Page 31 of Innocent's Wedding Day with the Italian

‘Cappuccino moustache,’ he explained with a grin, then popped the finger used to wipe the froth away into his mouth.

Rebecca couldn’t begin to explain why this one little gesture felt more intimate than all the things they’d done in bed together or why it made her chest ache so badly.

‘Always the gentleman,’ she said lightly.

‘Always.’ He held his hand out to her. ‘Come, Miss Foley, I have one more place to show you.’

‘Your mother’s apartment when she first took you in?’ she guessed.

He leaned across the table and kissed her. ‘Didn’t I say how smart you were?’

CHAPTER TEN

TRAFFICWASDECIDEDLYheavier on the second leg of what had become a tour of Enzo’s childhood, but still much lighter than during the working week and on Shopping Saturday. Although keeping to the safe speed he’d adopted on the first leg, Enzo nipped in and out of the traffic like a pro, and when he came to a stop outside an apartment building in a decidedly swankier district than the one he’d lived in until his father’s death, this one screaming wealth in the same way his father’s district had screamed family, the first thing Rebecca asked when he’d removed her helmet was, ‘Have you had a Vespa before?’

His dimples popped and his teeth flashed. ‘A Vespa was the first thing I bought when I turned eighteen.’

‘You were a Vespa boy?’

‘Much to my mother’s disapproval.’

‘Is that why you bought it?’

‘Her disapproval was a plus but not the reason.’

‘Girls?’

He tapped her nose and laughed. ‘You really areincrediblysmart, Miss Foley.’ Then, taking her hand, he led her to the oak front door, which opened as if by magic without even being touched.

The interior was even swankier than the exterior, a pristine white and gold reception with a distinct trace of chlorine in the air, staffed by a severe-looking raven-haired woman who must have magicked the door open. She gave a familiar smile of greeting to Enzo before launching into a spiel of Italian that was delivered too fast for Rebecca to even attempt making sense of. Enzo conversed back at equal speed and then the next thing she knew, he was guiding her to an elevator.

‘We’re going to the apartment?’ she asked, stepping inside it.

He pushed the button. ‘My mother still owns it. I would have shown you inside my father’s but he rented it and I didn’t think the current tenants would be happy being woken on a Sunday morning by a stranger asking to show his...’ He cut himself off mid-sentence as the doors closed, his features morphing into something she couldn’t decipher before he shook his head and laughed harshly. ‘Do you know, I don’t have any idea how I am supposed to refer to you now.’

Rebecca’s gaze fell to her bare wedding ring finger and, suddenly frightened at how much she missed the weight of her engagement ring on it and alarmed that she was letting Enzo hold her hand, unthreaded her fingers from his and hugged her arms around herself.

‘It doesn’t matter how you refer to me,’ she said in a lighter tone than she could have hoped to manage. ‘I’ll be gone in four hours. I won’t know.’ Mercifully, she didn’t have to see his expression at this statement for the elevator doors slid back open and she stepped into a small room that contained two doors.

Enzo pressed his thumb to the box beside the door on the left. The light on the box turned green and he opened the door.

Suddenly nervous, her feet refused to move across the threshold. ‘She’s not in, is she?’

‘We wouldn’t be here if she was,’ he answered shortly.

‘You’ve been in contact with her?’ He must have been if he knew his mother’s current whereabouts.

‘Only to tell her to stay the hell out of my life.’

‘Not planning to forgive her anytime soon?’

‘I will never forgive her.’

‘Never is a long time.’

His clear brown eyes suddenly swooped on hers. ‘Can you ever forgiveme?’

Her heart burst into a frantic canter. ‘That’s different.’

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