Chapter Fourteen
Lawyers and bankers weren’t exactly party animals. But they weren’t all that dull, either.
The small group that had gathered at Dante’s client’s home in Beverly Hills was cordial, and a few of them were even funny. So after being there for a good thirty minutes, Alexa finally released the breath she’d been holding since Dante had picked her up.
She’d nearly given herself an anxiety attack worrying about the dinner. She’d bought three new dresses just for the occasion and then ended up borrowing a simple black cocktail number from Natalie. It wasn’t too short or too revealing. It was, in other words, basic. And basic fit perfectly with the attire of the other women at the party.
She could do this. She could mingle and smile and pretend she belonged in this beautiful mansion with people who owned their own jets and small private islands.
“How are you holding up?” Dante whispered in her ear after one his colleagues left them in search of another cocktail.
“I’m fine. Is it time to go yet?”
He laughed and she almost told him that she wasn’t trying to make a joke. But before she could open her mouth again, a very good-looking couple approached them.
“Dante, I’m so glad you could make it,” the silver-haired man said and held out his hand to shake Dante’s.
“Thank you again for the invitation. Charles, this is my…date, Alexa Montoya.”
She couldn’t help but smile at his pause before introducing her.
“So good to meet you, Alexa,” Charles said. “And this is my wife, Gloria.”
After more handshakes were exchanged, Dante explained that Charles and Gloria were their dinner hosts.
“I hope you two are hungry. We have a seven-course meal planned,” Gloria said. “If you love it, then I cooked it myself. If you hate it, then it’s Chef Louie’s fault.”
She knew it was meant to be a joke. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to laugh.
“Alexa is a chef,” Dante blurted. She turned to look at him. Why in the world would he say that?
“Oh. How wonderful. Do you cook for one of the families here in Beverly Hills?” Charles asked.
“No. She owns her own restaurant in Los Angeles,” Dante answered for her.
“I co-own the restaurant with my brother,” she corrected. “I’m also the executive chef. It’s called L.A. Cuchara.”
“Spanish food?” Gloria asked.
“Spanish. Mexican. Puerto Rican. Argentinean. It’s a mix of all different kinds of Latin cuisines.”
“Oh, it sounds too spicy for my sensitive palate. But Charles here would probably like it. He visits all the ethnic restaurants downtown, don’t you, darling?” Gloria said.
Charles smiled widely and then proceeded to name his favorite Indian and Japanese dishes. Eventually, the couple moved on to chat with other guests, and Alexa turned to face Dante.
“What was that about?”
He shrugged. “What was what about?”
“Announcing my profession, like it was a distinguished medal of honor?”
“I didn’t do that. I simply shared that you were a chef.”
“You kind of overshared, actually. I’m perfectly capable of telling people what I do for a living all on my own.”
He studied her and then narrowed his eyes. “Okay. Point made. I will not tell anyone else anything about you.”
The tinkling of a bell interrupted their conversation, and a maid signaled it was time to enter the dining room for dinner.
By course three, Alexa was on her fourth glass of wine.
The only reason she wasn’t slurring her words yet was because she was stuffing her face. Chef Louie had done an amazing job, and part of her wanted to go find him in the kitchen and tell him so. Instead, she was stuck listening to Dante and the man next to him talk about some legal mumbo jumbo involving contracts and mergers. “Contracts” and “mergers” were actually the only words she’d understood from the conversation.
“So what has it been? Four weeks?”
It took a few seconds to realize that the woman on her right was speaking to her.
“Excuse me?”
The blonde pointed to Dante and then to Alexa. “I was trying to guess how long you two had been dating.”
She choked on the sip of wine she’d just taken. “Oh,” she answered after clearing her throat.
“Am I right?”
“Actually, we’ve been together almost six,” she answered hastily.
“Six? Well, good for you. My friend Kimberly only made it to five. See that redhead at the end of the table? She was only a three-weeker.”
The lady smiled sweetly, so pleased with herself that she’d given Alexa this tidbit of information. Alexa, on the other hand, felt sick to her stomach.
“There’s a rumor that there’s some woman in New York who actually lasted two months with Dante. But don’t worry, honey. He seems to really like you. Who knows? Maybe you’ll make it that long, too.”
Alexa had to will herself to close her shocked mouth. Then she excused herself and asked one of the servers for the nearest bathroom. Once inside, she leaned over the toilet, fully expecting various courses of food to reappear. But nothing came out.
Her face was on fire and her stomach was still doing flip-flops when she went to the sink to look at her reflection in the mirror above it.
“Get a grip,” she told herself.
And suddenly images of different women with Dante at the restaurant over the past two years played through her mind like a slideshow. The more she thought about it, the more she remembered that not one of them ever came in with him more than a few times. She dismissed the tightness clamping down on her heart. So what if Dante wasn’t a long-term-relationship kind of guy? Hadn’t she been telling him this whole time that she didn’t want a relationship in the first place?
She thought of the long looks he’d give her across the table or the way he grabbed her hand when they’d take Gomez for a walk. She’d been worried that those were hints that he was falling for her. Could she have misread everything as usual?
Come to think of it, those looks usually happened after he caught her staring at him. And the walks? There had been times when she’d been the one who grabbed his hand.
She’d been so focused on making sure they kept things casual, it never occurred to her that was exactly what Dante had wanted, too.
And she’d been so focused on keeping her emotions locked away that she hadn’t realized they’d escaped a long time ago.
Because as soon as the woman inferred that Alexa was just one week better than Dante’s last girlfriend, she’d realized she wanted to be more to him. Much more.
Natalie’s and Clarissa’s remembered voices whispered in her ear, “You always fall too fast.”
It was true. But this time, she could prepare for it.
“I’m not on the floor yet,” she told the voices.
It took another five minutes before she was calmed down enough to head back to the dining room. Dante offered her a sweet smile when she sat down, and Alexa took a breath. Then she picked up her fork and began course four.
Almost two hours later, she was regretting the wine and the seventh course. Her skin was still hot, and her head throbbed. She’d eaten way too much, so the simple black cocktail dress felt less fancy and more like a sausage casing.
In other words, she couldn’t wait to get home and get into bed. By herself.
“Thanks for coming,” Dante told her as they drove down the freeway.
“You’re welcome,” she said as she looked out the window.
“Are you okay?”
“Not really. I just need to get some sleep. It’s been a long day.”
“I know you’re worried about what happened today. But you don’t have to be. I’ll think of something—”
“We want to settle,” she interrupted.
His eyes widened. “What?”
She cleared her throat. “Brandon and I talked after you left and we think it’s time to start thinking realistically. We can’t win this.”
“Hold up. I still think we can fix this. The key is Carrie. She can help us prove that Nick is lying. We just need to convince her to help us.”
“And how are we going to do that?”
“I don’t know. But we have to at least try, don’t we?”
She shook her head. “It’s better we settle before we lose everything.”
“You can’t give up just because of one bad day,” he said, reaching for her hand. “We can still win this.”
Alexa pulled her hand from his grasp. “And then what? A trial could take months, even a year.”
“I realize that. So?”
“So, how are we going to handle being together for the trial after we’ve stopped seeing each other in other ways?”
“You’re not making any sense. Why would we have stopped seeing each other?”
“Because this was supposed to be—”
“Fuck casual,” he yelled. “You and I both know we crossed that line a long time ago. But what I don’t understand is why you won’t admit it.”
Her mind flashed back to the day at the beach when she watched Brandon and Dante with their friends from college. She’d never felt so out of place. So different.
She’d felt the same way tonight at dinner. Putting on a black cocktail dress didn’t erase who she was or where she came from. And it didn’t change the fact that she didn’t ever want to be a Gloria or that woman who thought it was perfectly okay to tell a stranger that she didn’t mean anything to the man she was with.
“It doesn’t matter if we crossed it or not. What I’m telling you is that I can’t do this anymore. The lawsuit. Us. Everything just needs to stop now.”
It was better this way, she kept telling herself as they drove in silence.
She knew he was angry, but she couldn’t care about that. She had to focus on getting her life back to the way it had been before men named Nick and Dante had turned it all upside down.
After pulling into her driveway, he turned off the car. But he didn’t turn to look at her.
“Did you ever trust in us, Alexa? Even for a moment?”
The question hammered her heart. So did his pained voice. Ironically, she had. That’s why it was killing her to do this.
“It’s better this way.” Her voice sounded so weak.
“If you say so.”
The hammering stopped. And now there were a million broken pieces floating around where her heart used to be.
“I’m sorry, Dante.”
Then, before any tears could fall in front of him, Alexa opened the car door and ran into her house.