Page 1 of Not Mine to Keep

CHAPTER ONE

Alessandro

Nashville, Tennessee

“You know, you might be the only person in all of Tennessee that’s ever had to look up this song.” A sexy southern voice flew over my shoulder from where I stood by the cash bar at a fundraising event.

“You caught me.” I smirked and swiped the music-identifier app closed to pocket my phone. Curious to see if this woman’s face matched her sultry tone, I turned her way.

“Whiskey on the rocks, please,” she ordered. “Make thatTennesseewhiskey,” she emphasized, busting my balls for not knowing this apparently famous song.

Eye contact now made, and well, damn. A quick, flirty wink from her did something unexpected to me. Something that never happened unless I was on a stair-climber or hunting a bad guy: my pulse kicked up.

I lost sight of those light-green eyes when the bartender slid over her drink. “It’s on the house, Calliope.”

The fucking flirt.Not that I wouldn’t have done the same if I were a twentysomething bartender, but also, why’d he know her name?

She leaned my way to snatch a napkin from the stack near where my left hand sat on the bar, and I couldn’t help but inhale her sexy scent.

“Pardon.” Her pinkie brushed against mine, and she pulled away. A vision of those sparkly silver manicured nails biting into my back pounded into my head.

Yeah, I needed this woman. In my arms. Tonight. Well, once I dealt with the reason I’d been summoned there in the first place.

“And for you?” I assumed the bartender was talking to me, not that I’d yet ripped my focus from the woman.

“Clase Azul Ultra. Chilled,” I ordered.

“But that’s—”

“I know.” I cut him off before he warned me of the high price. “It’s fine.”

“Good taste in tequila. But a work in progress in your music preferences,” this beautiful woman surprised me by saying, one side of her lips hitching a touch as she swished the liquid around in her glass, our eyes locking once again.

I reached into my back pocket for my wallet, snatched four hundreds to cover the drink and a tip, then slid the bills onto the counter. “Work in progress, hmm?” I let the words pour out as slowly as the bartender was filling a glass with two ounces of tequila.

Her face was so breathtakingly beautiful that when she lifted her shoulder, it was the first time I allowed my eyes to travel south of her chin. It was normally a woman’s body I paid attention to first.

Sex. No intimacy. No fucking strings. That was all I made time for in my life. I was bored. Bored to death, lately, when it came to dating.

But bored was the last thing in the world I was, standing before this woman wrapped in a dress straight from a fairy tale my late sister would’ve loved. It was a match in color to her shimmery nails and had a deep V that gave me the perfect hint of cleavage without the whole show.

At my height of six-one, even with her in heels, she was still a few inches shorter than me.

“Do you plan to answer what felt like a slight insult?” I finally broke the silence that was marinating between us like one of my chef brother’s meals at his restaurant in Charlotte.

“When your eyes make it to my face, I’ll give you my words.”

Oh, this woman was smooth.

Music started playing from somewhere in the room.I think.And people were talking all around us.Well, I’m pretty sure they are.But the only sound, the onlyvoice, I cared to focus on was Calliope’s. Because Little Miss Tennessee Whiskey had my undivided attention right now.

I met her gaze while accepting the drink from the bartender, contemplating doing the classic charm shit I did back home in New York. Not that I ever really had to do much in the way of trying to win women over. They knew I was a Costa and dubbed one of New York City’s top five wealthiest and most eligible bachelors. Of course, I had plans to be a bachelor until I met my expiration date.

“My apologies,” I began. “It’s not every day a woman tongue-ties me.”

A soft laugh from her dusted all over me, giving me chills, forcing me to check my glass to ensure I hadn’t been drugged given my odd reaction to her, but then I remembered I’d yet to take a drink.

“So you find me funny.” Swirling the glass so the spirit coated it, I took a sniff from the bottom lip, then inhaled it again before taking a sip. The tequila sat on my tongue, then I swallowed hard.

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