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She sat huddled in her gold robe with heated rollers in her hair, and the clock nudged past seven when he walked through the door.
‘I’m leaving tomorrow,’ she told him. ‘I am.’
‘Fine,’ he clipped. ‘Don’t ask,’ Dante warned, as he dropped his keys and headed straight for his chambers.
She followed him in but he ignored her—simply stripped off, because he honestly felt as if he’d spent the day digging up dead bodies by hand. He would like ten years to think about today; instead, she stood uninvited in his bedroom again.
‘That’s not fair,’ she said.
‘Why have you got rollers in your hair?’
‘In case you still want to go to dinner. I know I promised not to mention it, and if you don’t want me to come that’s fine. Either way, I put out your suit.’
‘I can dress myself.’
He stepped into the shower and started soaping up. And he couldn’t believe she came and sat on the edge of the bath.
‘Are you going to see your son?’
He shot her such a look. ‘I don’t know. I stopped by the House of No Bees rather than think of it.’
He knew what she and Beatrice had called it.
Should he tell her now that Roberto wasn’t his?
Light another fuse before he spoke with his father?
He came out and whipped up a towel, then lathered up his face to shave.
He glanced at her in the mirror as he shaved. ‘I spoke with Reverend Mother. I’ll tell you more when I’m ready, but I am not in a very good mood right now, and I want ten minutes’ peace before I meet the people who call themselves my family.’
And then she surprised him.
‘Do you want to have cocktails and casual sex?’
‘You don’t do that.’
‘I think I might like to tonight. Unless you really have been at the House of—’
‘Alicia,’ he warned. ‘I’m not in the mood to joke. And if you are coming, I suggest you take out your rollers.’
‘We’re going?’
She was so delighted, and in this odd mood he couldn’t even begin to read her.
‘It’s dinner, Alicia.’
‘I know!’
‘It will be hell.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘I shall not wait one second for you to be ready. Clear?’
Alicia was no longer waiting.
It would be their last night, she knew it for sure, and she was so sick of her own needy self.
