wish it didn’t hurt so much,” she added forlornly.

If she was expecting any other response from her cat other than his loud purr, which certainly wasn’t in tune with her feelings of melancholy, then she was out of luck.

How could she have fallen for Matteo so quickly and so deeply?

So much so that she had put the life she’d carved for herself in jeopardy just to see and be with him again.

It didn’t make sense to Grace. None of it did. This magnetic pull he seemed to hold for her. The way she melted the moment she was close enough to breathe in his unique scent of aftershave and musk. How, it seemed, he had only to touch her for parts of her body to either swell or grow wet in arousal.

As she had when they danced the tango together.

God.

She had never experienced anything like the physical oneness as the two of them danced together in such total accord. She could have come just from the heat blazing between them.

She sighed heavily as, bored by her distraction, Mr. Darcy stood up and jumped lightly to the floor before walking away, tail haughtily high in disgust at her lack of attention. She—

Grace tensed, every part of her on high alert, as the intercom bell rang in her apartment. Then rang again. And again. Before it rang continuously as someone obviously kept their finger on the button downstairs.

And Grace had a feeling she knew exactly who that someone was.

Who it had to be, because she didn’t tell people where she lived, let alone have a group of friends, or even a single friend who might call round to her apartment, invited or uninvited.

But she had allowed Matteo to drive her home from the store on Friday evening so she could feed Mr. Darcy before they went out to dinner.

Which meant it now had to be him standing downstairs with his finger on the intercom button to her apartment.

What should she do?

If she didn’t answer, would he, in time, just go away?

Did she want him to do that?

A sob caught in her throat as she hurried over to the intercom system in the kitchen to press the reply button. “Yes?”

“Open this fucking door, Grace, before I kick the damn thing— Good choice,” Matteo muttered when she pressed the button to unlock the door into the building. “I really hope you have a good excuse for—”

Grace cut him off by taking her finger off the receive button.

She stepped back, her heart pounding as she gripped her hands tightly together in an attempt to stop them from shaking. Matteo had sounded…furious. She remembered how her father, also Italian, usually vented such depth of anger in a physical way, usually against her mother. What if Matteo possessed that same need for violence? She was alone here, except for Mr. Darcy—and he had already shown how eager he was to comfort or protect her.

She shouldn’t have let Matteo in—

Grace had no doubt he would have kicked in the front door of the building if she’d continued to keep him locked out.

But what was he doing here? It was only nine o’clock in the evening, and if everyone was staying the night at the hotel, then surely his sister’s wedding reception was still going strong? As the bride’s brother, Matteo—

—was now loudly banging his fist on the door of her apartment!

Except, Grace now realized, she hadn’t ever told him the number of her apartment. Nor was her name listed beside the number on the apartments and tenants panel downstairs.

Which meant—

Grace grasped the door handle before throwing the door open. “You’ve had me investigated,” she accused, standing her ground in the doorway as she glared at him furiously, realizing by his formal attire that he must have come here straight from the wedding reception.

This wasn’t quite the greeting Matteo had been expecting, not when Grace must be fully aware by now of his own anger at her having left the hotel without telling him.

But perhaps it should have been?

After all, this was Grace, and she never did or said what he expected her to.

Her clothes, loose sweats hanging low on her hip bones and a fitted white vest top that revealed she wasn’t wearing a bra beneath, were also much less formal than anything he’d previously seen her in. She looked good. Too good for Matteo’s already shaky self-control.

“My security is such that everyone I come into contact with is investigated as a matter of course,” Matteo managed to answer her evenly.

“Really?” she challenged.

“Yes, really.”

“How did I do?” she sneered.

“It isn’t a pass or fail.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No.”

The information Matteo had read on Grace had been sparse, to say the least. There was just a single sheet of paper in her file, listing her movements from when she’d arrived in England five years ago. Nothing of where she was—or who she’d been—before that time.

A fact that had aroused Antonio’s and Luca’s suspicions

Matteo had been more pragmatic on the subject. That decision was based on the woman he knew rather than random facts printed—or not printed—on a sheet of paper. He could have had Grace’s past looked into more deeply. Bryce’s brother, Haydn, was one of the top hackers in the world. But Matteo hadn’t wanted to do that.

Perhaps, considering what he had suffered the past nine years, that wasn’t a sensible decision on his part, but he truly didn’t believe Grace represented any danger to him. Not physically, at least.

Antonio and Luca disagreed. Strongly. So much so that they had insisted on accompanying him here and even now were sitting outside the building in their black SUV.

“Invite me in, Grace,” Matteo prompted huskily.

“Are you a vampire? They’re supposed to need an invitation to enter a human’s home.” Her cheeks were red as she answered his puzzled frown.

“No, I’m not a vampire,” he drawled. “You still haven’t invited me in,” he prompted seconds later.

Her shoulders tensed. “I’m not sure I should.”

“If you don’t, I’m going to make love to you out here

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