Page 20 of One Naughty Night (Single in South Beach)

“My questions aren’t about furniture. They’re about you.” She planned to be direct, honest and upfront with him.

“Me?” He stalled in the middle of pouring his glass of white wine. “I don’t know that I’ll make for fascinating dinner conversation, but I’m game.”

“You lure me into staying for dinner with a bottle of wine in one hand and a basket of grapes in the other.” She plucked another piece of green fruit from the bowl. “You’re like Bacchus reincarnated and tempting me to indulge in a way I never usually do, yet here I am, letting you make me dinner. I’d say you’re a very interesting topic of conversation.”

“Bacchus, huh?” He moved around the stovetop like a pro, looking infinitely more adept in the kitchen than she’d ever been. “The Roman god of wine and intoxication, right? If I’m remembering correctly he was also the god of orgies and wantonness.”

She couldn’t see his face as he filled a pot with water at the sink, but she detected the smile in his voice.

“The Romans didn’t have an orgy god. I definitely would have remembered if they did.” It would have livened up her western civilization classes in grad school, that’s for sure. “You might be confusing drunken reveling with orgies.”

Turning, he lifted his glass as if to toast her from across the room. “Then let’s cross our fingers one thing leads to another.”

“You’re already giving me trouble and I haven’t even asked my first question yet.” She wondered why it seemed too easy to talk to Renzo, and how her comfort with him had happened so fast. She’d worked with Miles Crandall for five years and she hadn’t been at ease around him in all that time.

Renzo had blustered his way into her life with a lie and proceeded to turn her life on its ear in the course of twenty-four hours, yet she never once felt nervous around him.

Maybe her instincts about men weren’t as bad as she’d thought.

“Sorry. I’ll keep all my hopes for a drunken revel to myself. What did you want to ask me?”

“How could you have made so much furniture at such a young age and still work at another full-time job?” She’d start with an easy question, something practical.

“I’m a classic over-achiever and I don’t need much sleep. Next?”

She sensed more to that story, but she didn’t press. Yet.

“I lost track of the siblings you mentioned. Can you go over the list again?” As an only child, Esme had always been fascinated by big families.

“There are five of us. Vito’s the racecar driver in Europe. My brother Nico used to play pro hockey, but he got hurt and now he’s coaching a team. I’m next in the line-up, then Giselle, who is the executive chef for Club Paradise and made us the drinks last night. Last is my younger brother Marco— the surviving twin-- who just started at Harvard Law this fall.” He dumped a box of pasta into a boiling pot as the kitchen filled with the scent of seafood and garlic. “There will be a quiz on this later.”

“You’re lucky to have such a big family. Although I can’t imagine how your sister navigated coming of age if your brothers are anything like you.”

“Actually, I think having to contend with us has just made her more determined and stubborn than the rest of us put together.” He set the timer on the stove and then moved to a seat across from her at the table. He topped off both their glasses and stared at her, patient and unblinking.

Perhaps it was the wine that made her stare back a little too long. Or maybe she was just incredibly attracted to Renzo Cesare and there were no two ways around it. Her senses swam, overloaded with the scents of melted butter and broiled shrimp, the taste of fresh grapes and mellow wine, the memory of Renzo’s hands on her body and the feel of his eyes probing hers.

“Is it my turn to ask you anything yet?” His voice slid over her with the low confidentiality of pillow talk.

“I guess that would be okay.” She couldn’t keep him in the hot seat forever. Still, she stole a sip from her glass to steel herself.

“I know I said I wouldn’t touch you unless you asked me to, and I’ll live up to that promise if it kills me. But can you at least tell me if you’ve even thought about touchingmeat all today?”

The wine seemed to suck all the fluid from her mouth, leaving her throat too dry to respond. Had she agreed to be honest with her answers, or was it only Renzo who had to comply with that rule?

His dark eyes observed her with clear interest, not missing a second of her hesitation. Indecision.

“I’ll admit I might have thought about it a time or two.” There. Honest, but light. Simple. She didn’t want to dwell on the fact that she’d thought about him that way today at all, but there was no denying the draw she still felt toward him. “But I think that’s normal after what happened last night. I’m sure once we’ve been working together for a few days we’ll forget all about that.”

“What if we can’t forget it?” He leaned across the table as if to confide a secret. “What if days go by and we think about it more instead of less?”

Gulp.

“That would make things difficult.” She’d gotten worked up enough examining table legs with Renzo. What made her think she could somehow excise steamy thoughts of him if she engaged in private dinners with the man? “Why don’t we wait and cross that bridge when we come to it?”

“We could do that.” He plucked a grape from the bunch draped over the top of the fruit bowl between them and popped it in his mouth. “Or we could come up with a Plan B, just in case that doesn’t work.”

“Plan B?” She watched him eat another grape, her gaze drawn to his mouth.

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