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“Yeah.” He shrugged his big shoulder, clearly not reading the room. “You know they do it for … dramatic effect.”

Dramatic effect this—

“Ow!” Amo yelped, rubbing the back of his head where Dante had just slapped the shit out of him as he passed. “What did you fucking hit me for?”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” he told him from over his shoulder as he headed toward the stairs.

He saw the tug on his son’s lips when he put his shades back down and went back to pretending to be asleep.

Fuck. He thought going on vacation was supposed to be relaxing. Instead, it was anything but. Now he had One-Shot finally targeting him, and what was worse was that now Nadia was involved. She wasn’t meant to have been thrown into his shit. He regretted ever calling her back to give her the check. He should have just fucking mailed it to her, but his ego wanted him to do it in person.

He had made a mistake by letting his instincts throw Nadia into his car because now One-Shot could interpret it as him caring for her. Hell, she wasn’t under-aged; he could just let her go and let One-Shot handle the rest, but his conscience wasn’t letting him, and now he was playing babysitter.

At least, if he got her out of here alive, she was going to be easy to keep quiet. Handing money over to her little charity was going to serve as more than just a tax write-off now.

Finding her room was easy once he took the final step. It was the only door down here that was closed. Raising his knuckles, he gently raked them on the door. “Nadia?” he called out when she didn’t answer.

He was just about to knock the door down when he heard a stir …

* * *

Nadia cracked open the door to see a sliver of Dante’s face on the other side. She couldn’t help but notice his ice-blue gaze drift down to what he could see of her robe.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb your sleep.”

“I wasn’t sleeping.”

“You’ve been sitting in here this whole time?” He began to slightly narrow his eyes now, as his hand started to lightly push against the door. “Is something wrong?”

“Excuse me!” Nadia quickly lost the battle as he barged in. “This is my room!”

“Amo thought he heard a scream earlier,” he said, giving the room a quick look around.

“I may or may not have screamed,” she said, pulling her robe closer together. “But that was a while ago. A little too late now to be worried.”

“Yeah, well, he didn’t tell me till about a minute ago.” Dante let his disappointment show clearly in his tone as he went to give the bathroom a check now. Returning to the bedroom, he asked the question she was hoping he wouldn’t. “Why did you scream, then?”

“I was just being …” Nadia couldn’t think of the right word to describe why she had screamed after seeing the clothing options.

“Dramatic?” he asked with a raised brow.

“No”—you freaking prick—“silly.” Yep, that was a much better word.

“Okay, then, what were you being silly about?”

Nadia went to open her mouth but couldn’t think of what to say.

“I’ll wait here all day ‘til you tell me,” he threatened, crossing his arms.

Clearly, there was no getting out of it. He wanted to know what caused her distress.

Shit, the crossing of his arms drew attention to what he was wearing now. Dante had changed into a looser white button-up shirt that revealed the top of his tanned chest. His black slacks were now a navy pair of … khakis? No one in Kansas City would ever believe Dante Caruso would be on a yacht in khakis, yet here he stood, and Nadia had to admit the casual look made him appear somehow younger, fresher and, regretfully, even hotter.

When he was about to take a seat on the bed, she gave in to his relentlessness.

“Fine.” She rolled her eyes with a sigh, heading over to open the closet door. “I didn’t scream out of fear. I screamed in frustration because the only clothes available to me this weekend belong to”—she pulled out a yellow see-through dress—“Sherry”—she then revealed a red dress with the sides cut out—“Cherry”—now she headed toward the chest to open the forbidden drawer, grabbing a handful of string bikinis that she let rain back down into the chest—“and Missy!”

Stepping closer, he took a good look at the contents in the drawer. “This is why you’ve been locked in your room all day?”

Okay, when he said it that way, while he looked at her like that, it did sound a bit dramatic … silly … or somewhere between both.

“They’re just bathing suits, Nadia,” Dante told her simply, like it wasn’t a big deal. “We’re in the middle of the ocean, for Christ’s sake. Just try to chill out this weekend and enjoy yourself. You’re safe here.”