Dante's Twins

“And I’m not?”

“I didn’t say that.”

Her baby-blue eyes had welled with tears. “Prove it.”

“Huh?” He’d been genuinely puzzled. Prove what?

“Prove that you really love me.” She’d planted her fists on her hips and glared at him. “Make up your mind what you want—me or basketball.”

Well, nice nipples or not, it had been no contest! “Okay,” he’d said. “Basketball. So long, Jane. It was a blast while it lasted.”

That had been it as far as he was concerned. Girls came and went but in those days, basketball was forever. End of love affair—or so he’d thought until Mrs. Perry showed up on his family’s doorstep, weeping daughter in tow, and read the riot act at the callous way he’d behaved.

“You’ve broken my little girl’s heart, Dante Rossi,” she’d informed him and half the neighborhood, “not to mention sullied her good name.”

Because he knew he hadn’t behaved well, he’d refrained from pointing out that he wasn’t the first to sample everything Jane was so willing to share, nor was he likely to be the last. Instead, he’d learned from the experience and never again made the mistake of confusing lust with love or indulged in a spur-of-the-moment declaration that he wasn’t prepared to honor.

Instead he kept his feelings on a tight rein and if his hormones weren’t always as firmly controlled, at least he made sure a woman understood the ground rules before she entered into a liaison with him.

After that, there’d been no room in his life for long-term commitment. His father and grandfather had earned a living making the best pasta in town for a company owned by other men. But good Italian son though he’d been, Dante had known he’d never follow in such mundane footsteps.

His priorities had followed a different blueprint, one in which success and personal fulfillment were built upon a foundation of pride and a determination not just to be as good as other successful men, but to be better, stronger, smarter and—ugly though some might find the word—richer. Because another lesson he’d learned well and early in life was that honest labor and pride in a job well done didn’t, by themselves, guarantee the sort of success he was looking for.

It took more to inspire respect in a man’s peers. It took power. Authority. And money.

Without money, a man never amounted to anything but someone else’s patsy.

Until Leila, he’d found satisfaction enough in such a creed. Until Leila, he had scoffed at the kind of consuming romantic passion that afflicted other people and turned their ambitions toward suburbia and babies. Not that he didn’t value family; it was probably his most sacred asset, the motivation that drove him to success. He just hadn’t expected he was as susceptible as all those others. He was Dante Rossi, after all—king of his own corporate empire, too focused and too sophisticated to be blindsided by love.

He’d spent the better part of the last three days trying to convince himself of that—three days of covert glances, accidental touches that really were no accident at all, and flimsy excuses to strike up conversations with Leila in which the subtext of the words exchanged were charged with a powerful sexual innuendo.

And the result? Far from burning itself out, the attraction, the fascination—hell, the emotional involvement—had culminated in yesterday afternoon’s interlude in which body and heart had come together to bend his mind in an entirely new direction.

As they made their way back down the trail to the plantation house after their lovemaking, he’d said, “I want you to meet my family,” and waited for the familiar surge of caution to rise up. He never took women home; they seemed too inclined to view the move as the preface to a marriage proposal. He seldom even took them to his apartment.

“I’d like that,” Leila had replied, and once again he’d waited. But all he’d felt was a wave of relief that she hadn’t squashed the suggestion flat, then heard himself making plans for a future that went beyond the next few weeks.

For a guy who professed not to believe in it, he was showing classic symptoms of a severe case of love at first sight

In his present frame of mind, he’d have been happy idling away the day under a palm tree, with Leila beside him and nothing but an occasional swim to distract him from the pleasure of her company. Jeez! If any one of his employees had come to him with such a lame excuse for not putting in a full day’s work, he’d have kicked butt from here to Canada without a second thought!

Shoving aside the mosquito netting draped over the bed, he staggered to the louvered doors, flung them fully open and stepped out on the veranda, hoping a breath of fresh morning air would restore his sanity.

From his vantage point, the reef protecting Poinciana from the worst of the surf was clearly visible. Greenish brown and shaped like a boomerang, it separated the indigo blue of the open sea from the pale aquamarine of the shallower water in the lagoon.

But that bright light glinting off the waves...!

He winced at the arrows of pain shooting behind his eyes. The last time he’d suffered a headache like this had been the morning after his brother-in-law’s stag night two years ago. Then he’d been hung over, plain and simple. What ailed him now was anything but simple. In fact, it was damned complicated.

Given a choice, he’d have chosen to lay the blame on the rum punch served the night before. At least that wouldn’t have cast doubts on his sanity. But knowing the stuff packed a powerful wallop, he’d been very temperate. Pity his restraint hadn’t extended to his behavior!

Not that he cared for himself what anyone else thought, but he’d picked up enough to realize that Leila had already been put through the gossip mill. She hadn’t needed him to make matters worse.

Come to that, he hadn’t needed it himself. He was a man who liked to be in charge—of himself, of his surroundings, of his fate. And suddenly, he found himself in control of none of them.

Unsuspecting of the chaos about to assault him, he’d looked up and seen her three nights before, and if he’d been poleaxed smack between the eyes, the impact could hardly have been more acute.

He remembered wading through the mob of guests toward her, helpless to prevent himself, yet hoping the whole time that closer inspection would reveal her to have the kind of flaws guaranteed to put him off any notion of furthering the acquaintance. Hoping she’d be so heavily made up that it would impossible to see the real woman underneath; that her voice would make a crow sound musical by comparison, that she’d be vacuous, silly, or best of all, married.

Instead, she’d been perfect. Lovely. Dignified and delicate. Intelligent and refined. As passionately drawn to him as he’d been to her and, by all accounts, not involved with another man. He’d wanted to fall down on his knees and thank God for the miracle of her. Before he’d even touched her, a bonding of souls had occurred from which he had neither the will nor the power to extricate himself.

He ran a hand over the stubble on his jaw. He supposed he should be grateful she’d had the wit to turn him down last night because if he’d had his way, she’d be lying in his bed right now and he’d probably be lying on top of her. Not a smart move for a man who prided himself on never mixing business with pleasure.

He needed to get his mind back where it belonged: on revving up the troops on the feasibility of setting up a base of operation in Argentina. A hot shower, a shave, and a pot of strong coffee should do the trick.

About to turn back into the room, he stopped, his attention snagged by the sight of a figure emerging from the house. It was Leila.

She crossed the terrace and stepped down to the beach, her small footprints marking a trail through the freshly raked sand. Her swimsuit, a plain black one-piece thing, was modestly cut yet managed to define every curve, every hollow, every inch of her body. She’d tied back her hair so that it hung black and straight halfway to her waist. Her skin glowed apricot gold in the morning light.

She dropped her towel just above the high tide mark and waded into the water. When she stood waist deep, she waited a moment, perfectly silhouetted in the sunshine, then knifed below an incoming wave. Resurfacing another twenty feet out, she headed with smooth, easy strokes for a natural rock arch rising out of the sea at the eastern tip of the reef.

Dry-mouthed, he watched. And the fever to be with her came sweeping back, all the more compelling for its brief hiatus.

“To hell with business,” he said, moving with a speed he’d have thought beyond him five minutes before and dragging on his swimming trunks. “Argentina can wait.”

CHAPTER THREE

HER father had taught her to swim when she was only three years old and it had marked the beginning of a lifelong passion for her. Thoroughly at ease in the water, she’d spent many a happy hour with a mask and snorkel, exploring the secluded bays on the islands lying off the southwest tip of Singapore.

Although it lay farther north of the equator, Poinciana’s warm tropical lagoon reminded her of those times. Even without a face mask she could see schools of fish darting among the coral heads below her: flamboyant striped angelfish similar to those of her homeland waters, gaudy Spanish hogfish, dramatic black-capped basslet and iridescent blue parrot fish.

More relaxed than at any other time since she’d arrived on the island, Leila lost herself in that quietly alive world. But the fish were shy, elusive creatures, posing no threat to her safety, so when something suddenly wound itself firmly around her ankle and held her immobilized, she almost screamed with fright.

Kicking herself free, she turned in a tight somersault and came up to find herself treading water next to Dante. Had it been anyone else, she’d have lambasted him for sneaking up on her like that. But how could any woman hang on to her annoyance when she found herself mesmerized by a pair of eyes made all the more remarkable by the color they stole from the sea and sky?

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, cupping the back of her head in his hand and tugging her close. “I happened to see you leave the house and I just had to be with you.”

He sounded almost indignant, as though he resented the impulses driving him. “But you wished you could have stayed away,” she said, understanding exactly how he felt.

He nodded, the motion freeing the drops of water dazzling the tips of his lashes and sending them flying. Below the surface of the lagoon, his hips brushed against hers, a brief, erotic sweep of flesh against flesh. “Yes, and no. To be honest, I don’t understand a thing of what’s going on. All I know is that I’ve thought of precious little else but you from the moment I first set eyes on you.”

Unable to resist, she slid her hands over the planes of his chest and up around his neck. “I know,” she said. “It’s the same for me. I could hardly sleep for thinking of you and when I did finally drop off—”

Inching closer, he smothered the rest of her confession in a kiss. Long and slow and full of sweet fire, it stole her breath away. And just like fire, it consumed her until she was nothing more than one pliant, aching flame that left her professional aspirations in ashes, along with sound judgment and any intstinct she might once have possessed for self-preservation.

He pulled her into a tighter embrace, sliding his hands around her hips and molding her to him. Clinging together, they rode the gentle waves, oblivious to everything but the rhythm of their own passion. Caught in a current entirely of their own making, their legs tangled, mating with an intimacy that flooded her with a desire as overpowering as it was alarming.

What had happened to the woman whose signature trademark had always been the restraint and modesty with which she lived her life? Where had she gone? Until Dante, she’d never allowed a fully dressed man to take such brazen liberties.