Chapter 111 Keeping The Promise
Isabella POV
Damian came inside and glanced around my apartment. The fire was still roaring in the fireplace, and the painting I was currently working on sat on the easel by the window. He stripped off his blazer and hung it by the door
before he stepped farther inside and his shirt stretched across his muscular shoulders and toned arms. “You have a nice place.”
“No, I don’t,” I said with a chuckle. “But I appreciate you saying that. I’m still in my starving artist phase.”
He smiled then walked over to my painting.
“This is what you’re working on right now?”
“Yes, It doesn’t look like much, but once the details are painted out, it’ll make more sense.”
“So your process is to start with the point of interest first and then fill in stuff around it?”
“Yeah, the subject of the piece is the most important, and every other thing around is supposed to elevate it.”
He nodded as he kept looking. “Your father mentioned you sold all your pieces at the winery doesn’t seem like you’re a starving artist anymore.”
“Yeah, I couldn’t believe it. I just gave my mom two more to sell.”
He turned to me, wearing a sexy smolder with his coffee-colored eyes. The light from the fireplace hit him just right, highlighting the masculine sculpture of his face and he seemed more interested in me than the painting.
I made a promise to Dante, and now I had to keep it, even though I have intentionally invited this man over for sex. “Would you like something to drink?”
“Sure. I’ll have whatever you’re having.”
“Well, all I ever drink is wine, Is that okay?”
“Perfectly okay.”
I grabbed a bottle and poured two glasses before I set them on the coffee table and I made sure we stuck to the living room and didn’t go anywhere near my bedroom.
Damian sat beside me on the couch and drank his wine, his eyes moving to the fireplace.
As the silence stretched, I felt the tension between us because there was a charge in
the air, an attraction. I was sitting beside the ideal man I wanted to date, a respectable person who valued family the same way I did, but I didn’t want it to go anywhere.
The smart thing to do would be to forget about Dante and sleep with Damian as many times as possible to get Dante out of mysystem but I didn’t want Dante kiss or his touch. I wanted a man so wrong for me.
“I really want to kiss you.” Damian broke the silence with his deep voice. “The way the flames are illuminating your face, you look so beautiful and instead of telling you that, I would normally just do it, but something is
telling me you don’t want me to. Am I wrong?”
He set his wineglass on the table, his big brown eyes glued to me and I held my wine glass a little tighter. “No, you’re not wrong…”
His expression didn’t change, his disappointment bottled deep inside. “I’m all over the place right now....”
“Then I’ll enjoy my glass of wine and your company for a bit before I leave, tell me more about your artwork.”
I appreciated the way he let me off the hook and didn’t ask for an explanation for my erratic behavior. He just let it be, moving on to the next subject so casually.
He was invited over here with the expectation of sex, but now he wasn’t even getting a kiss but as if that didn’t really matter, he moved past it.
He was a gentleman, keeping his cool even though he drove over here for no reason at all.
I suspected his polite behavior stemmed from
his connection to my father and he knew his head would be on a platter if I told my father he’d been anything but kind to me. “I feel like all we’ve talked about is me, bow about we talk about you?”
Dante left two hours ago and now I lay in bed in the dark. I enjoyed my conversation with him, and he did a great job removing the
tension and making it casual.
When he walked out, he didn’t try to kiss me
goodnight. He didn’t even kiss me on the cheek, but he shook my hand instead.
He would never call me again and I couldn’t blame him that was a terrible first date and a handsome man like that could find a woman to replace me in a heartbeat, someone a lot more interested in him than I was.
I was strange, unpredictable, and an emotional
nightmare. I will be have judge him if he ever wanted to see me again and a part of me was sad about it because he could have been a good fit for me if Dante hadn’t ruined me and if we had met under different circumstances, we
could have hit it off. Normally, I was confident, charming, and easy to talk to but he met me at the worst time possible, when my murdering exboyfriend was sitting across the room watching every move I made.
Maybe I should apologize to Dante for wasting his time or maybe I should just leave it alone and let it be forgotten.
I held my phone in bed, my thumb itching to make a phone call I shouldn’t make. I wanted to hear his deep bass voice and to hear to him call me baby. I missed our silences as much as our conversations. I missed the way he felt
in bed beside me, his heavy body sinking into the mattress and making me roll toward him and I missed him so much it hurt but I had to keep going.
I had to move on with my life. I had to find a better future and leave him in the past but that was so damn hard.
I lost my final bit of resolve and called him.
He answered so quickly, like he’d been expecting the call all night. “Baby.”
I closed my eyes at the sound of my nickname, treasuring the way it sounded over the line.
“You kept your promise?”
“Yeah…”
He sighed with relief. “I’ve never felt like this before…never felt so shitty.”
The guilt flooded my heart. “My mom set me up on a date with him. He’s a family friend.”
“So he’s exactly what you want…someone your family will approve of.”
Bitterness was in his tone, mixed with a splash of rage.