Page 4 of Dating the Billionaire
Resisting the urge to wipe a hand across her face to check for makeup smudges, she asked instead, “What?”
“It’s a shame,” he murmured with a heavy sigh.
“What’s a...oh...” Her temper flared. “No, it’s not a shame that I’m not an escort.” But it was a shame that he was an asshole after all. She turned on the point of her stiletto heel to head back to the elevators.
A big hand wrapped around her bare arm, not so tightly that she couldn’t have shrugged it off and kept on going. But, her skin tingling from the contact with his, she stopped. She didn’t turn toward him, though; she just waited, breath held in anticipation of what he would say.
“I’m sorry,” a deep voice murmured. “I couldn’t resist.” He sighed. “But it is inappropriate to tease you when you are clearly concerned about this.”
“It’s as inappropriate as asking me to meet you in a hotel room,” she said as she turned back toward him.
He nodded in agreement. “I am sorry about that, too. I didn’t think of how it might seem...”
She narrowed her eyes with suspicion.
“I don’t have a place in Milan,” he said, “so I checked into the hotel.”
“You could have asked me to meet you somewhere else,” she pointed out. “The lobby, a restaurant...”
“I have plans—”
“That’s what worries me,” she interjected. What were his plans, though? And why did her pulse quicken at the thought that they might have been sexual?
She must had gone too damn long without enjoying a man. Mechanical toys were just not the same.
He chuckled. “My plans are not nefarious. I have to go to a gallery opening—” he glanced at his watch “—and I was worried about being late, which I will probably be now.”
“Then don’t let me keep you,” she said.
“I would like for you to join me,” he said. “And I promise that I have no ulterior motives beyond enjoying an evening with you.”
She wrinkled her nose. “At a gallery?”
“Not an art fan?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know much about it.” She’d been too busy learning other things, like how to stay alive during a firefight.
But if she told him...
And if he was as chauvinistic as most of her other dates had been, the night would probably already be over, and she didn’t want it to end yet. Matteo Rinaldi was too handsome and too intriguing for her to cut the date short.
“We won’t stay long,” he said, sliding his hand down her arm to her elbow—leaving a trail of tingling skin in the wake of his touch.
“I’m not coming back here,” she warned him.
Unless...
Unless Miranda had been telling the truth, and he wasn’t the asshole she was worried he was.
“I didn’t invite you back,” he pointed out. “My only expectation of this date was for someone to accompany me to the gallery opening.”
She narrowed her eyes and studied his face. “And you couldn’t find someone else to bring?”
He narrowed his eyes back at her, but amusement glinted in the warm chocolate. “And you couldn’t find someone else to spend the evening with not admiring art?”
A smile tugged at her lips. “Touché, or so you would understand, toccato.”
“Oh, maybe you do speak my language after all,” he murmured appreciatively.
