“That’s the trouble with secrets,” Dante said then, sitting back in his chair. “They must seem like a good idea at the time. Then they’re nothing but old words inscribed on the back of lost trinkets, and precious few people to care.”
Dante had to head out not long after, but Dario knew that everything had changed between them—and for the better this time. They might not have solved every problem, but they’d started the process.
He had his brother back. He was himself again.
The future was not going to take place in a series of little boxes. Not if he could help it.
And that meant there was only one thing left he needed to do.
It was time to head back to Hawaii and claim his family.
* * *
This time, when that same hard knock sounded on her door after dark, Anais told herself it couldn’t possibly be Dario. She’d been very clear with him. She and Damian had come home and settled right back into the perfectly decent life they’d been living before Dario had made his reappearance. Everything was exactly as it had been before.
Save that Damian now had a lot more to say to the photograph by his bed, and Anais found herself curled up in her own empty bed with nothing but her broken heart. Broken even harder this time, because she’d been the one to leave.
The knock came again, even louder.
Anais took her time getting to her feet, and longer still crossing to the door. And maybe some part of her had been expecting an impromptu visit one of these days, because she hadn’t changed into her usual postwork clothes. Not a single one of the nights since they’d come home from New York.
Had she been hoping he’d show up? Had she imagined that if he did, she’d really feel safer in a pencil skirt and a sleeveless blouse?
She swung open the door and there he was, and her whole body hummed to life, as if she’d locked herself away in a deep freeze here in the tropics. As if Dario was all the heat in the world.
He looked gorgeous and intent, in the kind of sleek, expensive T-shirt that only very rich men thought looked casual and a pair of jeans. He looked rugged and rumpled, his dark hair shoved back from his face at an angle that suggested he’d been raking his hands through it all day. His blue eyes met hers and held.
“This time,” he said in that low voice that connected to every part of her that longed for him and lit it all up like fireworks against a dark night, “you need to let me in.”
Anais didn’t move. She didn’t step toward him and she didn’t step back. And she was terribly afraid that he could hear how hard her heart was beating in her chest, that he could see how little it would take for her to simply throw herself in his arms and wave away the past...
But she refused to do that. Damian deserved better than that.
And so did she.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Anais said, and it was one of the hardest things she’d ever done in her life. She’d thought that morning in New York had been difficult. She’d had to fight to keep herself from sobbing in front of her five-year-old on that endless flight home. But this was harder.
Because he was here. He’d come after her.
She wanted that to mean a lot more than she suspected it could.
“I meant what I said in New York,” she made herself tell him, because she didn’t want to say anything of the kind. She wanted to stop gripping the doorjamb. She wanted to launch herself at him. But that was always the trouble, wasn’t it? She wanted things she couldn’t have, and Dario was at the top of that list. “This can’t work.”
She expected his eyes to flash dark, for him to argue. She expected threats, harsh words.
Instead, he smiled.
That beautiful smile of his. It was like a perfect sunrise. It was entirely too much like joy, and she didn’t understand it at all.
“I’m not going anywhere, Anais,” he told her, as if he was reciting a vow. “I’m not walking away again. I’ll stay right here on the doorstep for as long as it takes.”
“You’re not going to stay on the doorstep. Don’t be ridiculous.”
That smile of his widened. “Maybe not literally.”
And she told herself she had no choice. That her heart was a terrible judge of character, or none of this would have happened, would it? She made herself step back.
“Goodbye, Dare,” she said.