Page 57 of Incognito

Gina sighed and shook her head. “Did Dante tell you about our mother?”

Natasha wondered if she’d entered the twilight zone. Every time Gina showed up and opened her mouth, her confusion meter went up a notch.

“A bit.”

“Mother is pushy, opinionated, and always right.”

“Hmm…” Natasha mumbled, stifling a grin as she recalled Dante saying something similar about Gina.

“Dante’s life has been mapped out since birth, whereas I had the fortune to be born a girl and second so I could escape. My brother hasn’t had the privilege.”

“I’m not sure why you’re telling me this.”

With a swift change in mood that left Natasha reeling, Gina’s dark eyes pinned hers with an accusatory glare. “Dante didn’t say goodbye to me, he simply vanished and headed back home. He isn’t taking my calls either. Normally I wouldn’t interfere more than I already have, but this is getting out of control. Apparently, he’s behaving like a lovestruck fool in Calida, my mother is at her wits end, and she’s pestering me every day to find out what happened when Dante was in Melbourne. So I had to see you and find out how your last visit went with Dante before my mother drives me mad.” Gina shuddered. “Or worse, visits me.”

Gina paused to take a breath while Natasha tried to ignore the reality of Dante being in love with some lucky woman.

‘A lovestruck fool…’The thought made her head ache and froze her heart in a veneer of icy misery.

It shouldn’t hurt this much.

She should be over him.

She’d tried everything, from distracting visualisation techniques—somehow, a calm beach scene morphed into her and Dante frolicking in the waves together—to rainforest playlists—the soothing bird chirps reminded her of animals, which reminded her of Dante and their visit to the animal farm.

On and on it went: the memories of the loaded stares and that scintillating kiss, fake or not. She couldn’t get him out of her head and now Gina had to show up to rub her nose in it? What the hell was wrong with this family?

Natasha stood and towered over Gina, trying to make a point with her intimidating stance. “Look, I’m happy for Dante, but I have no idea why your mother is hounding you or why in turn you’re hounding me. You don’t even know me.”

Gina’s perfectly shaped eyebrows arched. “You’re happy he’s pining over you? Aren’t you going to do something about it?”

Natasha sat as quickly as she’d stood up. “You can’t possibly mean—”

“Come on, you don’t need to play games with me. We both know he’s in love with you, but for some reason you’re here while he’s there. I’d hoped that maybe you’d sorted out something? Come to some kind of arrangement? Maybe you’re going to join him shortly?”

Natasha wanted to strangle the woman. However, if she did that, she’d never get to the bottom of this whole mix-up. For some bizarre, twisted reason, Gina thought Dante was in love with her.

She wished.

Knowing it would take the blunt truth to get rid of Gina, Natasha said, “Dante and I didn’t part on the best of terms afteryouprompted me to go see him. And I can categorically say I’m the last person he’d be in love with. So there’s been a mistake, and I’m sorry, but you’ll have to sort it out yourselves.”

Gina shook her head, her slick curls tumbling around her heart-shaped face. “No mistake. Dante loves you.”

Natasha slouched in an undignified slump, despising herself for the surge of hope Gina’s words fuelled.

Dante loved her? No way.

They’d definitely had a spark, but he’d even denied that when she’d confronted him, when she’d put her heart on the line and he’d trampled it without a thought.

She’d harboured a faint hope he might’ve cared more than he let on when he’d been jealous about seeing her with Clay, but that hope had faded into oblivion around the time he’d let her walk out of his life without giving her a chance to explain or putting up a fight.

He couldn’t love her.

He didn’t love her.

But what if he did?

Gina snapped her fingers like a conjurer creating magic. “You should go visit him in Calida. Sort everything out. Stay there. Get married. Whatever. Just be gentle, Dante’s a good man and he deserves to be happy.”

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