4. Dario
DARIO
I stare at Liana, my heart racing as rage courses through my system. I can’t believe that she chose such a deadbeat for her son’s father.
I can’t believe she chose anyone else at all. Not after what we had.
But maybe I’ve been lying to myself this whole time. Maybe she never felt what I felt. She couldn’t have. I remember the night she left.
We’d spent days in my penthouse, making love and talking all night, barely eating, barely sleeping, just in this bubble together. I never wanted to leave.
But suddenly, Liana stopped calling. She stopped answering my texts. Stopped coming by after she went to the gym in the mornings.
I was worried. What if something happened to her? What if there was a target on her back because of her father? Or worse, because of me?
So I went to her father’s house and her stepmother answered the door.
She blinked at me, surprise evident on her features.
I cleared my throat, my palms sweating like a fucking teenager, my heart racing. I was nervous. I’d never met Liana’s father, and although I knew she had a complicated relationship with him, I also knew that he was important to her.
And she was important to me.
“I’m here to see Liana.”
She looked me up and down, smirking slightly before turning around and yelling for Liana.
Liana descended the stairs, wearing a pair of pajamas with a cartoon cat on them, and I smiled.
My smile faded when I saw her face. Her gray eyes were red-rimmed, her skin pale.
“I don’t think we should do this anymore,” she said quietly, not looking at me.
My words died in my throat.
“What do you mean? Why?”
She shook her head. “I just... I can’t. I can’t live like this, like my mother did...”
She trailed off and I had no fucking idea what she was talking about. All I knew was that I wanted to fix it, wanted to make her gray eyes sparkle again, make her look at me again.
I gripped her chin in my hand, forcing her to look at me.
“What the hell are you talking about, Li?”
“Don’t call me that,” she said flatly. “Not now. Not after what I saw.”
“What do you mean? What did you see?”
Panic rose up my throat. I’d never been unfaithful to her. Ever since the moment we met, she was all I could think about. I wanted to say it but it felt like there was a rock in my throat, like I couldn’t speak around it.
“Goodbye, Dario.”
She shut the door in my face, and I pounded on it again and again until her father’s security dragged me away.
I shake my head, trying to rid myself of the painful memory. That was almost the worst day of my life, and it’d all been because she couldn’t trust me.
I draw in a sharp breath as Liana rubs at her knees, wincing as she does.
I frown, staring at her. “Take off your pants.”
“Wh-what?” she stutters, her gray eyes wide.
I leave the room briefly to grab a first aid kit. “You must have gone down on your knees. Let me have a look.”
“I’m not taking off my pants.”
I roll my eyes. “Li, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”
She bites her lip but then stands with another wince, tugging down her pants and thermals until they pool around her feet. She’s wearing a pair of cotton white panties beneath.
I do my best not to follow the thick line of her thighs, the curve of her ass as she sits back down, letting the clothes pool around her ankles.
Sure enough, her knees are scraped, nearly skinned in some places.
“This is going to sting,” I warn her before splashing rubbing alcohol over the wounds.
She yelps, clapping a hand over her mouth. There’s no need. Sonny seems like he’d sleep through a stampede, and there’s no neighbors around for miles.
I touch the outside of her knee, on one of the uninjured parts, and she drags in a long breath. I grit my teeth as arousal shoots through me just from seeing her half-dressed, from barely touching her.
I hate it. I hate her. I hate myself for still wanting her.
I guess I always will.
I slowly put ointment on her wounds, taking my time, touching her as little as possible. It doesn’t matter. I want her nonetheless.
She drops her hand from her mouth after a few moments, sighing in relief as the pain-relieving ointment takes effect.
“Fuck, that’s better. Thank you.”
I grunt in response, bandaging the worst of them as best I can given the injuries are on a joint. I tug back up her pants and she lifts her hips, allowing me to pull them up the rest of the way. My fingers brush along her waist and my dick twitches in my pants.
Stop it.
This is Liana Rossi. The woman who ruined your fucking life.
I stand up from my crouch, not looking at her.
After getting the Chinese leftovers from the microwave, I hand her the box and a fork.
She makes a little sound in the back of her throat as she sniffs it, almost like a moan, and my dick twitches again.
God.
My mind is racing, trying to figure out what to do. I hate her, but I can’t leave a woman and child out in the cold. But then again, what if I let her in and she leaves me again?
My throat feels tight just thinking about it. I don’t think I can go through that again.
How do I keep her here? Keep her from leaving?
I realize that it’s stupid. Pathetic.
But I can’t help wanting her around. At least until I can find some way to get over her, to move past this.
She eats voraciously and I just stand there, leaning against the counter, watching her.
“You’ll stay here. You and Sonny,” I say as she finishes, already looking less pale and drawn.
She nods. “I really do appreciate this, Dario.”
I just nod. “I’ll give you a little tour.”
“You don’t have to go to the trouble—”
“Nobody has a house like this if they don’t want to show it off,” I assure her, and she smiles a little, making my heart flip around in my chest.
She stands and I walk out of the kitchen, leading her to the back door. I step out onto the patio over the grotto style pool.
“The poolhouse is back that way. I don’t know if Sonny likes to swim—”
“I’m sure we won’t be here long enough for that,” she says quickly, cutting me off.
I snap my mouth closed. She’s already plotting to leave. Of course she fucking is.
“Do you have somewhere else to go? Thought you said Sonny’s father wasn’t in the picture.”
“He’s not,” she insists. “And calling him isn’t an option, so just... drop it, will you?”
I don’t respond, just sighing and turning back to go through the kitchen into the foyer.
“Those crystal chandeliers were installed by my father,” I say proudly. “Every one.”
“They’re beautiful. Antiques?”
“Sixteenth century.”
Her mouth drops open. “Even one must cost a fortune.”
I hum. “My parents spared no expense.”
I show her the den, which includes a couple of arcade pinball machines and the newest gaming console.
“You play video games?”
“Every man needs a hobby.”
She looks up at me, smiling slightly. “Did you play them when... well, when we knew each other?”
“A little.” I don’t tell her that the reason I play so much now is to take my mind off thinking about her. Missing her.
And now she’s here. She’s here with her kid by another man and all I want her to do is stay.
I’m a glutton for punishment, I guess.
Especially since there’s only one way I can think of to control this situation.
I walk her upstairs, slowly because of her knees, and she holds onto the railing.
I make a side trip into the hallway bathroom and rifle through the medicine cabinet until I find some over the counter painkillers.
I pour a plastic cup full of water and hand it to her with the pills.
“Take these.”
She takes them without complaint, surprising me. She must really be in pain.
“You’re welcome to choose any room you like to sleep in.”
She shakes her head. “I’ll just bunk with Sonny. I don’t want to put you out.”
I snort. “I’m a single man living in a twenty-bedroom house. It’s not putting me out.”
“Still. He gets scared in new places.”
She looks up at me and I take a step toward her. She doesn’t back away, just looks up at me with unreadable gray eyes.
I lean down slightly, so close I could catch her mouth with mine, press her back against the wall, wrap her legs around my waist.
I bet she’d be wet already, like she always used to be. Pleasure rolls down my spine and I fight to keep my dick from hardening.
Even if I want her around, I’m not allowing myself to get pulled back into her orbit. Not ever again.
But I can’t leave her to drown, either. Not when she has a kid to support.
I’d always thought it wasn’t possible to hate him any more than I already do—the man she left me for, the man she had a kid with, but now, I want to put him underground.
What kind of man abandons his child?
“Dario... what are you doing?”
Coming back to myself, I blink. I reach out to tuck a brown curl over her ear.
“Like you better as a brunette. Is this your natural color?”
She swallows visibly, touching one of her curls. “Yeah. Got tired of bleaching it and damaging it.”
“It suits you,” I murmur, and force myself to step away from her. “Sonny’s in this room here, right next to mine.”
I jerk my head toward the master bedroom. She glances at it but then turns back to me.
“Why do you still have the penthouse if you’re living here?” she asks.
I shrug, grinning wickedly. “Don’t always want everyone I sleep with to know where I live.”
She huffs. “So you only take women there.”
“Yep.”
“Some things never change,” she mutters.
I frown, staring at her. She has no right to judge me for sleeping around, not after what she did. About five minutes after she left me, she got pregnant by someone else, so she’s being a hypocrite.
But I don’t bring it up.
I don’t want to remember that day, the day I found out she was pregnant. It was one of the worst days of my life, too, and I didn’t recover for months.
I open the door to the bedroom Sonny is sleeping in and she peeks her head inside.
“I guess I should turn in,” she says. “Don’t want him waking up and finding me gone.”
I nod.
“Alright. And Li?”
She looks over at me, one hand on the doorknob.
“Yeah?”
I take in a shaking breath. This is crazy. Completely insane. I have reasons for suggesting it, though, and although most of those reasons are about Liana, some of them have nothing to do with her.
“Let’s get married.”