Читать книгу Dante: Claiming His Secret Love-Child - Сандра Мартон, Sandra Marton - Страница 7

DANTE’S kiss was the last thing Gabriella expected.

The last thing she wanted.

Once, his kisses had meant everything. Tender, they’d been soft enough to bring her to the verge of tears; passionate, they’d made her dizzy and hungry for more.

And it hadn’t been only his kisses that meant everything. It was the man.

Deep inside, she’d known it had not been the same for him. She’d never been foolish enough to think it was. He was rich, powerful, incredibly good-looking. Many of the models she knew dated such men. She never had…

Until him.

His initial interest had been flattering. Exciting. She had thought, Why not? She’d promised herself dating him would be nothing serious.

And then, despite everything, she had fallen in love with him. Deeply, desperately in love.

Dante had been magic.

But the magic was gone, lost in the cold reality of the past year. Completely gone, she told herself frantically, when she saw the sudden darkening of his eyes, the tightening of skin over bone, the all-too-familiar signs that said he was going to take her in his arms.

“Don’t,” she said, slapping her hands against his chest, but he was not listening, he was not listening…

“Gabriella,” he murmured, saying her name softly as he used to when they made love. His arms tightened around her, he drew her against him…

And kissed her.

The room spun. The crowd disappeared. All that mattered was the sweetness of his kiss, the hardness of his body, the strength of his arms. Her foolish, desperate heart began to race.

“Dante,” she whispered. The hands that had tried to push him away rose and slid up his chest, skimmed the steady beat of his heart and curved around his neck. She rose on her toes, leaned into him, parted her lips to his just as she’d done in the past.

She felt him shudder with desire at her touch.

He wanted her, still.

Wanted her as if nothing had ever separated them.

The realization shot through her like a drug, and when he groaned, thrust one hand into her hair, slid the other to the base of her spine and angled his lips over hers, his kiss going from sweet to passionate as if they were alone, alone in that perfect world his lovemaking had always created, a world in which he had never abandoned her…

A meaty hand clamped down on her shoulder, fingers biting hard into her flesh.

“Pirhana!”

The foul Portuguese curse word was followed by a stream of profanities. Her eyes flew open as Ferrantes yanked her out of Dante’s arms, a stream of words even worse than whore flying from his lips.

Dante shot into action, grabbed Ferrantes’s arm, twisted and jerked it high behind the man’s back. Ferrantes hissed with fury and pain.

“I will kill you, Orsini,” he said, spittle flying from his lips.

“Dante,” Gabriella said desperately, “Dante, please. He’ll hurt you!”

Dante pushed her behind him and brought his lips close to Ferrantes’s ear.

“Touch her again,” he snarled, “and I promise, you bastard, I’ll be the one doing the killing!”

“She is a witch! She makes a fool of you. That you do not see it—Ahh!”

The big man yelped; his face contorted with pain as Dante forced his arm even higher.

“Listen to me, Ferrantes. You are not to speak to her. You are not to speak of her. You are not to so much as look at her or so help me God, you’re a dead man!”

Dante was dimly aware of the room emptying, men rushing for the door, footsteps hurrying across the veranda, truck and car engines roaring to life outside, but he never took his eyes from Ferrantes.

“You hear me? You’re to keep away from her. You got that?”

The big man’s breathing was heavy. At last he gave a quick jerk of his head in assent.

Dante let go, took a step back, and Ferrantes spun around and swung at him. His hand was the size of a ham but there had been many things to learn in the wilds of Alaska, including how to defend yourself in some of the roughest bars in the world. Dante danced back; Ferrantes’s fist sailed harmlessly by his face and when the big man came at him again he grunted, balled his own fist and jabbed it into the man’s solar plexus with the force of a piston.

Ferrantes went down like a felled tree.

Dante stood over him for a long moment. Then he looked up, saw de Souza, saw the auctioneer…

But Gabriella was gone.

De Souza was staring at the motionless hulk on the floor as if it were a rodent. Dante grabbed him by the shoulders.

“Where is she?” he demanded.

De Souza gulped, looked from Ferrantes to Dante. “You have made a bad enemy, senhor.”

“Answer the question, man. Where is Gabriella?”

The advogado shrugged. “She is gone.”

“I can see that for myself. Where?”

De Souza licked his lips. “Listen to me, Senhor Orsini. This situation is—how do you say—more complicated than it might at first seem.”

Dante barked a laugh. “You think?” His eyes fixed on the lawyer’s. “Where did she go?” he demanded. “Upstairs?”

“Not there,” de Souza said quickly. He gave another expressive shrug. “She fled with the others.”

Dante ran from the house. Only three vehicles remained in the clearing: his, a gold Caddy he figured was the lawyer’s and the big, ugly black SUV that surely belonged to Ferrantes.

He sagged against the veranda railing.

Gabriella was gone.

And maybe that was just as well.

He’d come here to buy this place for his father. Instead, he’d bought it for a woman who had once meant something to him but no longer did. Yes, he’d kissed her. And, yes, that one kiss had damned near consumed him, but so what?

He was a normal, healthy male. She was a beautiful woman. They had a shared history. But that was it.

He looked around him at the weed-choked corral, the dilapidated outbuildings. He’d dropped five million bucks on this place—his money, not Cesare’s—but so what? The truth was he had a lot of money. An obscene amount of money, and he’d made every penny on his own. Losing five million dollars was nothing. And Gabriella didn’t owe him anything. Hadn’t he promised her there would be no strings? Hadn’t buying the fazenda for her been his idea?

A muscle in Dante’s jaw began to tick.

It had been his idea…hadn’t it?

Yes. It damned well had. Still, he had the right to a couple of minutes of conversation. Okay, questions, not conversation, but he was entitled to ask them. Why had she returned to Brazil? Why did she want this rundown disaster? Why did it belong to the bank?

Most of all, why would an ugly SOB like Ferrantes act as if he had a claim on her?

The muscle ticked again.

And then there was the biggest question of all. Why had she melted in his arms when he’d kissed her? Hell, why had he kissed her in the first place? Forget the history thing. He was a man who never looked back—

“Yo, American!” Ferrantes stepped out of the house. He was grinning, even though his gut had to be aching. “You throw a good punch, for a Yankee.”

Dante’s lips drew back from his teeth. “My pleasure.”

The other man chuckled. “The pleasure is all mine, Orsini. Your blow gave me the chance to think. That two intelligent men would have fought over such a woman…”

Dante narrowed his eyes. “Didn’t you learn anything?” he said, his tone soft and dangerous. “I told you to watch your mouth!”

The big man lifted his hands in mock surrender. “Trust me, meu amigo. The woman is all yours.” A sly smirk lifted one corner of his mouth. “But I must be honest. You saved me from wasting a lot of money.”

Dante folded his arms. “Glad to have been of service.”

“And from wasting the rest of my life.”

What in hell was the man talking about?

“So, senhor, now I owe you a favor.” Ferrantes made a show of looking around, then lowered his voice. “Before you get in too deep, ask the lady a question.”

“Listen, pal, when I need advice from you—”

“Or ask the advogado. Perhaps he will tell you what you need to know about his charming client.”

A coldness danced along Dante’s spine. Don’t fall for it, he told himself, but it was impossible to ignore the bait.

“What in hell are you talking about?”

All pretence at camaraderie vanished from Andre Ferrantes’s ugly face.

“Ask de Souza whose bed your Gabriella has been sleeping in,” he said coldly, “until you showed up and she decided it might be more profitable to sleep in yours.”

He’d wanted to go for Ferrantes’s throat, but pride held him back.

Why give the man even a small victory? Dante thought hours later, as he sped along a narrow road that led deeper and deeper into a verdant wilderness.

Bad enough she’d played him for a fool in front of everybody, including the lawyer, who’d known her game all along, and the auctioneer, who was probably still celebrating the haul he’d made. Bad enough, too, that every man in that room knew she’d slept with Ferrantes.

Not that he gave a damn that she’d been with someone else—he had no claims on her anymore—but Ferrantes? She’d wanted the ranch badly enough to lie beneath a pig like that? Open herself to him, take him deep inside her, beg him to touch her, taste her, take her…

Dante’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.

She’d done all the things with Ferrantes she had once done with him—and then he’d come along and she’d seen an easy way to put the bastard out of her life.

His mouth twisted.

What a piece of work she was! The earrings he’d bought her had been worth a small fortune but she’d made it seem as if she were too good to accept such an expensive gift from a lover. A former lover, okay, but that wasn’t the point.

Apparently, accepting a ranch was different.

The car hit a pothole and swerved to the right. Dante cursed and fought the wheel, brought the car back on the road.

No wonder Ferrantes had stood there with that slab of beef he called an arm wrapped around Gabriella’s waist. No wonder he’d objected when Dante kissed her. Gone crazy when she’d kissed him back.

Except, she hadn’t.

He knew that now. It had all been a carefully calculated performance. The lady had seen her chance to get possession of those useless acres without continuing to spread her legs for Ferrantes.

An image, so hot and erotic it all but obliterated his vision, filled Dante’s mind.

“Dammit,” he snarled, and pushed the gas pedal the last inch to the floor.

The car rocketed ahead.

What an idiot he’d been! Falling for her act. Behaving precisely as she’d intended so that now he owned a useless piece of dirt in the middle of nowhere, every stinking weed, every collapsing outbuilding all his. He’d written a check for the auctioneer, ignored the man’s outstretched hand, brushed past the lawyer without a word because they’d both known what was happening. They could have told him. Warned him.

Warned him?

The auctioneer’s job was to sell the ranch. The lawyer’s was to protect his client. Besides, de Souza had tried. There is more to this than you know,Senhor, he’d said. Something like that and Dante had chosen to ignore—

Something raced across the road, came to a dead stop, glared at him through eyes that were a shocking red against the dark onset of night. Dante stood on the brakes, fought to control the steering. The car swerved, spun; the tires squealed as if in pain. A wall of thick trees reared up ahead and he cursed, hung on to the steering wheel…

The car came to a shuddering halt.

The sound of the engine died. Silence and the night closed in as he sat behind the wheel breathing hard, hands shaking.

The car had done a one-eighty, ending up pointing in the direction from which he’d come.

He looked in the rearview mirror. The road behind him, what had moments ago been the road ahead of him, was empty. The animal—a big cat, he was almost certain—was gone.

His heart was still pounding. He took half a dozen breaths, sat back until his hands were steady again.

All this crap, reliving the stupid things he’d done almost as soon as he’d stepped off the plane at Campo Grande, was not getting him anywhere. What was done, was done. It was something he had learned to live by, how he had gone from almost flunking out of high school to doing okay in college and then putting in those years in Alaska before finally admitting that success in life wasn’t such a bad thing, after all.

Besides, he was the one who’d get the last laugh.

Sure, he’d been conned into dropping a big chunk of change buying property he didn’t want for a woman who meant nothing to him, but this wasn’t over. As he’d walked past de Souza, the lawyer had put out his hand.

“Senhor Orsini?” he’d said politely. “I will expect your phone call.”

Dante had looked at him blankly. De Souza had cleared his throat.

“To make an appointment to come to my office, yes? To transfer ownership of Viera y Filho to Senhorita Reyes.”

“Yeah,” he’d said brusquely, as he’d brushed by the man.

Now, Dante smiled.

Why would he transfer the deed to Gabriella?

She’d wasted her time. No way would he give her the ranch. He’d sell it to the first buyer that wanted it. Or let it go on rotting until every last sign of it had been swallowed up by the surrounding scrub. He would do whatever it took to keep her from profiting from what she’d done to him.

Still smiling, he turned the key. The engine coughed, then caught, and he headed for Bonito.

The drive, even the near accident, had done him some good. Cleared his head. He felt a thousand times better, calm and in control, and that was important.

He was a man who prided himself on being in control.

Goodbye and good riddance to this place, this cast of characters. He was going home.

By the time he reached the main road, he was whistling. He felt good. He’d get to the hotel, shower, change, phone down for room service—or no, why do that? The travel agent had faxed him a list of restaurants and bars. This was Brazil and even in a town that specialized in eco-friendly tours, there was sure to be a hot night scene, and Brazilian women were spectacularly beautiful.

A little rest and relaxation was what he needed.

He didn’t just feel good, he felt great…

Until he approached the road that led to the Viera y Filho fazenda and saw distant lights blazing like the fires of hell against the black night sky at the end of that road.

His good mood disappeared.

Lights. There was someone in the house. And he knew, instinctively, that someone was Gabriella. De Souza had deliberately misled him. Gabriella hadn’t gone out the door, she’d gone up the stairs.

The rage he’d fought for so many hours reached out, all but consumed him. To hell with heading back to the States without confronting her. No matter what he told himself, he’d be leaving with his tail between his legs.

No way, he thought grimly. Not him.

Dante made a sharp left and headed for Gabriella.