Page 9

COULD'VE BEEN

VANESSA

D eep breath in, deep breath out. You got this. It’ll be over soon. Quick and painless.

Bracing herself with the usual mantra, Vanessa hesitated outside the conference room at Upton, Garcia & Vega, Family Law, on the forty-fifth floor of a Midtown Manhattan skyscraper.

She pushed open the heavy plate glass door and went in.

Two of the three occupants sitting around the large, gleaming black table turned when she entered, her lawyer Genesis Vega, and Santino’s attorney, Oscar Sanchez.

The third stayed seated, staring straight ahead through the window with a beam of sunlight slanting across his face.

Santino Antonio D’Alessio Donahue, descendant of an Italian duke, trust fund baby, and firefighter, her soon-to-be ex-husband.

The blond, blue-eyed bastard who annoyed the fuck out of her by day but still managed to haunt her dreams every night.

Ignoring him and the way her whole body pulsed at the sight of him, Vanessa sauntered coolly into the room, knowing full well Santino hated waiting on her. He’d always complained about her slowness, remarking how she managed to be on time for everyone and everything but him.

Vanessa laid her bag daintily on an empty seat and slid onto the thick leather cushion of the swivel chair next to Genesis, who greeted her with a quick smile.

Despite knowing they should keep some professional distance while the suit was ongoing, Vanessa really liked Genesis.

She was bright, bubbly, yet utterly vicious when it came to representing her mostly female clients in divorce and custody matters — sort of like a cute, golden-brown doll wielding a six-inch knife.

Genny had confided over drinks one night that she’d become a divorce lawyer because she hated seeing women getting left with zero and struggling after a divorce like her own mother had when her dad checked out on the marriage.

“Cut those bitches and take their last dime,” was more or less her professional motto.

Her zeal had earned her a partnership at her firm at the tender age of thirty-five.

“Whassup, homeguurrrl? How is you?” Vanessa whispered, pretending she wasn’t shaky at all, sitting across a table from her ex.

“Whassup, homeguurrrl? How is you ?” Genesis responded.

The bad English was a private joke. Genesis was from the Lower East Side, aka “Loisaida,” and Vanessa from Wakefield in the Bronx. Code switching was still very much a thing they’d each had to perfect when in law school, and now with upper-crust colleagues and clients.

Across the table, the handsome lawyer was unabashedly eye-fucking Genesis with his whiskey colored eyes. As usual, Genesis was pretending not to notice his attention but was doing a fair amount of hair-flipping with her dark bobbed locks.

Amused by this display, it was still the silent person in the room who pulled Vanessa’s attention like a beacon with his long body in a casual slouch.

Santino’s silver blue eyes were fixed on the bank of windows lining the conference room behind her.

It was gorgeously sunny outside, but all that could be seen from this vantage point was another gray building across the street.

Suddenly, those eyes pierced hers, zipping sharply down her body before resting on her face.

“Good morning, Mrs. Donahue,” Oscar said pleasantly, smoothing his hand over his short, shiny black hair.

“Watson. It’s Vanessa Watson,” she reminded him archly.

Santino’s face pinched ever-so-slightly, then smoothed out. Instead of the usual sullen expression he wore at these negotiations and court hearings, or the seething rage on bad days, today his stare was intent, determined.

“Let’s get started, shall we?” Genesis said with a smile at Oscar.

She opened a yellow legal pad, which lay next to her phone, and a manila folder.

Then she flipped open the folder and quickly perused a document before offering it to him.

“Okay. Today is it. Our signing day. But first, these are Ms. Watson’s latest and final set of financials that you requested a few days ago. ”

“Thank you.” Oscar smiled back at her, showing a lot of teeth. Vanessa was starting to wonder if they’d already crossed the forbidden zone between adversaries and lovers.

“Is there any particular reason you needed to see these when we’ve already accounted for everything?” Genesis asked with a raised eyebrow.

Santino looked at his lawyer with a serene, barely-there smile, who turned back to them from across the table and pulled at his tie as if it made him uncomfortable.

“We recently became aware that Ms. Watson was given a promotion at her firm. This obviously makes a difference not only with regard to the support she’s receiving from Mr. Donahue now but any final financial arrangements after the divorce…”

While Oscar and Genesis began discussing the dollar amounts, Vanessa snuck another look at Santino, who was still staring at her. This time, the intensity wasn’t tinged with resentment or anger but something deeper. More sensual.

She hated to admit it but damn he looked good in that charcoal button-down shirt with the gray stripes.

Santino typically hated dress clothes and only wore them during these occasions.

This one brought out more of the silver in his eyes while stretching taut across the impressive expanse of his shoulders.

Next to his brothers, he was the “shortest” of the Donahues, but at just over six feet one with that muscular build, he was still a big man.

Vivid memories of first seeing him towering over her while she waited for help in that elevator battered at her defenses, as well as the sensation of falling onto him, falling into his strength and his heat.

She’d never been the damsel in distress.

If anything, she’d been raised to be the rescuer, to save herself because no one else was going to swoop in if she needed something.

But being rescued by Santino that night had been wildly thrilling.

He was tanned, gorgeous, and with that sharp jawline, right down to the slight chin cleft, he’d seemed like a fair-haired hero straight out of a movie.

The problem? He’d been twenty-two, seven years younger than her, but the gap seemed so much bigger at that age.

That had given her pause. A lot of pause.

But when he kept showing up at the building, then at the coffee shop across the street in the mornings, he charmed her into a date.

And on those dates, he was fun and genuinely curious about her, so supportive and encouraging with her dreams for her life.

It was impossible for her not to fall. He was literally irresistible.

“…. .and most likely will increase exponentially as she progresses in her profession. We think she…”

She zoned out again. Even though she was a lawyer herself, this legalese over the financials was boring.

Her thing was defending those who deserved a zealous representation as afforded by the law, not the sad dissolution of love and the petty metrics of who owed what to whom and for how long.

She’d been prepared to walk out of this with nothing, but Santino was dragging this out to make her fucking miserable for reasons she couldn’t fathom.

Well…the reason wasn’t exactly a mystery, if she was being honest with herself. He wanted payback. He’d told her as much the first time she asked him to sign the divorce papers two years ago.

She had to track him down at his new place since he refused to accept the papers from the court-appointed process server.

When she showed up and handed them to him personally, he laughed harshly.

With sharp movements of his big hands, he ripped them to pieces and tossed them up in the air.

They fluttered down to the ground like unhappy confetti.

“I’m not signing shit,” he bit out and crossed his arms over his muscled chest, heaving hard as he stared at her, his jaw working. “Why are you doing this?” he asked suddenly. Fury and pain were written so starkly on his face she had to turn away. “Why are you doing this to me, Vanessa?”

She escaped back to her car, barely able to see through blurred vision.

Obviously, he hated her. Hated her for not playing a simp and a doormat as he’d expected.

Hated her for not tolerating disrespect from his ex-girlfriend like a good little woman.

He was furious at her for having the audacity to walk away with her dignity intact.

And he’d been punishing her ever since by withholding the only thing she still wanted from him: her freedom.

Well, was that all she wanted from him? Unfortunately, his bad attitude still hadn’t rendered him physically unattractive to her as she kept praying it would.

She snuck another look at him, only to see his gaze had been locked on her mouth.

A band of deep color arched over his cheekbones.

His mouth was slightly parted, the thicker bottom lip so tempting and full.

Crazily, she found that she would give any concession he asked for to have those lips on her again. Her nipples were tightening at the memory of him sucking on them, and she literally clutched the short strand of pearls around her throat against those memories and Santino’s bold, hostile stare.

Agitated, she pulled her gaze away from his mouth and his piercing eyes and poured herself a glass of water from the carafe on the table as Genesis and Oscar droned on back and forth.

She took a shaky gulp. Some of the water spilled from her lips and fell onto her cream blouse and into her cleavage, leaving a shiny trail as it slipped downward into her bra.