He had left her.
He’d never had the chance to say, “You made the first move, cara, but that’s all it was. You ran away before I had a chance to end our affair.”
She didn’t know that and it drove him crazy. Pathetic, maybe, that it should matter…but it did. Obviously it did, or he wouldn’t be standing out here in the cold, glaring at a stack of empty produce cartons and finally admitting that he’d been walking around in a state of smoldering fury since a night like this, precisely like this, late November, cold, snow already in the forecast, when Taylor had left a message on his answering machine.
“Dante,” she’d said, “I’m afraid I’ll have to cancel our date for tonight. I think I’m coming down with the flu. I’m going to take some aspirin and go to bed. Sorry to inconvenience you.”
Sorry to inconvenience you.
For some reason, the oh-so-polite phrase had irritated him. Was inconvenience a word for a woman to use to her lover? And what was all that about canceling their date? She was his mistress. They didn’t have “dates.”
Jaw knotted, he’d reached for the phone to call and tell her that.
But he’d controlled his temper. Actually, there was nothing wrong in what she’d said. Date implied that they saw each other when it suited them. When it suited him.
So, why had it pissed him off? Her removed tone. Her impersonal words. And then another possibility had elbowed its way into his brain.
Maybe, he’d thought, maybe I should call and see if she needs something. A doctor. Some cold tablets.
Or maybe I should see if she just needs me.
The thought had stunned him. Need? It wasn’t a word in his vocabulary. Nor in Taylor’s. It was one of the things he admired about her.
So he’d put the phone aside and gone to the party. Not just any party. This party. The same charity, the same hotel, the same guests. He’d eaten what might have been the same overdone filet, sipped the same warm champagne, talked some business with the men at his table and danced with the women.
The women had all asked the same question.
“Where’s Taylor?”
“She’s not feeling well,” he’d kept saying, even as it struck him that he was spending an inordinate amount of time explaining the absence of a woman who was not in any way a permanent part of his life. They’d only been together a couple of months.
Six months, he’d suddenly realized. Taylor had been his mistress for six months. How had that happened?
While he’d considered that, one of the women had touched his arm.
“Dante?”
“Yes?”
“If Taylor’s ill, she needs to drink lots of liquids.”
He’d blinked. Why tell him what his mistress needed to do?
“Water’s good, but orange juice is better. Or ginger tea.”
“That wonderful chicken soup at the Carnegie Deli,” another woman said. “And does she have an inhalator? There’s that all-night drugstore a few block away…”
Amazing, he’d thought. Everyone assumed that he and Taylor were living together.
They weren’t.
“I prefer that you keep your apartment,” he’d told her bluntly, at the start of their relationship.
“That’s good,” she’d said with a little smile, “because I intended to.”
Had she told people something else? Had she deliberately made the relationship seem more than it was?
He’d thought back a few weeks to his birthday. He had no idea how she’d known it was his birthday; he’d never mentioned it. Why would he? And yet, when he’d arrived at her apartment to take her to dinner, she’d told him she wanted to stay in.
“I’m going to cook tonight,” she’d said with a little smile. “For your birthday.”
He made a habit of avoiding these things, a homemade dinner, a quiet evening, but he couldn’t see a way to turn her down without seeming rude so he’d accepted her invitation.
To his amazement, he’d enjoyed the evening.
“Pasta Carbonara,” she’d said, as she served the meal. “I remember you ordering it at Luigi’s and saying how much you liked it.” Her cheeks had pinkened. “I just hope my version is half as good.”
It was better than good; it was perfect. So was everything else.
The candles. The bottle of his favorite Cabernet. The flowers.
And Taylor.
Taylor, watching him across the table, her green eyes soft with pleasure. Taylor, blushing again when he said the food was delicious. Taylor, bringing out a cake complete with candles. And a familiar blue box. He’d given boxes like that to more women than he could count, but being on the receiving end had been a first.
“I hope you like them,” she’d said as he opened the box on a pair of gold cuff links, exactly the kind he’d have chosen for himself.
“Very much,” he’d replied, and wondered what she’d say if he told her this was the first birthday cake, the first birthday gift anyone had ever given him in all his life.
He’d blown out the candles. Taken a bite of the cake. Put on the cuff links and felt something he couldn’t define…
“Dante?” Taylor had said, her smooth brow furrowing, “what’s the matter? If you don’t like the cuff links—”
He’d silenced her in midsentence by gathering her in his arms, taking her mouth with his, carrying her to her bed and making love to her.
Sex with her was always incredible. That night…that night, it surpassed anything he’d ever known with her, with any woman. She was tender; she was passionate. She was wild and sweet and, as he threw back his head and emptied himself into her, she cried out his name and wept.
When it was over, she lay beneath him, trembling. Then she’d brought his mouth to hers for a long kiss.
“Don’t leave me tonight,” she’d whispered. “Dante. Please stay.”
He’d never spent the entire night with her. With any woman. But he’d been tempted. Tempted to keep his arms around her warm body. To close her eyes with soft kisses. To fall asleep with her head on his shoulder and wake with her curled against him.
He hadn’t, of course.
Spending the night in a woman’s bed had shades of meaning beyond what he needed or expected from a relationship.
Two weeks after that, he’d attended this charity ball without her, listened to people urge him to feed his mistress chicken soup…
And everything had clicked into place.
The birthday supper. The fantastic night of sex. The plea that he not leave her afterward.
Taylor was playing him the way a fisherman who’s hooked a big one plays a fish. His beautiful, clever mistress was doing her best to settle into his life. She knew it, his acquaintances knew it. The only person who’d been blind to the scheme was him.
“Excuse me,” he’d suddenly said to everyone at the table, “but it’s getting late.”
“Don’t forget the chicken soup,” a woman called after him.
Dante had instructed his driver to take him to Taylor’s apartment. It was time to set things straight. To make sure she still understood their agreement, that the rules hadn’t changed simply because their affair had gone on so long.
In