Page 55 of My Fake Italian Marriage

That did not sound like Moira at all. She wasn’t a sex-on-a-first-date kind of woman. And this had to be a first date, since she hadn’t told Cleo about any other dates in the past few weeks, and Moira always told her everything. Cleo released her anxiety on a long sigh. She needed to stop being a mother hen; Moira was a grown woman and perfectly capable of looking out for herself.

“Maybe this will ease your worries.” Luca poured a glass of wine for her from the bottle he’d left open to breathe on the dining table. “It’s a Super Tuscan, a blend of our local Sangiovese with imported Bordeaux-style grapes.” He handed her a glass then poured one for himself, breathing in the bouquet before taking a sip. He closed his eyes, and she took advantage of his moment of distraction to let her gaze roam again over that defined torso, the planes of his muscles, that V-shape arrowing down…

“Blended with Cabernet Franc grapes, by the taste.” He cleared his throat, and with a start she realised he’d caught her staring. She was pretty sure the heat in his eyes mirrored her own.

Don’t blush. Don’t blush. You’re a grown woman, too, so behave like one.

He turned away, heading to the kitchen, powering up his MP3 player on the way, and for a moment she leaned against the dining table to recover herself. She’d thought she was perfectly capable of resisting this sexual tension constantly simmering between them, but it had been months since she’d last had sex, and clearly her defences were low.

Maybe, after she got back from visiting her family in Dorset, she should begin dating again and get all this want and need out of her system.

You could do that with Luca, a voice in her head whispered. “Shut up!”

“Did you say something?” Luca called from the kitchen.

She put on her perkiest smile and moved to sit on one of the high stools on the opposite side of the counter from where he worked. “Just talking to myself.” It was becoming a dangerous habit.

He set about making gnocchi, with a sauce of butter, fresh sage leaves and shavings of parmesan, and Cleo watched with a new appreciation for the effort required to make even the simplest of dishes, and a touch of envy. He didn’t just make cooking look easy; he made it lookfun. As he moved around the kitchen, humming tunelessly, he seemed to be enjoying himself.

He glanced her way and caught her look. “What are you thinking about? You look sad.”

She cupped her chin in her hand. “Not sad, but wistful… Everyone I know has some skill they’re passionate about. Moira has her painting, Sarah has her baking, and you… well, you’re good at everything: wine, football, cooking… The only thing I’m good at is numbers, which really isn’t the same thing.”

Like Luca’s legal practice, her career was a job, not a passion. A job she was great at, sure, but she couldn’t remember when last she’d been tempted to hum while working.

They carried their plates out to the darkening terrace. Music and voices floated over from the outdoor restaurant in the street above theirs, and across the wide, moonlit valley, pinpricks of light marked the distant farmhouses and wineries.

“Emanuela’s throwing a party for the team at the guest house tomorrow night, after the game,” Luca said. “Would you like to go?”

“I’d love to!” Anything not to spend another evening like this alone with him, trying desperately to resist the urge to forget that they were working together, that he was a client, that he was completely the wrong man for her, and that she shouldn’t cross that line, no matter how much either of them might want to cross it. Well, she couldn’t speak for Luca, but she really, really wanted to cross that line.

She cleared her throat. “We should talk about who we’re going to hire to run the vineyard.” There. Business was a safe topic. If she was thinking about work, she wouldn’t keep forgetting why she was here.

Luca shrugged, swirling the wine in his glass. “What’s the hurry? We have weeks left before you leave.”

Only two weeks. That same length of time had felt like an eternity when she first arrived. Now, the days were rushing by far too fast. She managed an airy smile. “I thought you’d want to be rid of me. It must be cramping your style to have me living here with you.”

And there it was again, the image she’d been struggling to ignore all day, but which kept re-appearing in her brain at inconvenient moments: Luca and Sofia together.

He shrugged. “I like having you here. It’s nice to have someone to cook for.” Which sounded like a compliment, but was off-hand enough that she wasn’t entirely sure.

“But you’re a bachelor, and with me here you aren’t able to…” Oh lordy, there was no way she could finish that sentence without sounding either prudish or jealous. But she simply couldn’t get past that image.

He smirked at her blush. “You think I mind that I cannot bring other women home while you are here?” He shook his head. “There is no other woman I would want to bring home.”

The breeze blew one of her curls into her face and she brushed it aside. Being brutally honest didn’t usually feel this difficult. “How does Sofia feel about that?”

Her question didn’t seem to surprise him. “She and I are friends. Sometimes, if neither of us is seeing anyone, we get together.” His keen, dark gaze turned to a look of amusement. “Despite what everyone thinks of me, I am not a man who is always after sex. I like to date, yes, but I am also happy on my own. And when I’m with a woman, I want to make love to her, not just have sex. To make love to a woman properly, I need to know her, to understand what she wants and needs. This is not something that should be hurried. It is always worth waiting for.”

She couldn’t breathe. Because his soft voice, with its intoxicating accent, had turned the constant slow burn she felt in his presence to molten lava. This was so not where she’d intended this conversation to stray.

She closed her eyes to break the connection between them. On the plus side, she was no longer imagining Luca and Sofia together. Oh no, nowshewas the one in that picture.

If he so much as reached out to touch her hand now, her resistance would crumble like a sandcastle on a windy day.

But he didn’t touch her. And when she cautiously re-opened her eyes, he was stretching and yawning. He rose and looked down at her. “Good night,cara.Sogni d’oro.” Sweet dreams.

ChapterTwenty-Three

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