SHE WAS GONE.
She’d been gone for over a month.
First, she left the flat, bunking down one floor below him, in the studio he had had built for her. Because he’d been worried about what trouble she would get herself into, and he wanted to keep an eye on her. Because he’d thought Alisha was a liability he was taking on. And he would need to do damage control.
The first couple of days in the flat without her had been his first glimpse of hell. Memories of her seemed to have been absorbed into the very walls, the very fabric of his home.
He’d lived alone for countless years and yet the silence now had a different, haunting quality. So Dante had taken to sleeping at his suite at work.
Then she’d walked up to the flat one evening when he’d returned for a change of clothes.
Clad in that off-the-shoulder loose sweater and some kind of leggings, she’d looked so excruciatingly lovely that it had been a kick to his gut. “You cut your hair,” he’d said, unable or unwilling to keep a possessive tone out of his voice.
She hadn’t even called him on it. Fingering the wispy ends that framed her delicate face and highlighted those sharp cheekbones, she’d simply said, “It will be easier this way. I won’t have time to wash and blow-dry.”
And then she’d told him that she was packing up all her work, leaving it with her agent, and that she was leaving the studio too.
That all that open space he’d had custom-built for her, premium real estate in London, was free again, to do whatever he wanted with. He’d been so angry with her.
He had still not understood how she could make a mountain of a molehill, how she was using a small difference of opinion as an excuse to turn her back on her vows, to walk out of their life together.
It wasn’t as if he had asked her to turn down that opportunity. It wasn’t as if he had told her that he would not wait for her.
No, he hadn’t begged, it wasn’t in his makeup to do so. But, even in the fury that had gone through him, he’d said he was okay with the kind of life she had described for their future. That even if she chose to go on expedition after expedition, to build her career, to do what she loved, to follow her passion, that it was okay with him. That he would always be in London, that he would always have a place for her in his life.
She looked as if he had swung an arm at her. As if he was speaking in a different language. As if he was the one who didn’t know the meaning of compromise.
It wasn’t what he wanted out of their life together, it wasn’t the picture he had of their marriage. He didn’t want her to go off for long months at a time, leaving him behind. But, still, he had taken that step.
She’d looked like another word from him would blow her away, like a fluttering leaf, but she hadn’t cried. Funnily enough, he would have felt better if she had cried. Instead, the emptiness in her eyes, the sheer absence of that light that was her spirit, had terrified him.
And then she moved into her papa’s home. He knew she’d been there for three weeks before flying to New York to meet the philanthropist’s team. He knew that in just a few days, she would leave for wherever it was that they were going.
Izzy had the information about their destination. He’d ordered her to get as much information as possible from Alisha, but had forbidden her to tell him where she was going. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to know in which part of the world his wife was.
But even after a month of her being gone, he was surprised at how empty everything felt each evening when he came home. He wasn’t some romantic fool, some naive idiot in love to expect some kind of miracle to happen. He didn’t expect her to be there waiting for him, in tank top and shorts, waiting to tease him, torment him, to love him.
Dios mio, how she had loved him. How she had touched him and kissed him and taken him inside her.
But every night he missed her. He missed her in his bed. He missed her in the kitchen. He missed her in his heart.
So he’d done what he’d always done to protect himself when life dealt him a setback. He’d reminded himself he had what he had always wanted. He was the CEO of Matta Steel.
He had thrown himself into the Japanese merger, worked like a demon for eighteen, twenty hours a day, hitting the bed only when sheer exhaustion claimed his limbs. When he was so brain-dead that thoughts of Ali couldn’t torment him. He’d waited to feel that knife edge of desire to wane. Waited for the day when he would wake up and not reach for her. Waited for him to stop expecting her to walk in. Waited to stop holding his breath for her to kiss him, claim him. Like only she did.
Today, this morning, was not that morning.
Tonight, it seemed, was not that night. Grabbing the keys to her studio, he took the elevator to the floor below. He had a feeling he had left sanity behind a few days ago. That he was on the very edge that he’d been determined all his life to avoid. That despite his every safeguard, despite him breaking her heart, Alisha had brought him to his knees.
He pushed open the door to the studio and turned on the industrial lights. Bare walls and empty floors greeted him.
There was no trace of her in the studio, just as she’d left no trace in the flat. A strange fever gripping him, he walked around until he felt as if the walls were closing in on him. And that was when he saw it, one lone print, framed, blown up, sitting against the far wall, covered by brown paper and tied together with string.
He was so desperate for a glimpse of her work, for a glimpse of her, that he realized he was tearing through the paper with no respect for her work. Breathing hard, he forced himself to slow down. Slowly, he removed the brown paper, picked up the frame and brought it to where he could see it properly.
What he uncovered stole the remaining breath from his lungs.
It was him.
His picture. The one she must have taken before he realized that she was taking pictures of him.
Before he’d been even completely awake. When he’d still been in that moment between sleep and wakefulness, when all his defenses were down, when his heart was as free and light as it had been when he’d been a small boy, loved by his parents.
It had been in that moment when he’d automatically reached out for her, searching for her. She’d zoomed in on his face at the second before he’d found that she wasn’t there next to him. And somehow, she’d captured everything he felt for her but hadn’t even known.
Such love, pure and complete, such anticipation, such expectation, such utter trust, that somehow when he reached for her, and when he found her, his life would be complete. That he would be complete.
What had she felt when she had developed the print? Why hadn’t she come to him with it, why hadn’t she shown him what he’d felt and demanded that he acknowledge it? Why hadn’t she—?
It will always be me reaching out. Always be me waiting for you to love me, maybe just a little.
Dios mio, she had begged him to give them a chance. She’d asked him for one capsule of time in his entire life and she had promised to give him all of hers. All the moments, all of herself. And he had said no. He’d pushed her away. He’d called her childish, dramatic, he’d told her she was twisting things.
God, he didn’t deserve her.
It wasn’t his father’s fault or his mother’s fault, it was his own. He had had love like he had never known before and he had pushed her away. Cristo, he’d actually put the company before his wife.
She was right, he was a coward. He had known in his heart that she was everything to him. That if she persisted, she could demand his very soul and he would put it at her feet.
I will not be my father.
God, he’d even given voice to his biggest fear.
From the beginning, she had floored him with her generous heart. She’d captured him with her surrender and Dante found he had nowhere to go, no recourse but to tell the woman that stole his heart that he loved her.
That all the riches in the world didn’t mean anything without her. That for her, he would give up a hundred companies, he would give up everything.
She was everything to him.
* * *
New York in December was like a page from a fairy tale.
White blankets of snow covered every building, every street, wherever Ali looked.
Christmas lights sparkled everywhere—on buildings, skyscrapers, trees, awnings of tall apartment buildings, reflected brightly on the white snow-covered ground.
But she’d never believed in fairy tales, not even as a child. Maybe that was what came of living with a single parent, of being the product of a failed marriage.
Even when the city was at its most beautiful, its most brilliant, Ali still saw the broken-down buildings, the cheap housing and poverty, a sharp contrast to the glittering beauty and opulence. She loved walking through the different boroughs, and she’d been going through the rolls on her camera like it was candy. It was such an interesting landscape. So much life to see. To capture.
But, every once in a while, especially when she was being jostled around by typical New Yorkers in Manhattan, suddenly she would spot a well-dressed man—usually in an expensive three-piece suit, his hair jet-black, his profile sharp—and just like that, her heart would crash to a complete stop.
The masses of people around her, the noise, the decadent scents of food and sometimes the nauseous scents of decay, the honk of horns, the chatter in different languages flying back and forth...everything would melt away. She’d still, even with the wind biting her cheeks, and crane her neck to locate that tall man. Every molecule in her body thrumming with hope that maybe, this time, it was not some stranger, not some executive, but Dante.
It happened a dozen times, a hundred times, and yet, she fell for it every single time. Hope, excitement and then the crash of disappointment, followed by such a paralyzing ache in her chest.
She went through her day, meeting with John Carter’s team, trying different restaurants in Manhattan and midtown, just living. Slowly, she would build herself back up and then she would spot someone again.
It was a vicious loop that she seemed to be stuck in.
She couldn’t wait to leave New York. But Mr. Carter’s assistant had only informed her this morning the trip had been indefinitely delayed.
No reason had been given and Ali, for once too distracted, hadn’t even asked for it.
In the first week, she’d realized that the scale of these trips was beyond what she’d initially imagined. The logistics were mind-boggling. The question left to her was whether she should stay in New York or go back to London.
New York, her aching heart whispered immediately.
Because New York was an ocean away from him.
Because, as much as it pained her to keep looking for him in a crowd where he would never be, at the end of the day, she had lived through another day without breaking down. Without calling him just to hear his voice.
Without jumping onto a flight back to London to beg him to take her back. On whatever terms.
She couldn’t do that. She couldn’t always be the one reaching out. Couldn’t live with the constant choke hold of worry about what would make him shut down.
Whereas London was full of memories. She wasn’t sure she even had the strength to walk away again. It had been hard enough to do it the first time. Pulling her coat together, Ali checked the street sign and sighed. Finally, she had made it to the Plaza.
She’d stay another week and then decide. Right now, it was time to join the living.
She forced herself to smile as she pulled the glass door open.
It wasn’t Christmas yet but she knew Christmas parties abounded everywhere.
It would be nice to see the people she would be working with over the next eighteen months. It would be nice to forget the man she had left behind for at least a couple of hours.
She inquired at the reception desk and was directed to a suite on the twentieth floor.
Since the receptionist had immediately turned away to take a call, Ali swallowed her question and made her way to the bank of elevators. She checked her hair in the mirror and straightened the sweater dress she’d worn over black leggings.
In no time, she was knocking on the door. Something didn’t feel right. She almost turned away just as the door opened and there was Dante.
A barrage of emotions came at Ali, knocking the very breath out of her. “What the hell are you doing here?”
But she didn’t wait for his answer.
She turned away but didn’t really make it far before he grabbed her arm and pulled her into the suite and closed the door behind her.
After two months, after searching for that beautiful face in every stranger, the sight of him rocked the ground from under her. Stole her breath. He was wearing a chunky sweater and dark jeans.
Two or three days’ worth of beard covered his jaw, giving him a dangerous quality. Hiding that sensual mouth. His eyes glinted with some secret agenda, his shoulders stiff with tension.
In fact, he didn’t look like the remote, coldhearted man she’d left behind at all. He looked distracted, rumpled, a little bit broken, as if he were human after all. As if despite his best efforts, she had left a little mark on him.
“Buongiorno, Alisha.” His gaze swept over her sweater dress clinging to her breasts. A fire licked in his eyes. “You look good enough to eat, cara mia. I missed you. Dios mio, how I have missed you.”
Even with the chill from outside still clinging to her skin, those husky words instantly warmed her up. The emotion ringing in them was a slap to her senses.
She wasn’t going to engage with him. She wasn’t going to get into a fight. She didn’t want to spend a minute more than necessary with him, because at the rate her heart was beating, she was going to collapse on the bed and beg him to give her mouth-to-mouth. “I don’t have anything to say to you. Nothing new to negotiate. In fact—” her throat filled with tears “—I take back what I offered. I won’t give up this opportunity of a lifetime for you. You don’t deserve it. You don’t deserve me, Dante.”
A bleakness entered his eyes. He ran a hand through his hair, his only tell that he wasn’t quite put together. “I deserved that.”
“Stop agreeing with me. Stop telling me you missed me. Just...stop.”
“Don’t cry, cara mia. I promised I wouldn’t hurt you. I just want a conversation with you. Just half an hour of your time, Ali. Then you can walk out of here. I won’t stop you.”
Slowly, the shock of seeing him faded, and reality sank in. “Wait, I don’t understand. How are you here?”
“I took the jet this morning.”
Why was he playing with her like this? Letting her tote fall down to the floor, she leaned against the bed. She rubbed a hand over her forehead. “Why are you here, at the Plaza? John’s assistant told me the team was meeting for Christmas drinks.”
“That was me. I had John postpone the trip too.”
Shock pulsed through her. “What? Why?”
“I had a lot of things to see to. Paperwork...”
“Paperwork, of course. What is it this time, Dante? What else requires signing? What else do you want from me? Because I have nothing left to give you. Nothing.”
“Ali, I know I’ve—”
“This is not fair. I...I can’t do this again and again. I can’t walk away from you over and over. Don’t play games with me.”
“I’ve never played games with you. Not once. Not even in my dreams.”
His fingers clasped her chin in a firm hold, his eyes boring into her. He studied her as if she were dessert after a fast. As if he were parched for the taste of her. “I...told John that I want to join the team. But I need a month or two at least to get things in good shape at the company. I can’t just... If I need to give this my all—and I desperately want to—I need to make sure there are contingencies in place, in case the teams can’t get to me immediately.
“I made three trips to Tokyo to make sure there were no problems with the production line. He twisted my arm of course, until I made a huge donation. But like you said, what’s the whole point of being a billionaire if you can’t bribe your wife’s boss to wait until you can beg her forgiveness? To wait so that I can join her before she disappears for eighteen months and leaves my heart broken? Because it has been, cara mia. Without you...”
Hands on her hips, he dragged her to him until she was pressed up against him from chest to thighs. Shaking and shuddering, he was a fortress of heat and desire around her. Relief, it was relief that gripped him, she realized. “I kept dreaming that you had left before I could get to you. I’ve never felt so powerless...not since the polizia came to take Papa away. You were right. What I suggested wasn’t a compromise at all. Dios mio, one eighteen-month stint is bad enough. If you left me like that again... I’m sorry for not realizing the value of what you gave me. I’m sorry for hurting you so much. For being so...”
His mouth trailed soft kisses all over her face, down her jaw, onto her neck until her pulse was in his lips. Shock and pleasure and hope—all collided with each other in her chest, vying for the upper hand.
Pleasure won and she clung to him like a limp doll, willing him to take her mouth without having to beg for it. Rough hands snuck under her blouse, branding her bare skin.
Words came and fell away from her mouth and Ali stared, hope fluttering its wings in her chest.
She gasped when Dante sank to his knees and buried his face in her belly. Dark eyes, shimmering with wetness, looked up at her. “I’m going with you, just not immediately. Do this trip and return to London or not. Do a hundred trips for the rest of our lives and don’t return to London. I don’t care. As long as we’re together.”
“Are you sure? This is not a transaction.” A sob racked through her. “It’s not a condition to love you. To be with you. It’s not... If you ask me to leave with you to return to London today, now, I will. I just... I need to love you in my own way, Dante. Even if you don’t. Even if you—”
When she would have interrupted him, he nipped her, effectively silencing her. “I’m in love with you, cara mia. We will travel the world so that you can take more of those powerful photographs. We will live like nomads if that’s what you want. Our kids will travel with us if that’s what you want. We’ll never return to London again. Never buy a home. We’ll do it all your way.”
Ali sank to her knees and burrowed into him. “No. All I wanted was for you to take a step toward me. To let me love you like I want to. To love me back just a little.”
“I love you a lot,” he said and utter joy spread through her.
“I will make my home with you, wherever you are, Dante. You’re my home, don’t you see? Always, you’ve been the place I can land, the person I can love. You’re everything to me.”
Dante picked his wife up in his arms, his heart bursting with love for his wife.
* * * * *
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