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There was always a spare set of clothes in his office, and his running gear. He could shower there, he could shrug on a fresh shirt. It worked because he didn’t keep office hours.
He wasn’t avoiding anything. It wasn’t in any way symbolic; it wasn’t as if he were in denial. Bea had gone and it was better for her and better for him.
She was looking at him with a puzzled expression.
‘But I wasn’t coming back.’ She had assumed her belongings would have been boxed as soon as she had gone. She had wondered more than once about asking for them to be sent on.
He shrugged, appearing exasperated by her persistence as he dragged a hand through his dark hair and sighed, managing by the flicker of an eyebrow to make her feel she was making a big deal out of nothing at all.
Maybe because you want it to be a big deal for him? Maybe you want it to hurt for him too? Before the horror of acknowledgement hit home, she pushed away the preposterous idea, conscious that she was guilty of overanalysing.
‘But you are back.’
She couldn’t argue with that, but it meant sleeping in the same bed they had shared…as if this weren’t hard enough anyway. She’d stepped out of this life—stepping back in was going to present challenges regardless of where she slept.
This time, when his hand curved around her cheek, she did let her cheek fall into it.
‘Look, I know this is hard for you but—’ He broke off, cursing as the opening of a door to their left made Beatrice jump away from him.
Giggles entered the hallway a moment before two uniformed figures. One saw Dante and stopped so quickly that the smaller figure bumped into her.
‘Scusi, Highness…’ Eyes round with shock, her face pink with embarrassment, she dropped a curtsy and the woman behind her followed suit.
Dante addressed them, speaking Italian, and they responded in the same language. Considering she had been boastful about her language ability earlier, Beatrice didn’t have a clue what was being said. Her brain wasn’t functioning through the jam of conflicting emotions in her head.
She stood there with a fixed smile throughout the exchange and one thing was clear: if her arrival had not been officially announced, it had now.
He gave a sardonic smile as the women vanished through the door they had entered and closed it behind them.
‘They think I don’t know they use this suite as a shortcut when we’re away,’ he said, sounding amused. ‘Don’t worry, word will get around we are back.’
‘My ears are already burning.’
‘They’d be burning some more if we slept at opposite ends of the building,’ he predicted drily.
‘Was that ever an option?’ she asked, with a catch in her voice.
He held her eyes and her insides tightened as he didn’t say a word. The look, even without the shake of his head, was enough.
‘But relax,’ he added as she swung away from him. ‘There’s still the bed in my dressing room if that is what you want.’
Walking behind her, he watched as she almost missed the next step but after a pause carried on walking.
He caught up with her, pulling level as he added in a low voice that dragged like rough velvet across her nerve endings, ‘Remember?’
Her hand tightened on the banister as she stopped and flung him an anguished look. ‘Why are you doing this, Dante?’
Remember?Of course she remembered…
She’d made her complaint after Dante had not slipped into their bed before three in the morning and had then been up before six for two weeks straight. It had been intended to ignite a discussion about his unhealthy work-life balance.
That had always been optimistic. Dante took the entire caveman-of-few-words thing to extremes, missing the point entirely and, working under the assumption she was concerned about her own disturbed beauty sleep, he’d had a bed put up in the adjoining dressing room so that he would not disturb her.
The one occasion he had used it she had lasted five minutes before she had left the massive bed they’d shared and joined him, sliding in beside him in the narrow bed. Images floated into her head, warm bodies entwined, his need to lose himself in her, her need to give. The cumulative effect had always generated heat.
She felt heat now ripple through her body and, resisting the temptation to feed it, lowered her eyes, her glance snagging on his strong brown fingers that were curled lightly around the cool metal of the banister a bare inch away from her own.
Conscious of the tingling and the tug, she pulled her own hand away and pressed it against her stomach.
