“I noticed.” Grace felt the sting of humiliated tears in her eyes. “Please leave, Matteo, and don’t attempt to see me again.”
He winced. “What if I can’t do that?”
“Try!”
He took his wallet out of his jacket pocket and removed a business card. “I… If you need me for anything, day or night, my telephone numbers, landline and cell phone, are on here.” He placed the card on the desk when she made no move to take it. “I don’t… Fuck it,” he rasped fiercely. “Come to my sister’s wedding with me tomorrow.”
“What?” Grace stared at him incredulously.
“Come with me to Bella’s wedding as my plus one,” he urged. “The notice on the door says the store is closed on Wednesday afternoons anyway.”
“It might be,” she conceded. “But I’m pretty sure that the brother of the bride, who also happens to be giving her away, can’t turn up to the wedding with a random woman he met only a few days ago.”
“I can do whatever the hell I please.”
He probably could, Grace accepted. Not just because he was arrogance personified, but because he was also Matteo Zalotti, head of the Zalotti Mafia family.
“No,” she answered him heavily.
He glared his frustration. “I’m going to write the details of the wedding on the back of this card, in case you change your mind.” He took a white-topped black pen from the pocket of his jacket before picking up his business card and writing on the back of it. “The wedding is at three o’clock. The reception starts at five. I’ve written the where on the card.”
“I won’t change my mind.”
Matteo looked as if he was going to argue but then thought better of it. Instead, he placed the card carefully down on the desk in front of her. “Day or night, Grace,” he repeated, giving her one last smoldering look before turning on his heel, unlocking the door, and striding out into the hallway.
Grace sat abruptly in the chair behind the desk, staring at that business card as if it were a viper.
No, not a viper.
A temptation.
One Grace wasn’t sure she had the willpower to resist.
Chapter Eight
“Guess the apology didn’t work, huh?” Bryce drawled, dropping onto the bar stool next to Matteo as he stared down into his whisky glass. Both men were still in the formal morning suits they’d worn to the wedding four hours earlier.
Matteo glanced about the room, relaxing slightly when he saw his sister, Bella, stunningly beautiful in her frothy white wedding gown, was happily chatting and laughing with Bryce’s parents. The last thing Matteo wanted to do was put any sort of dampener on Bella’s wedding by taking Bryce’s company from her. For some reason, his sister loved the mocking bastard, and Bryce loved her as deeply.
“It might have done if I hadn’t immediately compounded the first reason I needed to apologize with another, even worse, one,” he answered the other man heavily.
Bryce’s eyes widened. “Worse than behaving inappropriately in a restaurant?”
“Much worse,” Matteo acknowledged. “But at least it wasn’t in public this time.” Which wasn’t in the least reassuring when he’d tongue-fucked Grace over the top of her desk.
“What the hell did you do, Matteo?” his brother-in-law mused.
Matteo didn’t answer. Instead, he threw the contents of his glass to the back of his throat before placing the glass back on the bar and nodding for the barman to go ahead and refill it when he held the half-full bottle of the amber liquid up questioningly.
Bryce placed his hand over the top of the glass. “He’s had enough,” he dismissed the barman.
“I’ll decide when I’ve had enough,” Matteo snapped.
“Bella is worried about you,” Bryce warned.
A statement that was guaranteed to deflate Matteo’s belligerence over having his whisky supply cut off. It was misplaced anger anyway, because it was himself Matteo was angry with.
He hadn’t heard from Grace since he left the bookstore yesterday, but the wary look her assistant—Carla?—had given him was enough to tell him that she knew exactly who he was: Matteo Giorgio Marco Zalotti, the feared head of the Zalotti family. No doubt that was because her dark hair and eyes, along with her name, indicated Carla was probably of Italian descent.
As soon as he was out of the building, the other woman had probably hurried to Grace’s office to tell her all the reasons why she shouldn’t become involved with him.
He had every reason to believe his business card, with his telephone numbers and the details of the wedding today, would have been consigned to the bin beside Grace’s desk once Carla had told her all his sins. If not before. Because Grace had made it perfectly clear before he left her office that she wouldn’t be making any effort to see him again.
It was ridiculous of Matteo to have held out even the glimmer of a hope Grace might, just might, change her mind and come to the wedding today.
He released a heavy sigh. “Tell Bella I’m fine,” he reassured Bryce. “I’m drinking because I just gave away my one and only baby sister to another man,” he defended, and then felt guilty for using that as an excuse for the darkness of his mood. He had absolutely no doubt that Bella’s heart was safe in Bryce’s hands.
“And I can tell her you’re fine till I’m blue in the face, but she isn’t going to believe me if you don’t look fine.” Bryce shook his head. “What was so special about Grace?” he prompted curiously. “Tell me about her,” he encouraged huskily.
He released a shuddering breath he hadn’t even known he’d been holding, as if just being able to talk about Grace had eased the tight vise about his chest. “She’s gorgeous, but in an understated way. She’s about five foot six inches tall. Her figure is willowy, but gracefully so, like a ballet dancer rather than
