Page 12 of Rome with Dad's Best Friend

I use my free arm to hail a taxi, keeping Hannah close by my side, the scent of her perfume filling my nostrils. Her warmth and the softness of her skin under my hand – I could get used to this very easily.

And that, tonight, is exactly what I intend to begin.Chapter TenHannahOutside the hotel, our cab pulls up, and I feel myself tense. This is it. The moment when Marco will leave me. After what happened at the restaurant, I don’t want to be alone at all – and I definitely don’t want him to leave. Just like last night, I feel a desperate longing for him to come inside, to stay with me, even just a minute longer.

“I’ll come up with you, help you carry the pizza and the souvenirs,” Marco says, making my heart skip a beat. It’s as if he can read my mind. “I’ll just pay the taxi – I don’t want him waiting around for too long.”

“Thank you,” I murmur, meaning it because I was not at all looking forward to being alone. I get out of the car and walk into the lobby, and Marco joins me after just a couple of moments, smiling even though he is laden down with shopping bags and the pizza box.

The journey up the elevator seems even more laden with unsaid thoughts than before, the silence almost oppressive. I’m just trying to appreciate these moments before he does go at last. I want to cling to him for comfort, but I don’t think he would appreciate it.

We arrive at my room all too quickly, but this time when I open the door, Marco doesn’t pause outside. He comes in with me, setting the pizza box on the desk in the corner and my shopping bags on the floor. He glances around the room then, and I’m glad this is a hotel with a cleaning service and not my room at home, where I might have forgotten to tidy away clothes or make the bed.

“It’s not a bad room,” he says, flicking aside a corner of the curtain to look outside. The view is dark, that’s why I closed the curtains when I left, there isn’t much to see, only a street lined with shops. “Looks comfortable enough.”

“It is,” I say. I sit down on the bed. This is horrible. I can feel the moment coming when he will leave. I don’t want him to go. I want him to stay. What can I do?

Marco picks up the room service menu and flicks through it as if he is assessing this place for a future stay of his own. Or, more likely, I suppose, deciding whether to send a client here. But it gives me an idea – one that I latch onto tightly. It’s the only thing I can think of to stop him from leaving right now.

“Would you like to get a drink?” I ask. “Room service does delivery.”

Marco’s green eyes flick up to mine, and there’s something in them that I can’t read, a kind of darkness. “Sounds like a good idea,” he agrees. “What would you like?”

“I don’t know,” I shrug. “I think they do virgin cocktails. I haven’t tried any yet.”

“How about a virgin pina colada?” Marco suggests, walking over and reaching for the phone. “I’ll have some wine.”

He places the order in answer to my nod, and I pretend to listen, even though I can barely hear a thing over the pounding of my own heart. He’s here. In my room. Staying. The only place to sit is on the bed or on the one chair by the desk, and I hope he will choose the bed. Even as he continues talking on the phone, he sits, casually, right next to me. When he finishes the call and puts the receiver down, I find my mouth has gone dry.

This is it. The moment. With Marco so close, I could make a move right now, have his hands on me, his mouth. But I don’t know what to do. I’ve never made any move, let alone the first. I look at him through my eyelashes, his hands resting casually on the bed, his lips, raising my gaze to meet his eyes. He looks back at me, and the expression in those green orbs makes me freeze entirely.Chapter ElevenMarcoSomething in the room shifted as soon as we stepped over the threshold. No, before that, I sensed it in the elevator, and to a smaller degree even in the back of the taxi. There is something emanating from Hannah, some magnetism that draws me in, some heat.

When she suggests that I should stay, I knew it. I haven’t mistaken a thing. That magnetism I feel is her desire, coming off her like waves. I feel the intensity of her glances like heat on my skin. She wants this – wants what I want. All that remains is to begin.

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