Page 43 of Royally Roma
She swallowed. “Okay, then. We’ll be back in a minute.”
His lips curved into a cheeky grin. At least Julia thought they did. She couldn’t seem to stop staring at his abs. Valentina yipped, snapping her back into mostly coherent thought.
Dog. Outside.
Right.
Julia squared her shoulders, turned her back on Nico and his ridiculously hot bod, and marched toward the front door. She grabbed Valentina’s leash from the hook on the wall and slid her feet into her loafers, which she always kept right by the entryway.
She wouldnotlet Nico rattle her again. Not when he’d had the nerve to reject her the night before.Aftergetting her fired. She refused to be that woman. She just needed to clear her head for a minute, and she could go back to properly despising him. As she should.
She reached for the doorknob.
Behind her, Nico called out, “Julia?”
His voice sounded warm, sultry. Like Rome. Like sex.
“Yes?” she said, keeping her gaze firmly glued to the door.
He cleared his throat. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
She paused for a beat.
“Your pants,” he said.
She looked down at her bare legs stretching out from beneath her pajama top and wanted to die.
Nope, she wasn’t rattled at all.
NICCOLO PUSHED HIMSELF OFFthe sofa, raked a hand through his hair, and ordered himself to stop thinking about Julia’s long, graceful legs. Or how adorable she’d looked with her hair mussed from sleep and cheeks flushed a lovely shade of pink. Now that she’d slipped on a pair of jeans and taken her little dog outside, he should be getting dressed himself. Preparing to leave. What he most certainly shouldn’t be doing was thinking about how he’d very nearly slid into her bed the night before to kiss her, hold her.
Love her.
Nor should he be thinking about how he found her humble home charming and cozy compared to the impersonal elegance of the places where he normally slept. Or how the cheap Chianti they’d consumed the night before had somehow tasted better than the finest Italian wines on the Hotel de Russie’s menu. Or how arguing with Julia was far more enjoyable than having people bow and cater to his every whim.
None of those things should matter. Couldn’t matter. But they did. All of them.
He bent to gather his discarded clothes off the floor, and when he stood up, he banged his head on one of the ceiling’s low-hanging wood beams. Good. Maybe it would knock some sense into him, because his innocent little holiday had clearly become something bigger. And if he stayed here much longer, it wouldn’t be so innocent anymore either.
Show me.
He’d done the right thing the night before. He had absolutely no business bedding Julia Costa. He shouldn’t feel an ounce of regret about stopping things when he had.
Except he did. Big heaping loads of regret.
You’re perfect, but we can’t.
The hurt he’d seen in her eyes when he’d said those words had just about killed him. He’d wanted to take them back before they’d even left his mouth.
She was a grown woman, after all. She could make her own decisions. Who was he to tell her what to do?
That sounded awfully close to the sort of rationalization Cassian specialized in, though. At least his brother’s conquests had the benefit of knowing who they were sleeping with.
Niccolo sank back down on the sofa and dropped his head in hands. What if he told Julia who he was? What if he just laid it all out? Would that really be so awful?
Of course it would.
He’d carried the charade too far. Getting her sacked certainly hadn’t helped. The consequences of his impulsive choice to follow her yesterday morning had been worse than he’d anticipated. They’d pretty much confirmed every terrible notion Julia had about people in positions of power. Not to mention, men in general. If she found out he was a high-raking royal now, after everything that had transpired in the past twenty-four hours, she would be furious. Possibly furious enough to tell her story to the press.
