Page 12 of Royally Roma
She took a deep inhale to clear her fuzzy head. Without him invading her space, she could breathe again. And more importantly, think straight. For the most part.
“Safety first.” She unzipped her backpack and pulled out her spare helmet—green, red, and white striped, with ITALIA emblazoned on it in large block letters—and thrust it toward him.
He took the helmet, looked over his shoulder at the mob of approaching schoolgirls, and jammed it on his head. “Nice helmet. Very tasteful.”
The sarcastic edge to his tone was impossible to miss.
“Thank you. Would you like to take a selfie on the scooter before we head out?” She was baiting him, and she knew it. She just didn’t know why.
Other than the fact that there was something about him that so clearly got under her skin. Him and his blasted butterflies.
“No selfies.” He shook his head. “No pictures of any kind. I’m afraid I must insist.”
“No pictures? Really?” At least a third of her time on most tours was spent taking photographs for her clients. If her future master’s degree had been in photography, she would have been finished with her fieldwork by now.
But she wasn’t a photographer. She was an archaeologist, which explained her soft spot for men who knew their dinosaurs. Archaeology and paleontology weren’t exactly the same field of study, but they were heavily intertwined. Of course she doubted either school of thought had anything to do with Mano’s reluctance to be photographed.
“No photos.” He shook his head and fastened the chin strap of his borrowed helmet. Even with a Teflon Italian flag strapped to his head, he somehow managed to look handsome. It was remarkable.
And annoying.
She willed herself not to swoon.
“No pictures. Understood,” she said, climbing in front of him and cranking the Vespa to life just as the schoolgirls arrived on the scene. They were shouting something.È lui! It’s him!She must have heard wrong, as that made no sense at all. But she couldn’t bother thinking about that now.
Because she didn’t understand. Not really.
A tourist who’d booked an entire day’s tour and didn’t want a single photograph? A man dressed in a custom-cut suit and perfectly polished shoes to walk around ancient ruins in the rain? A complete stranger who said her name as if it were a caress, with a voice that felt like an aching, torturous touch.
And that name of his.
Mano Romano.
Things were getting weirder by the minute.
CHAPTER
FOUR
Niccolo had never ridden on the back of a Vespa before. He’d never ridden on a scooter, period. Nor on anything this close to being classified as a fossil. But he might as well have been riding astride an elephant for all the attention he was paying to Julia’s dubious choice of transportation.
Allowing her to drive had been an insanely bad idea. She sat in front of him, perfectly positioned in the narrow space between his thighs, with her pert bottom pressed against him. The wool-cashmere blend of his trousers and the bright shock of red denim covering her backside were the only things separating them. Two thin layers of fabric that weren’t nearly enough to keep him from being keenly aware of the soft swell of her body, her warmth. He glanced down, mesmerized by the sight of their bodies touching. It was too much. A full-on assault on his senses. He grew hard in a millisecond.
He looked back up and focused on the shiny surface of her helmet. But of course his gaze strayed to the loose chocolate tendrils that had escaped her ballerina bun and danced along her shoulders, inexplicably begging to be wound around his fingers.
This is madness.
She glanced over her shoulder, swiveling to face him ever so slightly. Just enough to allow the smallest possible brush of movement against his groin. A shock of arousal passed through him with enough ferocity to render him temporarily blind.
“I suggest you hold on, Mano Romano.” She smiled sweetly at him. Too sweetly, in Niccolo’s opinion. He suddenly wasn’t in the mood for sweet.
“Right,” he said tightly and slid his hands around her dainty waist.
He tried mightily not to imagine photos of himself with his arms around this woman he hardly knew on the cover of a pile of tabloids. Such a disaster would be unacceptable.
At least she was clothed. And there was only one of her, as opposed to thirteen.
You could still change your mind, you know.
