Chapter 2 - The Child in My Arms

Dante stopped three feet away from me. For a man who had once seemed capable of controlling every room he entered, he looked remarkably uncertain.

His gaze went from my face to the sleeping boy against my shoulder. The child stirred, pressing one small hand against the collar of my coat, then settled again. I tightened my arm around him without thinking.

“Claire,” Dante said. “Whose little boy is that?”

I had spent three years imagining what I might say if I ever saw him again. I had imagined anger, indifference, even the sharp satisfaction of walking past without acknowledging his existence. I had never pictured standing in one of his hotel lobbies with a child asleep in my arms while he stared as though the ordinary fact of my happiness required an explanation.

“His name is Benjamin,” I said. “He's my son.”

Dante's expression changed. “Your son?”

“Yes.”

His eyes moved to the boy again, searching for something he could recognize. It took him another moment to ask the question he seemed afraid of hearing answered.

“Is he mine?”

“No.”

The word came easily. There was no uncertainty in it. Three years had passed since my marriage to Dante ended. Benjamin was one year old. Even Dante, who had built an empire around numbers and contracts, ought to have understood the distance between those dates.

“He's my husband's child,” I added.

Dante glanced toward my left hand. He had been watching Benjamin so closely that he hadn't noticed the simple gold band on my finger. His face tightened when he saw it.

“You remarried.”

“I did.”

Behind him, the executives he had dismissed waited at an awkward distance. Two members of his hotel staff had stopped near the reception desk, pretending to inspect a display of flowers. We were becoming an attraction, and I had no intention of allowing that to continue.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I need to check in.”

He moved aside, but his attention remained fixed on us. “Could we talk privately?”

“We're talking now.”

“Not about everything.”

“There's nothing left from our marriage that requires a conversation in your lobby.”

He looked wounded. Three years earlier, I might have mistaken that expression for proof that he understood what he had done. Now I knew pain could be genuine without making someone innocent.

“Claire, please.”

I turned toward the reception desk. The clerk greeted me politely, apparently determined to ignore what had just happened. My reservation was under the name Claire Bennett. I had kept my maiden name professionally even after remarrying, and I was grateful for that small piece of continuity.

Before the clerk could hand me my key cards, Dante spoke from behind me.

“Give Mrs. Bennett the presidential suite. Put everything on my account.”

The clerk's hand paused.

“No,” I said, without turning around.

Dante approached one step, then stopped. “It's only a courtesy.”

“It would be another decision you made for me without asking.”

For the first time, the clerk looked directly at me rather than at the owner of the building.

“Your original reservation is ready,” she said.

“Thank you.”

I accepted the key cards and turned away. Benjamin's cheek rested warm against my shoulder. I could feel the steady, uncomplicated rhythm of his breathing.

A familiar voice reached us from the entrance.

“Claire?”

Nathan Hale crossed the lobby carrying a small leather bag and a folded program for the International Preservation Forum. He had arrived earlier for an organizers' meeting and had promised to meet us at reception. When he saw Dante standing beside me, his expression grew attentive but not alarmed.

Nathan was not a man who competed for attention. He restored historic buildings for a living and preferred the patience of old stone to the excitement of public arguments. We had met in Zurich, where he had asked me a question about a museum exhibit and listened carefully to the answer. I had learned to value that habit more than expensive gifts.

He kissed Benjamin's hair, then looked at me. “Everything all right?”

“Yes,” I said. “This is Dante Moretti.”

Nathan offered his hand. “Nathan Hale.”

Dante took it. Neither man made a performance of the encounter. Yet I could see how carefully Dante was examining the person whose place in my life he had only just discovered.

“Nathan is my husband,” I said. “He's speaking at the forum tomorrow.”

Dante's eyes flickered toward the program. The conference organizers had booked a block of rooms at the hotel. I had known who owned the property before agreeing to accompany Nathan. I simply hadn't been willing to rearrange my family around the possibility of encountering my ex-husband.

Nathan gently relieved me of Benjamin's small overnight bag. “We should get him upstairs.”

Dante looked at the child once more. “He's beautiful.”

“He is,” Nathan answered.

There was nothing possessive in his voice. He wasn't defending a territory. He was speaking about our son.

As we approached the elevators, Dante called my name again. I stopped only because Benjamin had begun to wake, turning his head toward the sound.

“I didn't know you'd come back,” Dante said.

“I wasn't required to tell you.”

“No. You weren't.”

It was the first uncomplicated thing he had said to me.

Upstairs, Nathan settled Benjamin in the portable crib the hotel had provided. Our room overlooked the city, not the Strip. Traffic moved far below, and the familiar Las Vegas lights looked strangely distant from that height.

Nathan waited until I had removed my coat before asking about the encounter. I told him what Dante had said, including the question about Benjamin.

“He asked whether Ben was his?” Nathan repeated.

“He did.”

Nathan sat beside me. “Does he know the answer now?”

“Yes.”

“Then what do you want to do?”

I looked toward our sleeping son. Nathan didn't ask what Dante wanted. He asked what I wanted, a distinction I had come to recognize as the difference between being loved and being managed.

“I want to attend your talk,” I said. “I want to finish our week here. And I don't want to explain my family to strangers.”

“Then that's what we'll do.”

My phone vibrated on the bedside table. The screen displayed a number I hadn't called in three years.

Lily.

I watched it ring until it stopped. A moment later, a message appeared.

Dante told me he saw you. I know I don't deserve an answer, but could we talk?

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I turned the phone facedown. Dante had already told my sister I was back. Before the first evening of our visit had ended, the family I had left behind knew exactly where to find me.

And I had not yet decided whether I wanted any of them to try.