Consequence Of His Revenge

All of that had been put in jeopardy by the loss of the seed capital his grandfather had allowed him to risk on his self-driving car dream. The consequence of trusting wrongly had been a decade of struggle to find an even keel and come back to the top—yet another reason he wanted to give his grandmother some attention. He had neglected her while he worked to regain everything she and her husband had built.

Cami Fagan ought to be grateful all he had done was refuse to hire her.

Nevertheless, that broken expression of hers lingered in his mind’s eye. Which annoyed him.

Someone knocked.

He snarled that he didn’t want to be disturbed, then flicked the lock on the door.

* * *

Cami was shaking so hard, she could barely walk. She could barely breathe. Each pant came in as a hiss through her nose and released in a jagged choke.

Get away was the imperative screaming through her, but she could hardly see, she was so blinded by tears of grief and outrage. Good? Good? Had he really said that? What a bastard!

She was so wrapped up in her anguish, she almost missed the faint voice as she charged past an old woman sitting on a bench, half a block from the Tabor’s entrance.

“Pi fauri.”

Despite drowning in emotion, Cami stopped. She and her brother always stopped, whether it was a roadside accident or a panhandler needing a sandwich.

Swiping at her wet cheeks, she raked herself together. “Yes? What’s wrong?”

“Ajutu, pi fauri.”

Cami had a few words in a dozen languages, all the better to work with the sort of international clientele who visited destinations like Whistler. In her former life, she’d even spent time with Germans and Italians, picking up conversational words, not that she’d used much beyond the very basics in recent years.

Regardless, help was fairly universal, and the old woman’s weakly raised hand was self-explanatory.

“I’m sorry, do you speak English? Qu’est-ce que c’est?” No, that was French and the woman sounded Italian, maybe? “Che cos’ è?”

The woman rattled out some breathless mumbles, but Cami caught one word she thought she understood. Malatu. Sick. Ill.

She seated herself next to the woman, noting the senior was pressing a hand to her chest, struggling to speak.

“I’m calling an ambulance. We’ll get you to the hospital,” Cami told her, quickly pulling out her mobile. “Ambulanza. Ospedale.” One didn’t race with champions down the Alps without hearing those words a few times.

She could have gone back into the Tabor and asked Karen to call, but she had her first-aid certificate, and this was exactly the type of thing she’d been doing since her first housekeeping position at a motel. The woman was conscious, if frightened and very pale. Cami took her pulse and tried to keep her calm as she relayed as much information as she could to the dispatcher. With the woman’s permission, she was able to check her purse and provide the woman’s name along with some medication she was taking.

“Do you have family traveling with you? Can I leave a message at your hotel?”

Bernadetta Ferrante pointed toward the Tabor, which sent a little shiver of premonition through Cami, but what were the chances? Dante Gallo seemed to be traveling with an entourage. Bernadetta could be related to anyone in there.

She asked a passerby to run into the hotel to find Bernadetta’s companion, then pointed into the sky as she heard the siren. “Ambulanza,” she said again. “It will be here soon.”

Bernadetta nodded and smiled weakly, fragile fingers curling around Cami’s.

“What the hell have you done?” The male voice was so hard and fierce, it made both of them jump.

Cami briefly closed her eyes. Of course it was him. What were the chances of two head-on collisions in a row?

Bernadetta put up a hand, expression anxious.

Dante said, “Non tu, Noni,” in a much gentler tone, before he returned to the gruff tone and said, “I’m speaking to her.”

The ambulance arrived at that moment. Cami hovered long enough to ensure she wasn’t needed to give a statement, then slipped away. Bernadetta was already looking better, eyes growing less distressed as she breathed more easily beneath an oxygen mask, while Dante left to fetch his car and follow to the hospital.

Cami trudged through the spitting spring rain to the next bus stop, only wanting distance from that infernal man. At least the crisis had pulled her out of her tailspin. Tears never fixed anything. She had learned that a long time ago. What she needed was a new plan. While she waited for the bus, she texted her brother.

My job fell through. Can I sleep on your couch?

CHAPTER TWO

MAKING COOKIES WAS the perfect antidote to a night of self-pity and a morning of moving boxes. Besides, she had a few staples to use up and a neighbor to thank.

When the knock sounded, she expected Sharma from down the hall. She opened her door with a friendly smile, cutting off her greeting at, “Hell—”

Because it wasn’t Sharma. It was him.

Dante Gallo stood in her doorway like an avenging angel, his blue shirt dotted by the rain so it clung damply across his broad shoulders. He was all understated wealth and power, with what was probably real gold in his belt buckle. His tailored pants held a precision crease that broke over shiny shoes that had to be some custom-crafted Italian kind that were made from baby lambs or maybe actual babies.

Oh, she wanted to feel hatred and contempt toward him. Only that. She wanted to slam the door on him, but even as her simmering anger reignited, she faltered, caught in that magnetism he seemed to project. Prickling tension invaded her. Her nipples pinched, and that betraying heat rolled through her abdomen and spread through her inner thighs, tingling and racing.

Woman. Man. How did he make that visceral distinction so sharp and undeniable within her? Everything in her felt obvious and tight. Overwhelmed.

Claimed.

Hungry and needy and yearning.

She hated herself for it, was already suffering a kick of anguish even as his proprietary gaze skimmed down her, stripping what little she wore. The oven had heated up her tiny studio apartment to equatorial levels, so she had changed into a body-hugging tank and yoga shorts. Her abdomen tensed further under the lick of his gaze.

Stupidly, she looked for an answering thrust of need piercing his shell, but he seemed to feel nothing but contempt. It made that scan of his abrasive and painful, leaving her feeling obvious and callow. Defenseless and deeply disadvantaged.

Rejected, which left a burn of scorn from the back of her throat to the pit of her belly.

She should have slammed the door, but the timer went off, startling her. With emotion searing her veins, she made a flustered dive toward the oven and pulled out the last batch of cookies, leaving the tray on the stove top with a clatter.

Pulling off the mitt, she skimmed the heel of her hand across her brow. What was he even doing here? Yesterday’s interaction had been painful enough. She didn’t need him invading her private space, judging and disparaging.

She snapped the oven off and turned to see him shut the door as if she had invited him in. He stood behind the door, trapping her inside the horseshoe of her kitchenette.

Her heart began thudding even harder, not precisely in fear—which was frightening in itself. Excitement. How could part of her be thrilled to see him again? Forget the past. He was a cruel, callous person. Good. She hated him for that. Truly hated him.

She didn’t ask how he’d got in the building. She wasn’t the only one moving this weekend. The main door had been propped open the whole time she’d been loading boxes into Sharma’s car and taking them to the small storage locker she’d rented.

This felt like an ambush nonetheless. What other awful thing had he said to her yesterday? She set aside her oven mitts and said, “You’re not welcome on this property.”

He dragged his gaze back from scanning her near empty apartment. His eyes looked deeply set and a little bruised, but she didn’t imagine he’d lost sleep over her.

A weird tingle sizzled in her pelvis at the thought, though. She’d tossed and turned between fury and romantic fantasies, herself. He was ridiculously attractive, and this reaction of hers was so visceral. In her darkest hour, she hadn’t been able to resist wondering, if they didn’t hate each other, what would that look like?

Tangled sheets and damp skin, hot hands and fused mouths. Fused bodies? What would that feel like?

Not now. Definitely not him.

She folded her arms, hideously aware she only had a thin shelf bra in this top, and her breasts felt swollen and hard. Prickly. If she had had a bedroom, she would have shot into it and thrown on more clothes. Her chest was a little too well-endowed to get away with something so skimpy anywhere but alone in her apartment, especially when her nipples were standing up with arousal.

She became hyperaware of how little she wore. How close he stood and how small her space was. The studio apartment ought to feel bigger, stripped to its bare bones—a convertible sofa that had been here when she moved in, along with an oval coffee table, a standing lamp and a battered computer desk. All that remained of her own possessions was an open backpack and the sleeping bag she was taking to her brother’s. The emptied space felt airless and hollow, yet bursting with tension. Like her.

“What are you doing here?” she asked when he didn’t respond to her remark.

“My grandmother would like to thank you.”

Could he say it with more disdain?

“Is she...” She took in the signs of a rough night, suddenly gripped by worry. “I called the hospital. They don’t share much if you’re not family, but said she’d been released. I thought that meant she was recovered.”

“She’s fine.”

“Good.” She relaxed slightly. “What happened?”

“Asthma. She hasn’t had an attack in years so didn’t bring her inhaler.”

There was definitely something wrong with Cami because even though he took a tone that suggested speaking to her was beneath him, his accent and the subtle affection and concern in his tone made his talk of asthma and an inhaler sound ridiculously kind and endearing. Sexy.

The heat of the oven was cooking her brain.

“Well, I’m glad she’s all right. I didn’t realize she was your grandmother—”

“Didn’t you?”

What now? Her brain screeched like a needle scraping vinyl. It struck her that a tiny part of her had wondered if he was here to apologize. Or thank her himself. Wow. How incredibly deluded of her.

It made her ridiculous reaction to him all the more unbearable. Of all the things she hated about him, the way he kept making her feel such self-contempt was the worst. She normally liked herself, but he made her mistrust herself at an integral level. He said these awful things to her and she still felt drawn. It was deeply unnerving. Painful.

“No,” she pronounced in a voice jagged by her turmoil. “I didn’t. And yes, before you ask.” She held up a hand. “I would have helped her even if I’d known she was related to you. I don’t assume people are guilty by association and treat them like garbage for it.”

She had to avert her gaze as that came out of her mouth, never quite sure if she could truly claim her father was innocent. He had signed an admission of guilt, that much she knew, but had told her brother he was innocent. If he was guilty, was it her fault he’d stolen Dante’s proprietary work and sold it to a competitor? She just didn’t know. The not knowing tortured her every single day.

It made her uncertain right now, one bare foot folding over the other, when she wanted to sound confident as she stood her ground. Her culpability was reflected in her voice as she asked, “How could I know she was related to you? You don’t even have the same last name.”

“Sicilian women keep their names.” He frowned as though that was something everyone should know, then shrugged off her question. “I’m not on social media much, but she is. It wouldn’t take more than a single search of my name to pull up our connection.”

“It would take a desire to do so, and why would I want to?”

“You tell me. Why did your father target me in the first place? Money? Jealousy? Opportunity? You knew who I was yesterday. You must have looked me up at some point.”

Further guilt snaked through her belly. Had she been intrigued by him even then? Not that she had admitted to herself, but how could she not want to know more about a man who had such power over her and remained so out of reach?

“Maybe I did.” She tried a shrug and a negligent shake of her head, but only managed to loosen her ponytail. She grabbed at it, dragging his gaze to her breasts, raking her composure down another notch. Challenging him was a mistake. It was an exercise in bashing herself against bulletproof glass with no hope of reaching whatever was inside. She knew that from the few times she had been desperate enough to try getting in touch, to plead her case, only to be shut out.

At least she was in a better place these days, even though it was still a precarious one. Her brother was looking after himself now, if barely scraping by under student loans. Her being jobless and homeless didn’t mean he would be without food and shelter, as well. She actually had a place to go to now that her own life had imploded again.

That meant she didn’t have anything left to lose in standing up to Dante. She dropped her arms and lifted her chin.

“Are you accusing me of somehow causing your grandmother’s asthma so I could call for treatment?”

“No. But I think you recognized her and took advantage of an opportunity.”

“To do what? Be kind? Yes. Guilty!”

“To get on my good side.”

“You have one?”

He didn’t move, but his granite stillness was its own threat, one that made a dangerous heat coil through her middle and sent her pulse racing.

“You haven’t seen my bad one. Yet.” Then, in a surprisingly devastating move, he added, “Cami.”

She felt hammered to the floor then, all of her reverberating with the impact of his saying her name. A flash in his eyes told her he knew exactly how she was reacting, which made it all the more humiliating.

Sharma chose that moment to knock, forcing her to collect her bearings. Cami had to brush by him, which caused him to move farther into her apartment. Her whole body tingled with awareness, mind distracted by thoughts of his gaze touching her few things, casting aspersions over them. Why did she even care how little he thought of her?

“Hi,” Sharma said with a big smile.

Cami had actually forgotten between one moment and the next who she was expecting. Her own baffled, “Hi,” reflected how out of sorts she was, making Sharma give her a look of amused curiosity.

“Everything okay? Oh, you have company.” Intrigue lit her gaze, and she waved at Dante. “Hi. Are you our new neighbor?”

Cami caught back a choke. The Dante Gallos of the world didn’t live in places like this. He’d probably wipe his feet on the way out.

“He’s just visiting.” Flustered, she set a brown bag of cookies on a small box of dishes she wasn’t keeping, but that Sharma’s young family might find useful, and returned Sharma’s keys at the same time. “Thanks for the car today.”

“It was bad enough you were moving out of the building. You can’t leave town,” Sharma said, making a sad face as she accepted the box. “What happened with the job?”

“I’ll explain later.” Cami waved a hand to gloss past the question, not willing to get into it with the demigod of wrath looming behind her, skewering her so hard with his bronze laser vision she felt it like a pin in her back. She was a butterfly, squirming under his concentrated study, caught and dying for nothing because her plain brown wings wouldn’t even hold his attention for long.

Sharma’s gaze slid over to him and back as if she knew Dante had something to do with it. “Okay, well, nice to meet you.” She waved at Dante, then said to Cami, “Gotta run to get Milly, but say goodbye before you leave.”

“I will.”

As she closed the door, Cami ran through all the should-have-saids she’d conjured last night, as she had replayed her interchange with Dante in his office. Through it all, she had wished she could go back and change a decade’s worth of history, all to no avail.

No matter what threats he was making, however, she knew this was a chance to salvage something. To appeal to whatever reasonable side he might possess. Maybe. Or not. Perhaps talking to him would make matters worse.

Still, she had to make him see she was trying to make amends and hopefully ease this grudge he had. It was killing her on every level; it really was.

* * *

As Dante waited out Cami Fagan’s chat with her neighbor, his brain was still clattering with all the train cars that had derailed and piled up, one after another, starting with the news her father was dead—which had been strangely jarring.

Initially, before their association had gone so very wrong, he’d looked on Stephen Fagan as a sort of mentor. Dante’s grandfather had been a devoted surrogate after Dante’s father died, and an excellent businessman willing to bet on his grandson, but he hadn’t had the passion for electronics that Dante possessed.

He’d found that in Stephen, which was why he had trusted him so implicitly and felt so betrayed by his crime. Maybe he’d even believed, in the back of his mind, that one day he would have an explanation from the man he’d thought of as a friend. Damaging as the financial loss had been, the real cost had been his faith in his own judgment. How had he been so blind? Something in him had always longed for a chance to hear Stephen’s side of it, to understand why he would do something so cold when Dante had thought they were friends.

Hearing Stephen was dead had been... Well, it hadn’t been good, despite his claim otherwise. It had been painful, stirring up the other more devastating loss he’d suffered back then. All the losses that had come at once.

As he’d been processing that he would never get answers from Stephen, someone had knocked insistently, informing him his grandmother was unwell. Rushing outside, what had he found?

Cami.

In the confusion, she’d slipped away, but she’d stayed on his mind all the while his grandmother was treated. The moment she had recovered, his grandmother became adamant that she thank the young woman who had helped her.

Back when she’d been grieving the loss of her husband, Dante hadn’t dared make things worse by revealing how he’d put the family’s security in jeopardy. It was one of the reasons he hadn’t pressed charges against Stephen—to keep his grandmother and the rest of the family from knowing the extent of their financial woes. He hadn’t wanted anyone worrying more than they already were.

Instead, with the help of his cousin, he’d worked like a slave to bring them back from the brink.

That silence meant Noni didn’t understand why he was so skeptical of Cami’s altruism. He didn’t want to tell her he would rather wring Cami’s neck than buy her a meal, but he wasn’t about to let his grandmother go hunting all over town for her good Samaritan, possibly collapsing again. He also sure as hell wasn’t going to give Cami a chance to be alone with his grandmother again. Who knew what damage would be done this time?

So, after a restless night and a day of putting it off, he’d looked up her address from her CV and had come here. He’d walked up the stairs in this very dated building, wondering what sort of debts her father had paid off since he clearly hadn’t left much for his daughter, and knocked.

Then Smash! She had opened the door, plunging him into a blur of pale pink top that scooped low enough to reveal the upper swells of her breasts and thin enough her nipples pressed enticingly against it. Her red shorts were outright criminal, emphasizing her firm thighs and painting over her mound in a way that made his palm itch to cup there. The bright color stopped mere inches below that, covering the top end of a thin white scar that scored down past her knee.

He’d barely processed the old injury when she whirled away in response to a buzzer. The fabric of her shorts held a tight grip on her ass as she turned and bent to retrieve something from the oven, making his mouth water and his libido rush to readiness.

He had spent the night mentally flagellating himself for being attracted to her at all, let alone so intensely. Cami was beyond off-limits. She was a hard No. Whatever he thought he might have seen in the first seconds of their meeting had been calculated on her part. Had to have been.

She had known who he was.

And now he knew who she was, so how could he be physically attracted to someone who should repel him? It was untenable.

Yet the stir in his groin refused to abate.

She turned from closing the front door, and her wholesome prettiness was an affront. A lie. He curled his fist and tried not to react when she crossed her arms again, plumping that ample bosom of hers in a most alluring way. Deliberately?

“I don’t know how to convince you that I had no ulterior motive yesterday, but I didn’t.” Her lips remained slightly parted, as though she wanted to say more but was waiting to see how he reacted first.

“You can’t. She wants you to come to the hotel anyway. To thank you. Not the Tabor. The one where we’re staying.”

Surprise flickered across her face, then wariness. “And you’re here to intimidate me all over again? Tell me not to go anywhere near her?”

“I’m here to drive you.” Was she intimidated? She wasn’t acting like it. “But it’s true I don’t want you near her. That’s why I’ll supervise.”

“Ha. Fun as that sounds—” She cut herself off with a choked laugh. Her ironic smile invited him to join in the joke, then faded when he didn’t.

Something like hurt might have moved behind her eyes, but she disguised it with a sweep of her lashes, leaving him frustrated that he couldn’t read her as easily as he wanted to.

She moved into the kitchen to transfer the last batch of cookies onto the cooling rack. “Too bad you didn’t put it off until Monday. I would have been gone. Tell her I’ve left town.”

He moved to stand on the other side of the breakfast bar, watching her.

Such a domestic act, baking cookies. This didn’t fit at all with the image he’d built in his mind of her family living high off his hard work and innovation. Nothing about her fit into the boxes he’d drawn for Fagans and women, potential hires or people who dined with his family. Nothing except...

“Unlike you, I don’t lie, especially to people I care about.”

“Boy, you love to get your little digs in, don’t you? When did I lie to you?”

When she’d mentioned he was being paid back, for starters, but, “Forget it. I’m not here to rehash the past. I’ve moved on.” Begrudgingly and with a dark rage still livid within him.

“Really,” she scoffed in a voice that held a husk. Was it naturally there? An emotional reaction to his accusation? Or put there to entice him? “Is that why you fired me without even giving me a chance? Is that why you said it was ‘good’ that my father is dead? My mother died in the same crash. Do you want to tell me how happy you are to hear that news?” The same emotive crack as yesterday charged her tone now, and her eyes gleamed with old agony.

He wanted to write her off as melodramatic, make some kind of sharp comeback so she wouldn’t think she could get away with dressing him down, but his chest tightened. Whatever else had happened, losing one’s parents was a blow. He couldn’t dismiss that so pitilessly.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” he allowed, finding his gaze dropping to the scar etched onto her collarbone. She had that longer one on her leg, too. Had she been in the accident? He tried to recall what he had known about Stephen Fagan’s family, but came up with a vague recollection of a wife and a forgotten number of children.