Page 45 of The Forbidden Cabrera Brother
She nodded quietly. ‘I’ll be gone by the time you get back.’
CHAPTER TEN
INTHEEVENTit was two days before Dante returned to the penthouse apartment.
One hour? There was no way he intended to risk returning to find her still there, hunting around for the last of her things and, frankly, considering the fact that she had refused to move in with him, she had managed to find homes for a lot of her personal possessions. A couple of photography books here and there...spare bedroom slippers because she had to have something on her feet when she walked around...a selection of novels, all started and not one finished because she always lost interest somewhere between Chapter Three and Chapter Four...
He hadn’t wanted to head back even after a day just in case she had forgotten something and had decided to return to collect it. He had forgotten to ask her to hand over the spare key he had insisted she have. She might have kept it. Who knew? She would leave it behind her in the apartment. He knew that without having to ask himself how.
So Dante had gone off grid for the first time in his life, dumping London altogether and heading to the coast for a couple of days to clear his head.
She was gone. She’d pulled the wool over his eyes and she was gone. End of story.
He would pick up where he had left off because the world was full of beautiful women and he knew, without a trace of vanity, that he could have any of them.
Including Luisa, should he so choose, but the very thought of her made his teeth grind together. Like the messenger carrying a poisonous communication, she had been sliced out of his life for good, whatever the long-standing family connections. What she had done had been done with the worst of self-serving motives. He would wait until she tried to get in touch, which she inevitably would, to tell her exactly what he thought, but right now he just couldn’t be bothered.
He couldn’t be bothered with anyone or anything. He escaped London thinking that he would escape Caitlin. It had been a remarkable failure on that front.
Dante spent the first night drinking way too much at the Michelin-starred restaurant in the hotel where he had booked for the two nights.
Then he spent the second night wondering what the hell he was going to do because things seemed as clear as mud.
But by the time he began the journey back to London, clarity was imposing itself.
Without the benefit of distractions, he could think, and in the confines of his Maserati, as he drove back to London, he finally began to see what had been lurking on the sidelines of his mind for so long now. Like wisps of smoke, warning him of a conflagration. He should have paid attention.
The warning bells should have started sounding the very second he’d decided to cross that ocean and meet her again. Then he had entered a comfort zone without even realising it. He had become accustomed to the way she laughed and looked at him, to the comfortable silences between them.
He hadn’t been fazed by the sight of her toothbrush next to his or her photos spread across his kitchen table, as they had been when he had confronted her about that damned email.
Dante began joining all the dots on his way back to London and by the time he hit the crowded outskirts of the city, he was frantic to do what he should have done a long time ago. He had to be honest. He had to stop pretending that he was an island.
He had to move on from hard and fast notions that had dominated his life and kept his emotions under lock and key.
But first and foremost, he had to convince her to hear him out. He stopped at his apartment only to dump his bag and have a rushed shower.
All evidence of her had been carefully removed.
The place was immaculate, wiped clean of her presence. Not even the faintest of smells lingered. That flowery, clean smell that followed her wherever she went? Gone.
He knew the way to her apartment like the back of his hand, even though he had, very quickly, refused to go there, preferring the comfort of his penthouse.
At a little after midday, there were signs of life, with kids out and about in front of the block of flats, aimlessly cycling around. He headed up to hers, nodding a greeting to some elderly lady with whom Caitlin had developed a firm friendship.
‘She’s not there.’
Dante stopped dead in his tracks. ‘I have a key. I’ll wait.’
Shared keys...something else that should have set those bells ringing in his head. Since when had he ever come close to handing a key to his place over to any woman, far less having a key for hers?
‘You’ll be waiting a long time, son.’
‘Why?’ Panic gripped him, like a vice.
‘She’s gone to her parents’. Told me to keep an eye on her place because she might be a while.’
‘Her parents’?’ He realised that, despite his knowing so much about her, she had singularly failed to talk to him about her parents. She had told him about her ex, about where she had grown up, had passed occasional remarks about her childhood, but her parents...? No, she hadn’t mentioned them and suddenly that failing felt significant. ‘Would you happen to have their address?’
