“What did you just say to her?”
Dante’s voice was quiet, but the entire bakery seemed to hear it.
The espresso machine stopped hissing.
Cups remained suspended halfway to mouths.
Even the tourists near the pastry case turned away from the desserts and toward the three of us.
Derek glanced at the men behind Dante, then straightened his shoulders as though an expensive suit could manufacture courage.
“Nothing that concerns you,” he said.
Dante did not look at him again immediately.
He looked at me.
Not the quick, uncomfortable glance people had been giving my stomach.
He studied my face first—the dampness around my eyes, the tension in my jaw, the paper bag crushed beneath my fingers.
“Chloe,” he said.
The sound of my name in his voice nearly broke the restraint I had been clinging to.
“You remember me,” I whispered.
His expression tightened.
“I have been looking for you for four months.”
Derek gave a short, disbelieving laugh.
“You two know each other?”
Neither of us answered him.
Dante’s gaze dropped to the curve beneath my dress.
He did not reach for me.
He did not make an assumption aloud.
But I saw the calculation in his eyes as he counted backward through the months.
“The Viper Room,” he said softly.
I nodded.
“The penthouse,” he continued.
Another nod.
For the first time since Derek had stepped into my path, the room no longer felt as though it were closing around me.
Derek looked between us, his confidence struggling to survive.
“Oh, this is perfect,” he said.
“Chloe finally finds some rich stranger, and suddenly she thinks she can—”
Dante turned his head.
Derek stopped.
Dante did not threaten him.
That was what made the silence frightening.
He simply gave Derek his full attention.
“I asked what you said to her.”
Derek swallowed.
“It was a joke.”
“No,” I said.
Every face in the bakery turned toward me.
Derek’s eyes narrowed in warning, the same look he used to give me whenever I contradicted him in front of people he wanted to impress.
I had spent three years learning to recognize that look and obey it.
I was finished obeying.
“He said I had let myself go,” I continued.
“He said no one would want to introduce me to a board looking like this.”
Dante’s jaw shifted once.
Derek lifted both hands.
“Come on.
She’s twisting it.
We dated.
We tease each other.”
“You ended the relationship four months ago,” Tiffany said.
Her voice was small, but the interruption landed harder than a shout.
Derek turned toward her.
“That’s not the point.”
