“Yes, but—”
“Marriage is a forever thing. A man needs to give it thought.”
“And you assume he did not?”
“What I assume,” he said, “is that I always thought a man should not leap into marriage as if he were leaping into the currents of a rampaging river.”
She could feel the anger forming inside her. Or maybe it had been there all along, just waiting to surface.
“Your brother is not the only one who is leaping. The same applies to the woman.”
Dante snorted with derision. “It isn’t the same.”
“Isn’t it?” Her voice had gone from cool to frigid.
“Men are meant to be hunters. To roam. Women are meant to be gatherers. Of course it isn’t the same.”
Gabriella was looking at him as if he’d turned into an alien life form. Well, hell, he couldn’t blame her. He knew he sounded like an idiot, but how could he not after finding Rafe’s Hey, man, I’m getting married! e-mail in his inbox this morning? It had shaken him to the core.
Rafe, married?
It had to be a joke.
He’d phoned Rafe, got no answer, phoned Falco, got nothing there, connected with Nick who said, yeah, it was a shocker and, yeah, it was fast, and then he finally got through to Rafe who babbled like an idiot about how he’d fallen crazy in love even if he’d only married Chiara Cordiano the first time around so he could Do The Right Thing and then found he’d fallen head over heels in love.
“But marriage? So fast?” Dante had said.
And Rafe had said, yeah, why wait when you knew you’d found the right woman? A woman who loved you for what you were inside, not for what the world saw. Who loved you, just you, and could see herself growing old with you beside her. Who loved you for giving her your heart, not the things money could provide.
And in the blink of an eye, Dante had known Rafe could just as easily have been talking about him and his Gabriella.
About this “situation” that wasn’t a “situation” at all but part of being deeply, totally in love.
He’d spent the day coming to grips with it, asking himself if Gabriella felt the same way, telling himself that she did, she had to, that she was not a woman who’d live with a man, sleep in his arms every night unless she loved him.
And, God, the whole thing was terrifying.
To declare his love for her, to offer his heart to her and hope she wouldn’t reject it…
He’d thought about it, tried to figure out the best way to do it, delaying the moment because what would he do if she didn’t feel the same and then, standing in the shower after putting Daniel to bed, the water sluicing down, he’d finally decided, okay, this was it, he’d just go out there and tell her he loved her, loved his son, that he couldn’t live without them both…
“Dante,” Gabriella said, and he swung toward her and caught her hands in his.
“Gaby.” He spoke fast, afraid he’d lose his courage, wondering why it had taken him so long to come to his senses. “Gaby. Honey.” He took a deep breath. “This thing tomorrow. My brother’s wedding…” He swallowed hard; how come his mouth had gone so dry? “Taking you to it would be rough. You’d get dumped into the middle of my family and, trust me, we’re not something out of a Hallmark card. My mother and my sisters would ask a million questions. My brothers wouldn’t just ask questions, they’d do the Orsini version of the third degree. And my old man—Hell, where my father goes, so go the Feds. Plus, not a one of my family knows anything about this. You. Me. The baby.” He paused only long enough to swallow again to moisten his throat. “So, here’s the thing, Gabriella. I don’t think—”
“I do not think so, either,” Gabriella said. “The truth is, I would much prefer to avoid what promises to be an overly sentimental family reunion.”
“What? No. See, you don’t understand—”
“But I do. I understand perfectly.” She drew her hands from his, gave him the kind of smile that made him understand the true meaning of a tight smile. “You say this wedding is tomorrow?”
“Right. Late morning. It’ll all be over by noon.”
“Excellent.”
“Yes. I thought so, too. Because—”
“My attorney’s name is Peter Reilly.”
Dante blinked. “Huh?”
“His office is on Seventy-second Street. He handled any modeling contracts that were outside the purview of my agency.”
“Gaby. What are you talking about?”
“I have been thinking, Dante. About our…our situation.” Do not cry, she told herself fiercely. Just because he’s confirmed all your worst fears, just because he’d sooner do anything than introduce you to his family, you are not to cry!
“Yes,” he said slowly, “so have I. That’s the reason I just explained things—”
“And a fine job of it you did,” she said, and told herself how well she was doing. “I shall ask Peter a special favor, that he meet with us at his office tomorrow, even though it is a Sunday at, let us say, two in the afternoon.”
“For what?” Dante said, totally bewildered.
This cold little speech, the frigid glare, that was what a man got for telling a woman that as rough as it was going to be, he wanted to take her to his brother’s wedding? Tell his entire family he loved her? Tell them that she’d borne his child, that there would be another wedding as soon as they could get to the clerk’s office Monday morning?
“For what?” he repeated, his eyes searching her face.
“For drawing up a payment schedule for what I owe you.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“About resuming my own life,” Gabriella said. “You see, I have been thinking things over. And it is time that happened. This has been very nice but—”
“Very nice?”
“You have been most kind to me. Of course, it would have been better had your attempt to buy the fazenda gone through.”
“Better,” he repeated, his voice low and dangerous. “Buying you the fazenda would have been better than bringing you to live with me?”
“Well, yes. It would have taken me a very long time to repay you but the fazenda was my home—”
“And this is not.”
There was a terrible coldness in his voice. She wanted to put her arms around him, tell him that she had never been happier than she’d been the past days, that she wished, with all her heart, his home could really be her home, too…
“No,” she said, struggling to hold on to what little pride she had left, “it is not.”
They stared at each other while the silence of the chill night built around them.
Then Dante nodded.
“I’ll want my attorney at this meeting.”
“Certainly. I will give you my lawyer’s address and telephone number.”
“Do that.”
He turned on his heel. Walked inside, grabbed his jacket, took the private elevator to the lobby and walked briskly into the night. When he got back, hours and hours later, his bed was empty.
Gabriella was in the guest suite.
Exactly where she should be,