raised her to be, even if it killed her.
Another glance at the financial papers of her mother’s charity hadn’t changed reality. Other than a huge influx of cash, there was nothing anyone could do to save it. So, if Dante had something that could help, Ali would listen. She would treat this as a meeting with a professional.
Her beige pumps click-clacked on the gleaming cream marble floor as she walked up to the entrance to the restaurant. Soft yellow light fell from contemporary chrome fixtures. Beige walls and cream leather chairs gave the restaurant an utterly decadent, romantic atmosphere. Her belly swooped as Ali caught sight of Dante’s bent head, the thick jet-black hair glittering in the lights.
Gripping her clutch tighter, Ali looked around. Every other table was empty. She checked her knockoff watch and saw it was only seven in the evening, nowhere near closing time.
The setting was far too intimate, far too private. Just far too much a scene plucked right out of her adolescent fantasies. But before she could turn tail and run out of the restaurant, that jet-black gaze caught her.
The mockery in those eyes made Ali straighten her shoulders and put one foot in front of the other.
He stood up when she reached their booth—a cocoon of privacy in an already silent restaurant. He’d exchanged the white shirt for a slate-gray one that made his eyes pop. With his jaw freshly shaved, thick dark hair slicked back half-wet, he was so...no, handsome was a lukewarm word for Dante’s fierce masculinity.
The scent of his aftershave, with an aqua note to it, was subtle, but combined with the warmth of his skin, it sank into Ali’s pores. Every cell in her body came alive.
“Where is everybody?”
“Everybody?” he said, standing far too close for her sanity.
Ali sat down with a plop, hand smoothing over her stomach. “Yes, people. Other Homo sapiens. Who might want to partake of the delicious food I’ve heard they serve here.”
There was no mockery now when he looked down at her.
Heat swarming her cheeks, Ali ran her fingers through her hair. “What?”
His gaze swept over her face, her hair, the low V-neckline, but went no farther down. A shiver clamped her spine. “You clean up nice.”
“Oh.” The one syllable hung in the air, and she looked away, pretending to smooth her dress, putting her clutch down.
He took his sweet time sitting down, not opposite her, but on the side of the table, to her left. Ali shifted her knees away to the far right.
“If you scoot any farther down, you’ll fall off the seat. Why are you so jumpy?”
Ali stilled, clasped her restless fingers in her lap. “I’m not.”
“No? Really?”
His accent got thicker any time he got a little emotional. It was one of the tells Ali had picked up a long time ago. Pulling herself together, she met his gaze. Did he really have no idea what being near him did to her equilibrium? Did he really not feel the charge in the air around them, the pulse of undercurrents in every word, every look...? God, how was it that she was the only one who felt so much?
Not that she wanted Dante to be attracted to her. Her shoulders shook as a shiver of another kind traveled down her spine.
“If you’re jumpy around me, it means you’ve arranged a little something for me. A surprise.”
Ah...that was what he attributed it to. She closed her eyes and counted to ten. She couldn’t even blame him because back then she’d been a little devil all right.
She’d lit sparklers in his room one Diwali night that had put holes in the new suit her papa had bought him. And that had almost lit the entire house on fire.
She’d taken a hammer to his new cuff links—Vikram’s present—and minced them to so much dust.
Oh, and let’s not forget the documents for an important merger she’d taken from his room and shredded.
When he’d brought his girlfriend to meet her papa... Ali groaned at the memory. And those weren’t the half of all the destructive things she’d done to show how much she hated him.
She cleared her throat. “I told you. I’ve changed.” When he raised a brow, she sighed. “I didn’t know where we were dining. How could I arrange anything? I was just surprised to see no other patrons, that’s all.”
“I had my secretary book the entire restaurant for us.” When her mouth fell open, he shrugged. “If you were going to cause a public scene—which given my knowledge of your character seemed like a high probability—I wanted to minimize the public part.”
“Fair enough,” she replied back with all the sass she could manage. Other people would have been a buffer, other people would have distracted her from this...whatever made her skin prickle with awareness.
Luckily, before her sudden awkwardness could betray her, the maître d’ arrived.
“A bottle of your best white wine and the shrimp salad for both of us.”
Ali lifted her chin. “I don’t want shrimp.”
“No?”
His fingers touched her wrist, and again, Ali pulled back as if he were a live current.
His jaw tightened, a flare of heat in his eyes. “Even though it’s what this restaurant is famous for and you made that soft moan when your eyes came to that item on the menu?”
Her cheeks aflame, her heart pounding, Ali stared down at the menu. The words blurred, the tension between them winding round and round.
“Madam?” His expression set into a pleasing smile, the maître d’ spoke up. “If you don’t want the seafood that Mr. Vittori has ordered,” he said, “might I suggest something else?”
“No.” Ali took a deep breath. It wasn’t the poor man’s fault that Dante was playing with her. And she had played into his hands like she was still that irrational, impulsive hothead who wanted to hurt him for everything that was wrong in her world. “I’ll have the shrimp, thanks.”
“Don’t,” she simply said, once the man left.
Don’t manipulate me. Don’t rub me the wrong way. Just don’t...be in my life.
Dante leaned back, his stare intense. “Don’t make it so easy.”
Before Ali could launch into another argument, he placed a rectangular velvet case on the table. Ten minutes into the dinner and she felt like she was already emotionally wound up. She fell back against her seat. Of course, he was the master manipulator, playing on weaknesses, while he had remained untouchable.
“What now?”
“Open it.”
Just get it over with. Just get it over with. And walk away.
Ali opened the clasp. She caught sight of the tiny, exquisitely cut diamonds set into flowers with such delicate white gold that it always took her breath away, as it glittered under the soft lights. She rubbed the necklace back and forth with the pads of her fingers, compulsively, a balloon of ache in her chest. As if the gentle love of the woman who had worn them might have rubbed off on the stones.
It had taken everything she’d had in her to sell her mother’s precious piece.
She pulled the box to her and clasped it so tightly that her knuckles showed white.
First, he had dropped the word about her mother’s charity, now the necklace. Dante never did anything without some kind of payoff. He hated her just as much as she did him, and still he had sought her out. The hair on the nape of her neck prickled while her belly went on a swan dive.
“Why do you have this? What do you want, Dante?”