Page 18 of Brooke
“Okay, I’ll put it away since I really am happy to be here with you tonight. Being a good friend is important to me. Plus, I’m an excellent multitasker.” Maybe she could take her phone with her to the bathroom to jot down a few notes.
“You have a hard time being present, don’t you? And it’s not only seeing people who know you, like Giulia Mariani, although I noticed you tensed a moment when she spotted us. I only ask because I want to understand why. What makes you tick? As you Americans say.”
She wasn’t offended. But what did make her tick? That question was a little unsettling. “I have a lot going on in my head. Lists. Tasks. What I’m planning on writing next. But it’s something I work on with yoga and deep breathing.”
He ran his fingers over the white tablecloth as his beautiful full lips teased into a smile. There, she had him back. “You assure me you are addressing a flaw, when I did not mean to imply there was one. Why are you being hard on yourself?”
Her throat grew tight. That kind of observation was scary. “Maybe I’m nervous. Giulia is probably pulling out her supposedly poisoned stick pin to stab me as we speak.”
He nodded, folding his hands on the table. “That rumor about the poison is false, I can personally assure you. She would not risk hurting herself with the pin, nor would she use it on another. The threat of it serves her quite well as ametaphor for her ambition. The pin is only a representation of the lengths she will go to in order to have what she wants. Which is why I declined to decorate her Lake Como house. But that is not the issue, I think.”
A surge of satisfaction raced through her before she realized he was waiting for her to respond. She felt the urge to tap her fingernails together. “You’re right. I’m always trying to improve myself, and one of the ways I do that is to complete the tasks I put in front of me. That makes me happy.”
“Happy or accomplished?” He leaned forward as he asked, his glacier blue eyes intent.
The urge to take another breath was strong. “Accomplished. I like feeling useful. To myself and the people around me.”
He opened his hand as he slid it across the table toward her. “How about we do a little experiment, seeing as we’re on an adventure?”
She gave a little jog of her chin, her heart in her throat.
“When I tell you that I don’t need you to be useful to me, you believe me. Then you take a breath and hold my hand, knowing I’m simply happy to be here with you.”
Hold his hand? A part of her jumped back from the very thought as she glanced around. “I know people here,” she answered in an undertone.
“So do I. Let us forget them together. Besides, I am so huge they probably cannot see around me to notice the terrified expression on your face.”
She raised a hand to her cheek. “Do I look like that? God, that will not do. I have a reputation to preserve.”
“Good. Then be brave and take my hand and forget them.” His palm slid another delicious few inches her way, his quiet strength calling to something inside her.
The urge to take it was tempting. Did she dare? Surely afew moments wouldn’t hurt. And he was right. His large frame was blocking her from view.
“Instead, I would like you to focus on me wanting to hear your stories,” he continued with a mesmerizing smile. “How your day was and where you bought that beautiful dress you’re wearing in a color I suggested you should wear more often. But also why you’ve decided you need to feel so useful when you’re already wonderful without doing anything.”
Her eyes burned. She wished she could blame it on smoke coming out of the kitchen. He had the power to bring out her vulnerabilities and throw her off her center. “You aren’t like any man I’ve ever gone out with,” she whispered, hearing the rough emotion in her voice.
“Isn’t thatexactlythe reason to be here? That is why I am here, after all. Take my hand, Brooke.”
Her collapsing diaphragm forced her to take another shaky breath. She looked at him, noting his warm gaze and the small twist of his mouth. In her whole vision, she could see no one but him. It comforted her. Here was another moment of personal courage, she realized. She pushed herself to take it and move past her fears, past all thoughts of Giulia and her stick pin and her watching eyes.
Extending her hand to him, she felt like an eternity passed before their palms finally connected. A part of her heart seemed to spring open and then fit back into a different yet perfectly happy place. Light filled her being. She realized she was smiling, and so was Axel, and there were no thoughts in her head now. Only a gentle peace and sense of awe, the kind she’d felt while hiking in the redwood forest in California years ago when she’d gone to visit Dean. God, this man also had the power to make her relax. What a roller coaster.
“There,” he only said in that deep, grounding voice of his.
A simple word for a powerful moment, she thought, as her fingers caressed the large bones in his hand. There wasstrength. And fire. Touching him was filled with wild, sizzling sensation.
“Shall we look at the menu?” he asked softly.
That gave her the reason she needed to withdraw her hand. Of course, his mouth tipped into an amused smile as she hurriedly reached for her menu. But she wanted to pat herself on the back. She’d take note of this monumental act of bravery in her journal time tonight.
She was reluctant to break his searching gaze as she opened her menu, but she did have a job to do. She read the menu through her new restaurant lens. She’d been to enough Michelin-starred restaurants to know when they were trying to show off. Because what in the world was a shrimp’s head made out of parsnip? Or bone marrow foam?
“You are thinking again,” he said, his voice pitched to the near tomb-like silence in the restaurant. “Perhaps I should hold your hand and caress the center of your palm when I notice you are elsewhere.”
She could practically feel the strong sweep of his thumb across her skin, a thought that made her shiver. God, it was tempting to take his hand again, but she feared it would be noticed. But honestly, just thinking about it was delicious, pleasurable even, and it created a heat in her belly that could have cooked those shrimp-looking parsnips on the menu.
“Guilty. But please do point it out when my mind starts going. Although you have to give me this. What in the world is bone marrow foam?”
