.
“Where are you going?” The rough, sleepy rumble of Dante’s voice touched my back.
I froze, my toes curling into the plush triple ply while my heart took off on a gallop.
Stay calm. Stay cool.
Even if his voice sparked a host of X-rated memories.
Look in the mirror when I’m fucking you.
You like this? Watching me wreck your pussy while you make a mess all over my cock?
Heat crawled over my cheeks, but I attempted a neutral expression when I turned.
Dante sat up against the headboard, charcoal silk sheets rumpled around his waist. A smooth expanse of olive skin stretched over the naked, sculpted planes of his shoulders and tapered down to a lean waist. His V cut arrowed beneath the sheets like an invitation to pick up where we left off last night.
I forced my gaze up only to find his eyes waiting for mine. A knowing smirk tugged on his lips as he leaned back, oozing casual arrogance and pure male satisfaction.
Smug bastard.
Yet it didn’t stop butterflies from erupting in my stomach.
“I’m going to work,” I said breathlessly, remembering his question.
“Legacy Ball crisis. It’s urgent.”
“It’s Saturday.”
“Crises don’t operate on a workweek schedule.” I discreetly tugged on the hem of my top.
I wore one of Dante’s old college T-shirts, and it fell somewhere between scandalous and mid-thigh.
His eyes flicked down and darkened.
The heat spread from my face to somewhere south of my stomach.
“Perhaps not, but that’s not why you’re sneaking out of my bed at seven in the morning, mia cara.” Some of the sleep evaporated from his voice, leaving satin and smoke behind.
“No?” My voice squeaked like a door hinge in need of oil.
“No.” His gaze met mine again. Challenge glinted in its depths.
Who’s the one running now?
The unspoken words sank into my bones.
“You wanted to talk,” he said. “Let’s talk.”
I swallowed the nerves lodged in my throat. Okay then.
I’d pictured our conversation happening a little differently. I would be fired up and full of indignation—and dressed in my best outfit, of course—
not sitting on the edge of his bed, smelling like him and wearing his T-shirt while the memory of his touch was imprinted on my skin.
But he was right. We needed to talk, and there was no point in delaying the inevitable.
I addressed the elephant in the room first.
“Heath came over last night because he said I texted him about wanting to get back together.”
A shadow crossed Dante’s face at the mention of Heath, but he didn’t interrupt.
“I didn’t. Well…” I amended my statement. “He showed me his phone, and there is a text that looks like it was from me, but I never sent it. Maybe it was a prank or a hack. I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. My answer to his…proposal hasn’t changed since the last time we spoke. He refused to accept that, and we went back and forth for hours until you showed up.”
I should’ve kicked Heath out long before Dante came home. However, I’d never quite gotten over my guilt for how my parents treated him when they found out about our relationship.
Vivian is a Lau. She’s meant to marry someone great, not a so-called entrepreneur with a company no one’s heard of. You are not good enough for her, and you never will be.
Two years later, the memory of my father’s harsh words still made me wince.
“Did you say no because you no longer have feelings for him, or because you feel obligated to keep our arrangement?” Dante’s face was unreadable.
“Does it matter? We’re getting married either way.” I threw his words from last night back at him.
His mouth tightened. “I wouldn’t ask if it didn’t.”
“Yet you haven’t answered my question about whether this is still business.”
Dante had indirectly admitted it wasn’t last night, but I took anything anyone said during sex with a grain of salt.
His lips parted on a sardonic breath. “How many times are you going to make me say it?”
“Just once,” I said softly.
He regarded me with dark, hooded eyes.
The clock ticked with deafening precision, and my soft cotton T-shirt suddenly felt too heavy.
“Business would be staying in California and celebrating a deal I’d worked a year on instead of rushing back to see you,” he finally said, his voice low and loaded with gravel. “Business would be completing my D.C. trip instead of waking my pilot up for a last-minute flight home. In all my years as CEO, I’ve only cut a work trip short twice, Vivian, and both those instances were because of you.” A wry twist of his lips. “So no, it’s not just fucking business anymore.”
The butterflies took flight again, soaring so high the velvety tips of their wings brushed my heart.
I grasped for an appropriate response before I settled on the only word that came to mind.
“Oh.”
Ironic amusement ghosted through his gaze. “Yes, oh,” he said dryly.
“Your turn, mia cara. Why did you say no to Heath?”
His tone was lazy, but there was nothing lazy about the way he watched me, like a predator locked on its prey, his muscles coiled with tension.
“Because I don’t have romantic feelings for him anymore,” I said, my voice soft. “And because I might have them for someone else.”
Now that the emotional shock from last night had cleared, I realized my conversation with Heath had provided some much-needed clarity.
Once upon a time, I’d loved him, and I felt guilty for the way things had ended between us. But it’d been two years. I wasn’t the same person I’d been when we dated, and I hadn’t felt anything except surprise, sadness, and a bit of annoyance when we talked.
All this time, I thought I’d missed Heath, but I missed the idea of him. I missed having a partner. I missed being loved and being in love.
Unfortunately, I could no longer find those things with him.
The morning sunlight filtered through the curtains and gilded Dante’s face, casting soft shadows beneath his brow and cheekbones. He was so still he resembled a golden sculpture in repose, but the air sparked like dry kindling.
“It’s not just business for you.” I forced back the uprising of nerves in my stomach. “And it’s not just duty for me.”
The air turned dense, heavy with meaning. A faint car horn sounded dozens of stories below, but we didn’t look away.
“Good.” The rough sound brushed my skin with startling intimacy.
My pulse drummed in my ears.
I smoothed a clammy hand over my thigh, unsure what to do or say next.
Do we kiss? Continue the conversation? Go our separate ways?
I stuck with the safest option.
“Well, I’m glad we had that talk. I really do have a work crisis, so I’ll get back to my room—”
“This is your room.”
I gave Dante a dubious stare. Maybe the lack of caffeine had affected his memory.
“I hate to tell you this, but this is not, in fact, where I’ve been sleeping the past five months,” I said patiently. “My room is at the other end of the hall. You made a big show of distinguishing it when I moved in.
Remember?”
“Yes, but I think it’s clear the boundaries we set that day are no longer applicable.” Dante notched a dark brow. “Don’t you agree?”
My pulse tripped into overdrive. “What are you suggesting?”
“That we set new boundaries. No more separate bedrooms, no more sneaking out in the morning…” His expression darkened. “And no more contact with Heath.”
Normally, I would’ve chafed at Dante’s attempt to control who I could talk to, but after last night’s debacle, I understood where he was coming from. If he had an ex who was hellbent on breaking us up, I wouldn’t want him talking to her either.
“What a shame,” I said. “I’d planned to invite him over for dinner.”
Dante didn’t look amused.
“It was a joke.”
Nothing.
I sighed. “On that note, if we’re setting new boundaries, I have a few of my own. One…” I ticked them off on my fingers. “No more scowling as your default expression. Your face is close to freezing that way, and I’d rather not wake up to the Grinch for the rest of my life.”
“I’m much better looking than the Grinch,” he grumbled. “And if people stopped pissing me off, I wouldn’t scowl so much.”
“Other people aren’t the problem. Remember when we passed by a dog park around Christmas and saw those adorable huskies? You glared at them so hard they started howling.”
“I wasn’t glaring at them,” he said impatiently. “I was glaring at their outfits. Who dresses their dogs up as reindeer? It’s ridiculous.”
“It was Christmas. At least they weren’t dressed as elves.”
Dante’s frown deepened. We’ll work on that later.
“Anyway.” I moved on before we veered too deep into an argument about canine fashion. “Back to the boundaries. No more disappearing for weeks at a time with less than forty-eight hours’ notice unless it’s truly an emergency. No more shutting down when you’re upset and things don’t go your way. And…” My teeth tugged on my bottom lip. “We should commit to at least one date every week.”
Most people dated before their engagement, but we were doing everything backward.
Late was better than never, I supposed.
“If you wanted to spend more time with me, mia cara, you only have to say so.” Dante’s drawl slipped back into a velvety cadence.
My cheeks warmed. “That’s not the point.” Not the whole point, anyway. “We’re getting married in a few months, and we haven’t gone on a single real date.”
“We’ve been on dates. We went to the Valhalla gala.”
“That was a social obligation.”
“We went to Bali.”
“That was a family obligation.”
He fell silent.
“Those are my terms. Do you accept?”
His answer came less than two seconds later. “Yes.”
“Great.” I hid my surprise at his ready agreement. “Well…” God, this was awkward. Why was peace so much harder than war? “We can sort out the bedroom logistics later. For now, I need to fix my work problem before I’m blacklisted.”
Trying to find a last-minute venue in Manhattan was like trying to find an earring at the bottom of the Hudson River. Impossible.
But if I wanted to save the Legacy Ball and my career, I needed to find a way to make the impossible possible, fast.
“Is it something that requires you to be in the office?”
“No…” I said cautiously. “Not really.”
I mostly needed to brainstorm alternatives so I could call them on Monday.
“Perfect. Fix it over breakfast.” A smile flickered over Dante’s mouth.
“We’re going on our first date.”
