Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Men in suits and women in skirts and silk shirts were stationed around the fancy restaurant—either circling the C-shaped bar or seated at the surrounding tables. A pianist was playing in the corner, serenading the crowd as they sipped on martinis and cosmos.
This place was haughty and impersonal. Gabby had chosen wisely.
Honesty approached the bar, resting her hand on the gleaming honey-colored wood. Glass shelves that stretched to the ceiling were lined with every liquor bottle imaginable.
Dante, wearing a crisp white shirt, his sleeves rolled to his elbows, stood to pull out a chair for her. “I was early,” he said. “Saved you a seat.”
Honesty had spent the afternoon focusing on two things: how she wanted the charity to operate, and what she would and wouldn’t accept from Dante going forward. Since those two topics were enmeshed, she was going to tackle them both tonight.
“I thought I was early.” She hung her purse on the hidden hook beneath the bar and slid onto the leather seat.
The bartender took her order and poured the cabernet sauvignon, then left her and Dante to themselves.
“Thank you for meeting me,” she told him.
“Is that what this is? A meeting?”
“Well…”
His hand was wrapped around a short glass of brown liquid. He lifted it to take a drink. “Makes sense. Our assistants arranged it. If it was a date, I assume you would have texted me yourself.”
“I was busy today.”
He grunted.
Butterflies took wing in her stomach, so she took a deep guzzle of wine to calm them. No sense in pretending she didn’t have an agenda. “I invited you here to talk about the future. Our future.”
“Okay.” He leaned away from her, as if she had been roped off with caution tape.
“After you return to California next week, do you plan on keeping in touch?”
He blinked. She’d caught him off guard. “Of course.”
“Do you plan on seeing me in person again?”
“You mean…ever? Probably.”
Not the definitive she’d hoped to hear.
“You’re in a sweet spot with me, Dante. I have been willing to share your bed and I have offered you mine. I am easygoing and congenial. I am patient. I have attended two meaningful family events with you. A birth and a wedding.”
His eyebrows slammed down. “I know. I was there.”
“In part,” she said.
“Where are you going with this?”
“We haven’t just been sleeping together.
That’s where I’m going with this. What we’ve been doing is outside the parameters of a fling.
” She should know. She’d dated Boyd Humphrey, after all.
That was a fling mistaken for a relationship.
What she and Dante had was the opposite—a relationship mistaken for a fling.
“You don’t think I’ve noticed things have changed?
I stepped in to introduce you around at a party and now our businesses are intertwined.
I didn’t expect to make headlines with you or be on the cover of a magazine together.
And I sure as hell didn’t plan on bringing you to a birth and a wedding.
It’s a lot of pressure when we’re just…” He trailed off, seeming unable to find the words. “Just…”
“Temporary?”
He opened his mouth but closed it again.
In her mind, a door slammed. She wouldn’t beg him to profess his feelings for her. If he wasn’t ready, that was on him. She knew how she felt. And now she knew how he felt.
“I didn’t come here to fight,” she said. “I came here for answers. Answers you just gave me. Although I had my answer this morning when I walked out of your penthouse for the last time.”
“Zander was needling me for information today. He said you talked to Chloe but he didn’t know anything.”
It was nice to hear that Chloe had kept her promise.
“Would you like to tell me what you talked about?” he asked.
Tell Dante she was in love with him? Sure, and after that she’d set fire to her eyebrows. “No, I wouldn’t.” No good could come from a one-sided profession. “Look, I had fun—”
“You had fun?” His voice was machete-sharp. “Don’t water this down. We reconnected over these last few weeks. This was about more than fun.”
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It was like he was saying everything except the word love. Could he not admit it, or was it that he didn’t feel it?
At the end of the day, it didn’t matter. If he hadn’t come to this conclusion on his own, what was the point?
“It’s my fault,” she said. “I started expecting more. I didn’t want to give you an ultimatum like you gave me eight years ago.”
“I never gave you an ultimatum.”
“What would you call asking me to move to LA with you or else we break up?”
“I offered you a choice to do what you wanted to do, which you did by the way. You stayed in Chicago. I left.”
“I’m aware.” If she’d held out any hope that he’d see the error of his ways, that was long gone now.
She would never deny that they’d had a connection at one point. They had been in love, but the way they’d defined it at the time was different than the way they defined it now.
She tried to talk the tears in her eyes into retreating. A battle she was losing.
“Not once did you say you wanted more,” he said quietly, as if it had just dawned on him that more was possible.
Why were men so concrete? He hadn’t seen her love for him on her face or felt it whenever they were together? He didn’t feel it radiating from her at this very moment?
“I have good news for you, actually.” She pulled her phone out of her purse and scrolled to her Notes app.
She cleared her throat. “I don’t want you to be beholden to Long Live Food when you have a life to return to in California.
So Gabby and I have restructured the launch. You don’t have to be involved.”
His eyes narrowed. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I’m not. I can do it without you. You’re no longer under any obligation.”
“You mean you don’t want me.”
She did. She wanted him with a ferocity that frightened her. But she wouldn’t beg.
“I have it under control.”
“I see.” He stood, reached for his wallet, and slapped a one-hundred-dollar bill on the bar. “Glad we ironed that out.”
“Dante, you don’t have to—”
“Leave? I think you made it clear that is exactly what you want me to do.”
“It’s easier if we button everything up before you go.”
“Right.”
“There’s no reason we can’t still—”
“Be friends?” His eyes went to the ceiling. He emitted a humorless chuckle. “And be held at arm’s length, or communicate via our assistants? No thanks.”
“Don’t make this any harder.”
“No need. You’ve done that for me.”
That was the last thing he said before he walked out the door.
Honesty’s vision blurred when the tears came. She hadn’t wanted to end it, but she’d made herself a promise. If Dante didn’t lead with a profession of love tonight, she would cut her losses.
She’d done the right thing. If theirs was nothing beyond a working relationship, she couldn’t allow herself to keep hoping for more. Now she could accept what was staring her in the face.
It was over between them.
For good this time.
The hum of the jet engine had been the only sound in the cabin until Simone Moretti broke the silence by cracking open a can of Diet Coke.
They were on their way home to Los Angeles, and Dante had done nothing but think around, over, and through what had happened over the last two weeks. During his visit to Chicago he had been vilified and misunderstood over and over again.
Last night, when he walked out of that stuffy, corporate bar, he hadn’t looked over his shoulder. Everything about being there had pissed him the fuck off.
The impersonal way she’d arranged that meeting had matched the way she’d shown up. He hadn’t even kissed her. Her body language hadn’t invited it.
He’d gone back to his hotel room and drank not one whiskey, but three. Which had helped him fall asleep, but had betrayed him at two in the morning. He’d woken parched with thirst, his heart racing, his head pounding.
Only to receive a knock on the door at seven a.m. It’d been his mother, offering to fly back with him if he wanted to leave today. Since he had but one reasonable option left—to escape with his dignity—he’d accepted.
“It seems like you are suffering from more than a hangover,” his mother said now.
He watched the clouds out the window rather than respond. He saw nothing but a sea of gray. How apt. He had been trying to stay angry but was losing the fight. Hurt had crept in.
He’d never dreamed that Honesty would no longer need him. He liked being needed, and he’d liked being needed by her most of all.
He hadn’t blown smoke up her ass, either. He’d meant it when he’d told her the charity was important. That she would make a measurable difference in the community. He’d been invested from the start, and she’d just …dismissed him.
“I could have flown home by myself. You didn’t have to come with me.” Simone slurped soda from the can. She had spent last night in her own suite at the Crane. Her favorite thing to do was order an egregious amount of room service and watch TV while sitting in an oversized bathtub.
At least that’s what he’d thought she’d done until she said, “Are you mad because Octavius and I spent the night together last night?”
The glass of water in his hand stilled in midair. “What are you talking about?”
She smiled. The twinkle in her eye made it hard to know if she was telling the truth or not. “Now that I have your attention, do you want to tell me what’s really going on with you beyond this alleged hangover?”
“Whatever happened between you and Dad anyway?” He’d rather not talk about Honesty. Ever, if possible.
“Why on earth would you ask that?”
“Dad said you didn’t want to marry him.”
“Oh, he would’ve been a terrible husband.” She waved a hand dismissively. “How does one share a man with several other women?”
He frowned. She wasn’t wrong. “But he wanted to marry you?”
She scoffed. “Don’t sound so surprised, mister. I was worthy of a proposal back then. I wasn’t interested.”
“I don’t think that you were unworthy. For years I assumed he had been the one running for the hills.”
“He proposed during sex all the time.”