Matteo raised dark brows. “Finished?”
“I… Yes.” She glared at him.
“One.” He raised one finger. “You aren’t thin, you’re willowy and fine-boned, like a ballet dancer. Two.” He held up two fingers. “You are stunningly beautiful. Three—” He paused as Grace attempted to speak, a single glare from him silencing her before she began. “Three,” he held up that third finger. “I’m almost ten years older than when most of those photographs you’re talking about were taken, and my taste is now far more discerning.”
She eyed him curiously. “You’re expecting me to believe you didn’t date for almost ten years?”
Matteo drew in a harsh breath. They had inadvertently stumbled into territory he would rather not talk about. Not at this stage of getting to know Grace, at least. “I never dated any of those women either,” he rasped. “We fucked, but that’s all we did.”
Grace winced. “Nice.”
He breathed out his frustration. “I’m trying to be honest.”
“Maybe try being less so,” she advised.
“Grace, most of those photographs you saw would have been taken during my early to mid-twenties.”
“So you’re thirty-five.”
“Thirty-six. You?”
“Twenty-six. And I doubt I’ve read as many books as you seem to have had women—and I’ve read a lot of books!”
Matteo smiled without humor. “What can I say, I was young and foolish.” Those were the exact same, indulgent words his father had used to describe Matteo’s behavior shortly before he died.
“And now you’re older and…more discerning?” she derided.
“Yes.” He sobered. “Grace, I want to take you out dinner this evening.”
“On a date?” she mocked.
His mouth thinned. “Yes. Please,” he added when she made no reply.
Grace grimaced. “I’m sure that pleading and innocent look might have worked when you were a little boy, but you’re now thirty years too old to be considered cute.”
“You don’t think I’m cute?” he teased.
She eyed him exasperatedly. “I think you’re many, many things, but cute certainly isn’t one of them.”
Matteo was sure he didn’t want to hear some of the things Grace thought he was after reading his online profile. Once a player and now head of the Zalotti organization, both those things made him dangerous and powerful.
But he also knew from the way her cheeks were flushed and her pupils blown that Grace was still aware of that same strong attraction that had been so intense between them earlier today.
He stepped forward in the darkness to take a firm grasp of her elbow. “We’re going to get in my car, I’m driving us to the restaurant, and we are going to have dinner together.”
“Because you say so?” she challenged.
“Because that was the invitation you accepted earlier.”
“Before I knew who and what you are.”
“Who and what I am has absolutely nothing to do with the two of us.”
“Of course it—”
Matteo halted her protest by stepping closer and taking her lips with his own.
She tasted of sweetness and innocence, of fidelity and forever.
Everything Matteo had once run away from and all that he now ached to have in his life. A woman of his own. A love of his own. A woman and love he chose for himself and not something that was nothing more than an agreed-upon business deal between two powerful men. As his marriage to Natalia Brunelli would be.
Matteo wanted Grace!
He’d met her only hours ago and yet he knew he wanted to make love to her until neither of them knew where one of them ended and the other began.
Grace dropped her bag at their feet so that she could stand on tiptoe and lift her arms up and entangle her fingers in the thickness of hair at Matteo’s nape. Her lips parted to the moist sweep of Matteo’s tongue, her heart leaping as that tongue explored the heat of her mouth, seeking out each curve and hollow, and igniting nerve endings of awareness wherever it roamed.
She gave a noise of protest when Matteo broke the kiss, but groaned her arousal when his teeth gave a playful nip at her earlobe before his lips traveled the length of her throat, his tongue licking and tasting her.
“This is what’s important, Grace.” His breath was hot against the dampness of her flesh. “Holding you, kissing you. For now, it’s all that matters.”
Was it?
Could she do this?
Could she forget, just for one evening, who and what Matteo was? Who she was?
When he was holding her and kissing her like this, Grace knew she couldn’t say no to him.
Chapter Five
Which was how, a short time later, Grace found herself seated in a booth beside Matteo in the small and very busy Italian restaurant where he had apparently booked a table. A booth that was pretty much secluded, no doubt deliberately so on Matteo’s part, from the other diners. Within minutes of their arrival, the two of them had been provided with drinks, water for Grace and red wine for Matteo, and they were waiting for their food to arrive.
Matteo had driven her home so she could see to Mr. Darcy’s needs, but she had decided against changing her clothes after all, not willing for Matteo to grow tired of sitting in his car waiting for her and decide to come up to her apartment instead.
It was only a short drive to the Italian restaurant called Mama and Papa Benito’s, and despite the room being crowded, Mama had taken the time to greet Matteo like a long-lost and much-loved nephew the moment they walked in the door of the warm and deliciously garlic-smelling restaurant. Her husband had emerged from the kitchen to greet them too, seconds later.
Listening to their excited conversation, Grace realized that it had been some years since Matteo had been to the restaurant.
The same “almost ten years” during which
