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Dante paid all her bills. Food. Daniel’s clothing. Diapers. The furniture in the nursery. The rent or the mortgage, whatever it was. He paid for her clothes—she’d left so much at the fazenda, and she’d needed warmer things after arriving here.
It would take her years, a lifetime, to pay him back, even if her agent lined up the kind of modeling deals supermodels got, and the truth was, she’d been a successful model but not one who earned six figures a day.
He owned everything in her life and her son’s life.
How had she let such a thing happen? What had become of her independence? Her sense of autonomy? Her determination, from childhood on, to rely on nobody but herself?
What had become of her responsibility to Daniel?
He deserved stability. Security. Not just financial security but the kind that came from the heart.
A father’s heart. She, of all people, knew how much that meant. Daniel was only a baby but already he smiled and laughed when Dante reached for him. Another few months, ba-ba-ba would turn into ma-ma-ma and da-da-da, but would Dante be there for him? Would he be there for her?
She took a deep breath. The word of the day was commitment.
As in forever. As in a man and a woman who were building a life together.
As in—
“Married,” Dante said, and she spun toward him, heart pounding.
“What?”
He was smiling but the smile was a lie. She could see it in his eyes, the set of his mouth.
“My brother Rafe.” He dug his hands into his trouser pockets as he stood beside her, his gaze on the skyline beyond the park and not on her. “When I checked my e-mail this morning, I found a couple of notes. Seems he’s getting married tomorrow. Well, it turns out he’s already married, some kind of quickie deal that happened in Sicily, and tomorrow, he’s doing it for real. Meaning, in church where my mother can get all misty-eyed over it.”
He sounded as if he were describing an auto-da-fι rather than a wedding but then, being burned at the stake might seem more appealing to a man like him. Was that why he’d been so distant all day?
“Oh,” she said, because she had to say something. “Well, that’s…that’s—”
“He’s been trying to reach me. The whole family has. But I’ve been out of touch.”
He made it sound like an accusation. Gabriella narrowed her eyes.
“I did not keep you from checking your messages.”
“Yeah, but who would ever expect a message like this?” Dante ran his hands through his showerdamp hair; it stood up in little black peaks. “I mean, this is crazy. He only just met this woman.”
“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.
