Page 38 of Sinful Escape

My brows shot up. “One?”

“Si. My hometown is small. I was lucky there was even one.” He shrugged. “Caterina was always the girl for me. Then she wasn’t.”

The sadness in his eyes was so sudden my heart melted. “What happened?”

He clutched his beer as if praying for strength. “We were together fifteen years.”

“Fifteen! Bloody hell. How old are you?”

He chuckled. “I’m twenty-five. She was my neighbor. We were just always together.”

“What happened?”

He shrugged. “She had a fling with a tourist. The guy was married. Knocked me for a six. I thought I knew her, but . . .”

“You can never really know someone.”

He blinked at me. “Si. Yes, you can.”

“No. It’s impossible.”

He tilted his head sideways, studying me. “He hurt you that bad, huh?”

“Who?”

“The man who stole your heart.”

Stole my heart. That was exactly what William had done. I twirled the stem of my glass. “Yeah. You could say that.”

“What was his name?”

My chest squeezed. Even saying his name hurt. “William.”

“Okay, it’s your turn. How’d you meet William? Why did you break up?”

Oh, God. I took a large gulp of my drink, praying for liquid courage.

“You are stalling.”

“All right.” I waggled my head. “Bossy boots,” I mumbled. Inhaling a breath, I readied to tell a story that I hadn’t voiced since I’d shared it with Azalia during one very long pissy night on the cruise ship. “I met William at school.” I gave Roman a cheeky smile. “There, now you know.”

“Very funny. If you’re not careful, I will ask you my twenty questions.”

The champagne must be going to my head because Roman’s mischievous grin was totally cute, and my heart thumped a little bit faster. I cleared my throat. “Twenty questions?”

“Yeah, it is a trick I use to get people chatting. Ask a pile of questions and they don’t even know they’re talking.” He wriggled his eyebrows. “Trust me, you don’t want question five.”

“What’s question five?”

A playful smile curled on his lips. “You don’t want to know. Now come on, stop stalling.”

I knew how well the twenty questions theory worked. I’d been doing it myself since my school years. If I wasn’t careful, I’d be revealing all sorts of private stuff. I was not going to fall for that old trick. No way. Nuh-uh. No more champagne for me.

Pushing my glass away, I cleared my throat. “We met in senior year of school. In the library. He was looking at science books. I was looking for a good novel to read.”

“So, he was a disadattato.”

“Disadattato?” I frowned, unable to translate.

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