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“So you’re willing to help me, but only as it benefits you in a business sense?”
“Please, Minerva,” he responded. “I don’t need this. Make no mistake. Had I needed a family connection I would have pursued it on my own terms long ago. With Violet. Not you.”
Her cheeks flooded with color. “Oh, really?”
“She is much more in keeping with my image.”
“Your image!”
“Though, to be perfectly frank, little one, I could have seduced you at any point over the years if I’d wanted to. I did not need your little scheme. Had I wanted to marry you, I’d have done so.”
She looked a second away from howling. “You could not seduce me, Dante Fiori,” she spat. “I don’t even like you. I never have.”
“Oh, is that why you used to follow me around like a puppy?”
He did not know why he felt the urge to prod at her, only that he did. She was the one who had walked them into this situation, and now she was going to put up a fight because he had found a way to make it tenable for him. Well. He would not have it.
This little sprite did not own him, and she was not in charge here.
If it weren’t for the fact that he was not quite the monster that the press made him out to be, he could destroy her farce easily. All it would take was a simple paternity test.
“You are using me to clean up for your bad choices, Minerva. All the better for you if you’d been seduced by me. Because at least I would have offered marriage, and I would have posed you no threat.”
“You are a threat,” she said darkly.
“A threat to what?”
“Common human decency.”
The door to the study opened, and Robert King filled the space. “I think we need to have a talk,” he said.
“Whatever you have to say to Dante you can say in front of me,” Minerva said.
“I don’t think that’s true, Min,” her father responded.
“It is,” she said stubbornly.
“Fine,” Robert responded. He slammed the door behind him. “How dare you use my hospitality so poorly. She’s a child compared to you.”
“You weren’t angry when I came home with the baby!” she protested. “But now you’re mad?”
“Why rail at you for your decisions?” Robert asked. “You were out in the world on your own, and you did not consult me on your choices. You came home and presented them, and what was the point in holding a postmortem on it? I’m not angry at you. I’m angry at him.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Minerva shouted.
But Dante knew that it did. Because Robert knew exactly where Dante was from. Not only that, he was thirteen years Minerva’s senior. A man who had seen more and done more than Minerva ever would.
She had been cloistered, sheltered by her family connections, and Robert had extended the same to him.
Robert had always counted on Dante to take care of Minerva.
Oh, yes, the fact that he was treating it as a betrayal made perfect sense to Dante.
And it spoke volumes about Minerva’s actual inexperience and age that she did not.
“Just tell me that you never took advantage of her when she was younger,” Robert said, his voice like iron. “Tell me.”
“I would not,” Dante said, keeping his voice even. “I swear to you, I would never abuse what you gave to me.”
