CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER FIVE

E MMA STEPPED ON to the terrace of their hotel suite and embraced the light breeze on her skin.

It had been two days and she could still feel heat clawing at her. It was the only thing she understood about her relationship with Dante. She couldn’t make sense of anything else but that, which was why she’d asked him to stop. Before they’d headed to bed, any bed.

Shinjuku City was spread out before her. She’d seen the lights from the highest floors of every skyscraper that required a cleaner, or a silver service waitress, but she’d never seen... this. She’d been raised in a city, but this was unlike anything she’d ever seen.

This was a city made up of buildings piercing the clouds, a city that kissed a mountain. Any minute now, the sun would move again and settle behind Mount Fuji.

She pressed her open palms to the balcony balustrade.

They hadn’t talked. They’d moved into the penthouse mansion two days ago and she hadn’t set eyes on him since.

She’d drawn the battle lines, and he’d retreated with the excuse of touching base with the board of his company. She understood what he was doing.

His vulnerability on the plane had been raw. As open and present as her own. He missed his wife. But she wasn’t his wife. At least not the one he remembered. Not yet.

And he remembered everything. Their first kiss. Their every touch. Every night spent in their bed together.

But she still had the same questions. Why had she married him in the first place? Why had she left? And her only goal was to figure it out. To figure him out. To learn, to understand, who she was with him. The only way to do that was to talk without the urgent pressure of his lips. Because, on the plane, she’d felt the adrenaline, and the need to chase it.

It would have been so easy to fall beneath him, and stay there, under the weight of him. Far too easy. But sex didn’t feel like a big enough reason for her to marry him. To tie herself to a man legally. No matter how intoxicating his kisses, or how good he made her feel.

He hadn’t spoken of love. And for that, she was grateful. She didn’t want it. She didn’t want him to love her, and she did not want to love him, did she? But then what did that mean? What kind of marriage did they have if it wasn’t based on love?

Was their marriage really just based on sex? And if that were true, if that was what twenty-six-year-old Emma had wanted and agreed to, why had she left him when the chemistry between them was so potent?

Had Dante wanted more? Had she walked away from her marriage because she couldn’t give to him the kind of marriage her mother had craved? Did he want a family? Children? Did he still want those things? Was that why he’d come for her? Was that why he hadn’t divorced her? Because he still hoped he could persuade her?

She swallowed. Had she not divorced him because she too hoped that he would change his mind? Or perhaps because she had fallen for him...

She felt his presence before she heard it. A shift in the air, in her.

‘Have you been bored without me, Emma?’

She didn’t turn. Didn’t visibly let her body react, but the deep husk of his voice reached inside her.

The instinct to turn and move towards him was overwhelming. All she wanted was to meet him. To raise her mouth to his in invitation and demand he kiss her again. Kiss her until all she could feel, all she could question, was how to angle her mouth. Until she was breathless with his kisses.

She closed her eyes to steady herself. She couldn’t do any of that, not until she understood why she’d married this man who made her blood run hot, whose kisses left her frantic, who made her feel unaligned with her natural self.

‘How could I be bored with this view?’ She opened her eyes and commanded her gaze to stay forward, on the glints of orange disappearing into the shadow of the night.

‘It’s beautiful,’ he agreed, and in her peripheral vision, she saw his hands slide onto the balustrade next to hers.

‘If you listen carefully,’ he said, ‘you will hear the ring.’

‘The ring?’

‘The bell of a setting sun.’

She listened. Watched as day turned to night. Heard the bell as the sun disappeared into darkness behind the mountain.

Slowly, the lights flickered on in every window, on every street, and the city was ablaze with artificial rainbow light, the mountain hidden until tomorrow. But she knew it was there. Even in the shadows. An impenetrable force of nature. Just like Dante . There even when he wasn’t. In her mind. Intruding on her every thought...

She forced herself to relax.

‘Was it always this way for you?’

‘What do you mean?’ he asked as she fought the urge to move close, to allow their elbows to meet, to allow the electric current to flow from her body into his.

No. Desire and discussion were to be separated.

‘I mean with your dad. His job. Your grandfather’s. Was life—’ she waved at the cityscape ‘—always so spectacular?’

‘It was,’ he answered. ‘It is.’

‘Did you ever crave something simple?’ She swallowed. ‘Something less... Something more normal?’

‘I have never known... normal .’ He spoke softly, but his voice was laced with something heavy.

‘I’m normal,’ she countered, because she was. And she wanted to know why this extraordinary billionaire had married her.

What did they have in common?

She didn’t know what she’d told him about her past or what he’d told her. But she’d start at the beginning, as he had when he’d told of their first meeting. She’d tell him the beginning of her .

‘My life isn’t unsimilar to many others,’ she started. She didn’t look at him, because it was easier to have this conversation without the intensity of his gaze boring into hers.

‘I grew up hating my father and making sure I was always there for my mother, because he never was. I didn’t grow up watching sunsets in penthouses made for the ultrarich and royalty. I grew up taking care of my mother. Supporting her so she could look after me. I helped her clean for her agency work before school. I’m the definition of normal. A city girl from a council estate, yet now—’

‘You are here,’ he interjected softly.

The rational part of her mind told her to tread carefully, not push too hard too soon, but she needed to know more.

‘Did you hate your dad too?’

‘What gives you the impression I hate my father?’ he asked, and still, she didn’t look at him. Didn’t acknowledge the closeness of him, or the pull inside her to be closer.

‘On the plane,’ she confessed, ‘there was a hesitancy when you spoke about him. A hesitancy I recognised because I feel it too. This conflict inside me when I think of him. That I owe him something because of his biological contribution to my life, all while hating him,’ she hissed. And she waited, for the gasp. For his shock at how she felt about the man who gave her life.

Emma and her mum had had so many arguments about it. His behaviour. His treatment of her. And her mother had told her to accept that he still loved them.

But nothing came from Dante. Only silence and an invitation for her to continue. So she did.

‘I know it sounds violent,’ she confessed, ‘but he makes me feel violent. Because I hate how she accepted his lies as truth. I hate what he did to her. What he turned her into. My mum—’

His hand moved then, atop hers, and she couldn’t continue. Couldn’t concentrate on anything other than the feel of his palm on her skin. His offer of comfort was given without her having to ask for it.

‘What did he turn her into?’ he asked, and this time she didn’t look, because she didn’t want to see pity in his eyes.

Had she ever told him what her dad had done? Why he was the reason she never wanted to marry? Why she found it hard to accept that someone would want to make her life easier?

‘A doormat,’ she rasped the truth of it. ‘And however, many times I wanted to tell him to be gentle, to at least wipe his boots before he stomped on her again, she hushed me. Told me to be quiet. To accept that my... father ,’ she said, even though he was no such thing to her, ‘would never be the man either she or I wanted him to be. That he would continue to break every promise he should have held dear.’

Emma tried and failed to keep the venom out of her voice. ‘He seduced my mother when she was sixteen, promised he’d marry her but never did. He lied. And still, for all the years afterwards, she believed one day he would.’

Her heart ached for her mother. For that teenage girl who believed in the fairy tale, believed love would conquer all. Regardless of how much time passed, how many lies he told her, she believed in their love, in him.

‘He abandoned her when she fell pregnant with me. He didn’t come back even when she begged him to, even when she was kicked out by my grandparents. Even when I was born...’ It was Emma who was hurting now, remembering that little girl who couldn’t understand why her father didn’t want her. ‘He didn’t come for a year. And then he only stayed for two days before leaving us. I have seen the pictures of him holding a one-year-old, his daughter, a daughter he’d only just met.’

She was breathing so hard, so fast, her words tumbled out of her. Out of a place she’d hidden them for so long it hurt to speak them. But she needed him to understand her hesitancy to accept their marriage at face value.

‘And then there was another picture when I was five. Another when I was thirteen where I’m looking at him with disgust. And he disgusts me still. Not because he wasn’t there for me. He wasn’t there for her . Because every time he left, he promised he’d be back for good next time. But he couldn’t be the man my mother deserved.’

Tears of rage clouded her vision but she wiped them away.

‘He didn’t deserve her. Her kindness. Her patience. Her devotion. He broke her heart and killed her with his lies.’

She turned and finally met the gaze she’d been avoiding. But there was no trace in his eyes of the pity she feared. But not empathy either. Just his steady gaze on hers. And his hand remained where it had the entirety of her story. On hers. Unmoving. Just there .

‘That’s why, on the plane, I was so angry. Angry that you’d left what was meant to be our house. In that moment, I was her—I was my mother.’

Her heart was beating so fast. So hard. And she felt vulnerable. Exposed .

‘I swore I’d never be her. Never devote myself to any man. But I married you. And I... I need to understand it. I need to know who you are and that you’re not him. Not like my father. That I have not betrayed myself and everything I stand for . That’s why I stopped you,’ she admitted rawly. ‘Because it was too intense. Too blinding. Too frantic. Our marriage, it seems the antithesis to all that I am.’

She pulled her hand from beneath his and turned her body to face him. She’d never told anyone about her parents, and how their relationship had changed her forever.

She’d thought it would feel weak to have told him everything, but it didn’t. It felt like she’d taken her power back, after amnesia had taken everything from her. She was choosing to share these memories with him.

‘So help me to make sense of our marriage, Dante,’ she said. Shoulders back, head raised, she continued, ‘Talk to me. Tell me who you are,’ she breathed heavily. ‘Tell me why you hate your dad too.’

Dante gave a slight shake of his head.

For two days, he’d stayed in his company’s Tokyo headquarters, avoiding this conversation. Talking wasn’t how he had imagined he was going to persuade Emma back into his bed. And so he’d plotted how he’d exploit this talking she wanted to his advantage. And he’d planned to exhilarate her senses and distract her with worldly things. Sights and sounds that would make her dizzy.

He saw no advantage here. Only emotion and feelings. Feelings that he didn’t want to examine, either hers or his own. He did not want to examine the faults of their fathers and find common ground.

They didn’t need any here.

Only in bed.

And yet, it was clear that Emma would not be appeased by what he had been willing to offer. So he must adapt, change tack, offer...something.

‘My life was not hard, Emma,’ he said dismissively. ‘I never worried about my parents’ relationship. They didn’t have one. I didn’t worry about the bills or the fridge. I did not work before my tutelage. I never worried who would take care of who. My father employed a triage of nannies to care for me while he conquered the world.’

And women , he added silently.

‘Your dad left you alone too?’ she summarised without his permission. ‘Left others to care for you while he cared only for himself?’

‘It was not like that,’ he said, but even as he did, he knew it was a lie. ‘When I was of age, I conquered the world myself, and with him, guided by his ethos for life.’

‘Isn’t that what I’m doing—what I did before you?’ She screwed up her nose. ‘I let my father’s ethos for life determine my every relationship. I didn’t have relationships because I didn’t want to be...’

‘Abandoned?’

And it hit him now; the very thing she didn’t want to happen to herself, she had done to him. Done to him what his mother had too. His father was different; he had never abandoned Dante, never made any promises.

He was your father; he shouldn’t have had to. He should have just been there.

‘Yes,’ she admitted, jolting him back to the present. The spaghetti strap of her dress fell over her bare shoulder. He swallowed as her fingers grazed along her skin to pull it back into place.

‘He never considered how him coming in and out of our lives affected us. It sounds as if your dad did the same,’ she concluded, and his lips thinned into a firm line when she didn’t stop. ‘He gave you up to nannies until he could benefit from your company. He only showed up when it was of some benefit to him .’

She didn’t understand his life.

She didn’t understand him.

‘It is not the same,’ he rejected.

‘Isn’t it?’ she asked, her blue eyes seeking and finding his. Something heavy shifted inside him.

‘Why would I hate him, Emma?’ He stepped closer to her, because how could he not? ‘Everything I have. Everything I am, is because of him.’

And she looked at him now as if he was the source of her pain. And his feet halted. And he didn’t like it. Didn’t want it.

The story she’d shared with him, the relationship between her parents, it was everything they weren’t.

In the past, he would have reached for her. Placed his hands to her waist, allowed them to slide down the cotton of her blue polka dot dress. Over her hips. Down her thighs. Seeking the hem at her knees. And he’d have taken her with her back pressed into him as she looked out at the view. Thrust inside her again and again, until all she could think, all she could say, was his name as she screamed it into the night. He would have turned pain into passion.

He fisted his hands.

He couldn’t do that. Not yet, not with this Emma.

‘Is that why you resent him?’ she asked quietly.

‘Why would I resent him?’ he asked. Because it wasn’t true, was it? ‘You are looking for a common ground between us where there is none,’ he growled. ‘I am very much who I am because of my father. Because of the way he lived.’

‘I loved my mother. She was there for me unconditionally, but I resented her too, for the way she lived,’ she confessed, and he heard the crack in her voice. Heard how hard it was for her to admit. ‘Her inability to let my dad go. It wasn’t just my dad who changed my relationships with people, it was her . She made me so afraid, I’d...’ She looked away from him and into the night. ‘I’d let someone I—’ she turned to him and her gaze was shuttered ‘—loved, take and take, until I was nothing more than a shell.’

Love? Did she think she’d loved him? That he’d loved her? That their marriage was based on all those emotions he didn’t want and didn’t know how to feel? She was no different; that was one thing he did know. That was why they were perfect for one another. No emotional attachments. Only physical desire. Only want.

Was that what she was afraid of? Was that why she had needed him to tell her that divorce was an option? That if she wanted to leave, she could? She needed an out in case the reason she had left before was because she had become emotionally invested in their relationship.

She wrapped her arms around her waist. ‘Do you think all children grow up to be replicas of their parents?’

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘After all those vows and promises I made to myself, I wonder if I was always destined to...’

‘Continue her legacy?’

‘Yes.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Was it something in my DNA that I couldn’t run from? Hide from...? The same way you couldn’t hide from your destiny to continue your father’s legacy.’

He didn’t contradict her. DNA was undeniable. He was his father’s son, after all. He knew the pressure of living up to a legend. He knew the worry of not being good enough.

For Emma, he supposed, it was the opposite. She didn’t want to live up to the legacy.

‘My father’s dead, Emma,’ he said, wanting this to end. ‘I think of him little.’ He shrugged off his suit jacket and took another step towards her. ‘He was an uncomplicated man. He lived to live, took what he wanted from life, until he died.’

‘He died?’ she whispered.

He moved closer. ‘He did.’

‘How did he die?’

‘A solo adventure on the high seas,’ he told her. ‘His boat returned—’ he splayed his empty hand, palm side up ‘—empty.’

‘I’m sorry.’

He moved closer still . ‘Don’t be. It was a death my father would have applauded.’

She gasped. ‘Applauded?’

‘An adventurer dies adventurously.’ He shrugged. ‘It would have been the way he’d have wanted to go.’

‘On his terms?’ she grated.

‘Is that not the best way to live?’ he countered. ‘And to die?’ And he watched the flare of her nostrils. The tightening of her bare shoulders. In her mind all men were the same, weren’t they? Selfish even in death.

Was Dante selfish? Was she right to think so? Had he only kept her, kept coming back to her, for his own needs?

Of course he had, but he’d met her every need as well as his own.

‘And your mother?’ she asked, her eyes fixed on his. Watching. Waiting for whatever it was she was seeking in his answer.

‘My mother,’ he said, unsure how to take this conversation forward. How to expose bits of himself he never had before. To find this common ground he knew they didn’t have. ‘My mother has no influence in my life.

‘Why not?’

‘She gave birth to me and left to start a new life.’ Something hot and unknown bubbled in his chest. ‘She was out the door as soon as they cut the umbilical cord.’

She shivered again. ‘Without you?’

‘I had my father.’

‘Sounds to me like you had no one,’ she said. He could see the goosebumps covered her flesh now, highlighted by the soft amber lights flooding the terrace. She was cold. And he knew several ways to warm her. None that she wanted.

She was right, wasn’t she?

He’d always been alone.

Until her .

He dropped his jacket over her shoulders and held on to the lapels.

‘And now we have each other,’ he said, and he knew it was a lie. They’d had each other for a time. A time until he didn’t want her. Or she didn’t want him.

The silence was palpable.

He felt it. The shift. The rise in her shoulders. The absence of breath leaving her lips.

He resisted the urge to thrust his nose into her hair. Grip the hair caressing the flesh between her shoulder blades and draw her to him. Kiss the exposed flesh beneath her ear and taste her. Move his mouth down her neck and bite the delicate flesh of her shoulder. And step back into familiar ground. To take them both back. Back to the beginning.

But there was no back , was there? Only this. Only now. Only her .

And he’d agreed to her demand of no more kisses, even when that was all he desperately wanted to do. To close the distance between them.

To sink into their connection. A deep connection that was always there beneath the surface.

A connection to something he couldn’t see. Nature. God , maybe.

It was just there.

Humming .

And it was too loud. Too much.

But he wouldn’t allow it to happen. Couldn’t.

A kiss without heat.

He did not want her softness.

He didn’t need it if it was not given freely.

He pulled away from her.

‘Go to bed, Emma,’ he commanded roughly.

‘To bed?’ she husked, and he knew he could lead her there if he wanted. That this time she’d welcome him.

He moved away from her.

‘Dante—’ She reached for him.

He shook his head. Kept moving until the distance between them felt endless.

For months, he’d thought of nothing but her . The feel of her against him. Her skin. Her taste. She’d haunted his every living moment. In his waking hours and his sleep.

He shut his eyes against it. The something in his chest he didn’t recognise. A pain. A tug.

He didn’t want it. Whatever it was. Whatever she was bringing to the surface.

‘It’s late,’ he said.

He wanted her. But he didn’t want this. This new Emma who spoke of her feelings. Her pain. This Emma who wanted to know his pain.

He wanted none of it.

So tonight he would walk away.

He’d reset. He’d find another way to show her how they maintained the balance in their marriage.

No emotions. No discussions of childhood trauma. Only them. Only sex.

‘Good night, Emma.’