Dante’s Girl (3 page)

Great.

“Don’t worry,” Dante reassures me quietly, his hand on my shoulder.  “It will be okay.”

“How do you know?” I challenge him. 

“I just do,” he shrugs.  “It always is.”

I can’t argue with that logic. In my seventeen years of life, there has never been anything that didn’t eventually turn out alright.  But to be fair, I have never left an airport with a complete stranger who might possibly be an ax murderer before, either. 

Holy cow.  I’m such an idiot. 

I’m totally screwed.

My dad is going to have to identify my body parts.

I’m sure of it.

We step out of the darkened terminal and find two large black SUVs with tinted windows waiting for us.  An airport security person stands to the side.  He takes our passports and ushers us on our way after speaking hurriedly with Russell.  

I briefly consider telling Dante that I’ve changed my mind, that I want to stay, but something holds me back.  I’m not sure what.  Some niggling little thing in the corner of my mind tells me to just hang tight.  My mother has always told me to trust my gut.  And right now, for some reason, my gut is telling me that Dante is okay, that I am safe with him. 

I sincerely hope my gut isn’t crazy.

The other four men in suits take the front SUV while Dante, Russell and I climb into the second one.   I settle into the cushiony seat, the leather cool against my skin.  I pull my shirt down to cover the exposed skin on the bottom of my back and then turn to Dante, who was sitting next to me.

“Who are you?”

“Dante Giliberti,” he answers, pronouncing Giliberti as Gili-Bear-ti and looking confused by my question.  But he has to know why I’m wondering.

“Why does Dante Gili-bear-ti command such special treatment?” I demand impatiently, staring him straight in the eye.  “I’m sorry if I seem rude, but I’m an American speeding away from an airport with a man that I don’t even know.  You are clearly important or we would be stuck back there with everyone else- probably even still on that plane.”  I shudder at the thought.  “And while I’m very grateful to you that that isn’t the case, I would like to know who you are.”

“My father is Dimitri Giliberti.  He’s the Prime Minister of Caberra.”  

Dante says this calmly, casually and matter-of-factly, as though he was speaking of the weather, as though it is something that anyone might say. 

My mouth drops open and I’m pretty sure that my vision blurs for a second. 

“Prime Minister?” I stutter.

I can see mild amusement on Buzz Cut’s face, but I ignore it.  At this moment, he doesn’t matter.  Although, now at least it makes sense why Dante has a security team in the first place.  Oh, sweet Mary.  The guy has an entire security team.   The realization makes me almost nauseous and I’m not sure why.  I should be happy.  Dante isn’t an ax murderer. 

“Are you upset?” Dante asks in concern.  “Are you alright?”

“Your father is the Prime Minister of a country,” I say out loud.  Dante nods.

“Yes.  Caberra. It’s a small island country in the Mediterranean.  It’s not far from Greece.”

“I know where it is.  You already told me,” I answer softly.  “And your father is the Prime Minister.”

Dante nods.  “Yes.”

I gulp.  My father is a desk-jockey for the NSA.  Dante’s father is the leader of a country.  It’s just one more reason that I should feel inadequate when standing next to him.

“Don’t be intimidated by that,” Dante adds graciously.  “You’re not sitting next to the Prime Minister of Caberra.  You’re sitting next to me.  And I’m a normal person.”

“A normal person with billions of dollars,” Russell mutters beneath his breath.  Dante shoots him a glare. 

“Billions of dollars,” I repeat weakly. “You have billions of dollars. You’re a billionaire.”

Dante doesn’t answer yes or no.  Instead he says, “My family has been in the olive business for quite a long time.  We export gourmet olives.”

He’s diplomatic, too.  It must run in his family.

“Giliberti Olives,” I murmur, absently picturing a name that sits on a jar in my very own kitchen cabinets back home.  My grandmother loves their garlic stuffed olives. If we even have them in Kansas, then they must be a huge company.  Clearly, they ship all over the world.

“Yes, Giliberti Olives,” Dante answers pleasantly. “You’ve heard of us?  We sell pretty much any kind of olive you can think of, as well as gourmet olive oils.”

“You’re a billionaire,” I repeat again. 

I feel stupid, but I just can’t wrap my head around it.  This handsome, sophisticated boy is a billionaire.  And the son of a Prime Minister.  It makes total and complete sense.  The realization that I am safe barely registers with me.  It is overshadowed by the fact that the beautiful boy that I am with is a billionaire.

“Does it matter?” Dante asks with a smile.  “Money is money.  It is only that. It doesn’t define us, does it?”

I’m pretty sure it does.  I’m farm girl from Kansas and he’s the wealthy son of a Prime Minister.  We are from completely different worlds.  So different, that we are probably separated by two or three galaxies.  He’s way out of my league.  In fact, he’s in a total league of his own.

Chapter Three

“Why did you bring her in the first place?” Buzz Cut demands of Dante. 

They are standing approximately five paces from the SUV as we wait for the helicopter to prepare for our flight.  They must think that I can’t hear them over the whir of the helicopter’s engine.  I want to tell them that I’m not deaf, but instead I cringe from the agitation in Russell’s voice.

“Because I couldn’t leave her there,” Dante answers icily. “And I don’t answer to you, Russell.  I do as I please and you will do as I say.”

The bodyguard glares at Dante for one long moment before he pivots on his heel and stalks over to speak with the crew chief of the helicopter. 

Honestly, I’m impressed with how quickly the flight crew had reached us. 

We’d only driven for a half an hour before the helicopter met us on the road, touching down in a field next to us.  We’d pulled over and now, ten minutes later, we are about to board. It’s surreal.  Larger than life. 

And if my mother knew this, that I am about to travel to an island nation with someone I’ve never met before, or in fact, about any of it, she’d have a heart attack.  As it is, I still don’t have a cell signal so I’m safe for the time being.  I’m with the son of a Prime Minister, after all.

Dante strolls back to where I am leaning against the car, his shoulders all wide and strong and distracting.  He smiles casually and you’d never know from his face that he had just gotten into a little verbal altercation with his massive bodyguard.

“Are you alright?” he asks politely. “Do you need anything?”

I shake my head. “I need to call my parents before they kill me.  But other than that, I’m fine.”

Dante nods.  “The cellular circuits are jammed because everyone is on their cell phone in this area, trying to check on their loved ones.  When we reach Caberra, I’m sure it will be clear.  You can call them then.”

“Okay,” I answer, fiddling with the strap of my purse.  Dante’s casual good looks aren’t something I have gotten used to yet.  He still causes my tongue to tie in knots. Actually, I don’t foresee that dissipating anytime soon. 

“Are you upset that I brought you with me?” Dante asks, his forehead wrinkling in concern.  “I didn’t mean to cause you any trouble with your parents.  It’s just that we didn’t know at the airport what the problem might be. I thought it was terrorists and something inside of me said that I couldn’t leave you there.”

“You
thought
it was terrorists,” I repeat in confusion.  “It wasn’t?”

Dante shakes his blond head.  “The helicopter pilot tells me that a volcano erupted in Greenland.  The ash has carried in the air and it is wreaking havoc on airplanes.  It gets sucked into their engines and clogs them up.  Airports all over Europe are closed down.”

“Will a helicopter be safe?” I ask nervously, mentally picturing a fiery crash.  Perhaps I’m going to die after all.  My pulse speeds up.

Dante smiles reassuringly. “Yes.  It’s safe. Helicopters don’t have jet engines to clog, so we’ll be fine.”  He glances at me. “I promise.”

At precisely that moment, the pilot motions to us that he’s ready and we quickly move to board.  Dante lifts my hand and helps me step into the craft, like a prince and a princess.  His manners are perfect.  His mother should be proud.

“It will be fine,” Dante repeats to me, patting my shoulder.

I’m such a baby. I know that.  But in the face of what we’d just seen a couple of hours ago, I’m 99.999% sure that my terror is justified. 

The co-pilot hands us headphones, which we all put on and settle into our seats.  This is the biggest helicopter that I’ve ever seen, large enough to seat everyone in Dante’s security detail. 

That thought makes me gulp again. 
Dante has a security detail.
  He is my complete and polar opposite on the life-importance-meter.

I fasten my seatbelt and close my eyes.  All of a sudden, I feel his breath on my cheek and his mouth next to my ear. 

“I promise, it will be fine.”

Everyone in the helicopter can hear, because mouthpieces are attached to our headphones.  My cheeks burst into flame.  Now everyone is well aware that I’m a big baby.  Perfect.

“The people on that plane.  Are they all dead?”

It is completely silent around me as I ask the question.  No one wants to answer and that is answer enough.  Dante’s face is grave as he leans toward me.

“Yes. They are.”

The breath freezes in my throat as I remember the grotesque popping sound as the plane had burned. And the doll with no face. 

I close my eyes but I still see the visions.

Dante reaches over and squeezes my hand.

Perfect.

For real, this time. 

I feel my heart flutter a little at his nearness and at the way his cool hand feels within mine. And then I instantly feel silly.  Just because I’m a small-town farm girl does not mean that I should make a fool of myself over this boy.  I have to have some self-respect.  I am
not
going to fawn all over him.  He’s a billionaire. And beautiful.  He’s probably used to ‘those’ girls being at his beck and call.  And I am bound and determined not to be one.

I pull my hand out of his and lean my head against the window.  I’m determined not to look at his reflection, particularly because I can feel him staring at me. 

I squeeze my eyes shut as the engine roars and we lift off the ground, shakily at first and then we soar across the sky like a motorized bird.

I think I might have a heart attack and this time, when Dante reaches over and squeezes my hand, I squeeze it back.  To hell with trying to seem guarded.  That had lasted all of three minutes.  I’m a girl who wears her emotions on her sleeve. I’m not going to change that just to look cool.  

Not for any boy, not for any reason.

The drone of the helicopter fades into my subconscious as I close my eyes and try to imagine that I am anywhere but 15,000 feet in the air.

I focus on my favorite daydream, the one where I return from London at the end of the summer and am all glamorous and drop-dead gorgeous and every girl in my school is completely jealous when Quinn McKeyan asks me to Fall Homecoming because he can’t resist my charm.

Hey, it’s my daydream.  I can dream what I want to.  

The thing is, Quinn’s face keeps getting replaced in my head by Dante’s.

Since I’ve had a mad crush on Quinn from the time we started kindergarten all the way through our junior year last year, that’s saying something.  

Every daydream I’ve had for eleven years has been of him.  I’m a very loyal daydreamer.  And I suddenly feel like I’m cheating on my imaginary boyfriend, a boy who happens to be real, but who has been dating my best friend Becca for the past two years.  And no.  Becca has no idea that I’m secretly in love with her boyfriend.  It’s the one secret that I’ve kept from her.

I clear my head from cluttered thoughts and instead focus on emptying it.  I focus on blackness and feel myself drift to sleep. 

I’m not sure how long I sleep.  But my eyes flutter open to find Dante watching me. I’m instantly self-conscious and seriously hope that I haven’t done anything gross in my sleep.

“I like the name Reece,” Dante says randomly, as though he’d been thinking about it.  Once again, everyone in the helicopter is listening since we’re all on the same frequency.  My blush comes back with a vengeance, fiery hot. 

“Thank you,” I answer, not looking at him, trying to will my cheeks to not be pink.

“How did your parents choose it?” he asks, staring at me with interest.  I straighten in my seat and once again look at him in the glass.  I find it is safer to look at his reflection, rather than into his startlingly blue eyes.  It helps me to keep my wits. 

And I need every wit that I have.

“My father has always had a man-crush on the baseball hall of famer, Pee Wee Reese,” I tell him.  “He played for the Dodgers a long time ago. My father has a signed Pee Wee Reese baseball that his grandfather gave him.  Do you watch baseball?”

He shakes his head. “No.  But I played it when I was a kid.”

“Well, it is one of the things that my dad lives and breathes for, when he isn’t working,” I explain.  “So, naturally, he named me after his hero.  But like I told you earlier, he was expecting a boy.  I was quite the surprise.”

Dante looks at me seriously and I can’t help but turn to meet his gaze.  As a result, my heart thumps so loudly that I’m afraid my mouthpiece will pick it up and give me away.

“Yes,” he agrees. “You are quite the surprise.”

What the hell does he mean by that?

But I don’t have any time to ponder it because Dante looks out his window and begins giving me a blow-by-blow tour of the scene below us.  And as I lean into the window and look, I gasp at the beauty below.  It is so gorgeous that it effectively takes my mind off my fear of flying.

“Where are we?” I ask in awe.  This is so much better than being in the dreary rain of London.