People passed us on the sidewalk. I was aware of them in my periphery, but only vaguely. I was centered on him with searing focus. My entire body hummed with awareness. I leaned forward, angling toward him like he was a magnet I could not resist.
“Are you hungry?” he blurted, taking one step back from me, severing the invisible string that had been pulling us closer.
I released a shuddering breath. Okay. Not happening. I guess he didn’t want me that much.
I slipped my phone from my pocket and glanced at the time. “Goodness. It’s almost two.” I took stock of my stomach then. This whole day had been such a distraction. I’d forgotten all about food. I was having a good time. I was having a good time with him. “Yeah. I’m starving.”
He nodded slowly. “I know a place. Not far from here.”
“Great. Let’s go then.”
We walked the seven blocks to the restaurant. When I reached it, I stopped hard and stared up at the gold scrolling letters stretching above the door and mullioned windows. “Moretti’s?”
He pulled open the door for me. “Yeah. It’s my family’s restaurant.”
Delighted, I eagerly stepped inside. Luca followed behind me. It was mere seconds before the restaurant staff identified him. Happy exclamations filled the air amid the delicious smells of marinara, basil, and sizzling meats.
I stood to the side as the hostess and wait staff embraced him.
A tall, silver-haired man exited from the kitchen, crossing the restaurant to fold my big intimidating bodyguard into his arms. He was undoubtedly Luca’s father. The resemblance between them was uncanny. It was like glimpsing thirty years into Luca’s future. It would be a kind future for him indeed.
“Vee, this is my father, Lorenzo.” Luca gestured to his dad and then went on to introduce the lovely hostess. “My sister, Bianca.” His father and sister swept me into warm hugs that robbed me of breath.
He introduced the other members of the staff—all names I doubted I could remember.
My attention was trained on his father and sister. I was utterly fascinated . . . and enchanted. The Moretti family was remarkably good looking, and I felt a little gawky standing in the shadow of them. I wished I’d styled my hair instead of sweeping it up into a ponytail for the day.
Conversation whirled around us and I gathered it had been some weeks since Luca had visited the restaurant and they were all taking him to task for the neglect.
“I’ve been busy with work,” he defended, palms face out as Bianca reprimanded him.
“Not too busy, eh?” Lorenzo elbowed his son and sent me a wink.
“Mama is going to be so sad she missed you . . . that she missed you both.” Bianca looked me over meaningfully.
Heat scored my face. Oh dear. They had the wrong idea about us. I looked at Luca, ready for him to correct his father’s and sister’s misapprehension.
He did not.
With a hand at the small of my back, he guided me to a booth.
I was reeling. He’d brought me here. To his family’s restaurant. Warmth swelled in my chest.
“Have you had lunch?” Bianca asked us, her dark eyes flitting back and forth between us as we settled into the booth.
“No, we have not and we’re hungry,” Luca declared.
“Famished,” I seconded.
Lorenzo clapped his hands. “I will bring you our specials. Beef short rib Bolognese, artichoke ravioli—”
“And mussels in white wine?” Luca asked with a tinge of hope in his voice.
“Of course.” Bianca sent me a look. “It’s his favorite.”
“And garlic bread for the table? And some fresh burrata?”
I gawked. “That’s a lot of food.” I hoped I could still fit in my dress this evening.
Bianca smiled. “Welcome to Moretti’s.”
Lorenzo hurried back into the kitchen to start on our order. Bianca lingered and chatted with us, catching up Luca on the latest activities with her husband and kids. They sounded like a handful, but her face flushed pink with obvious love for them.
I listened, charmed at seeing Luca this way, as a real person—a son, a brother, an uncle . . . this glimpse into a real family. It was something I never had.
Lorenzo stuck his head out from the kitchen. “Luca! Come help me load this delivery into the freezer.”
Luca looked at me. “I’ll be right back.”
I watched him trot back into the kitchen, my stupid heart tripping as I tracked him.
“How long have you two been seeing each other?”
My gaze jerked back to Bianca. “I beg your pardon?”
“My brother? You?”
“Oh.” Heat swept up my neck to my face. “It’s not like that. I’m actually . . . a client.”
“A client?”
“Yes. I’m an author. My publisher hired Corps Security while I’m here in town.”
“Oh.” She frowned. “Well. So this is . . . work? Luca is on the job?”
“Yes,” I confessed, wondering why it felt so difficult to admit that.
“Well, I’m not getting that vibe at all.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My brother doesn’t bring clients here.” She nodded with conviction.
“Oh?”
“I’ve never met a client of his before. He only ever brings serious girlfriends around us . . . and it’s been two years since he had one of those.”
I opened and closed my mouth several times, unsure what to say to that. I shrugged awkwardly. “Maybe he just wanted a good meal—”
“No. He’s a very thoughtful and deliberate person. He’s all about caution.” She peered at me contemplatively. “Has he told you about Matti?”
“Matti?” I shook my head. “No.”
“Hm,” she murmured, her dark eyes probing on me. There was no doubt she was her brother’s sister.
“Who is Matti?”
The front door dinged with the arrival of more customers, and Bianca left me to attend to them just as Luca emerged from the kitchen toting plates.
He lowered a plate of steaming garlic bread and a plate of burrata drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar onto the table between us with great flourish.
“Beautiful,” I murmured in appreciation.
“You’ll love this. It’s so fresh.” He set small plates in front of each of us and then prepared my plate for me, giving me a hefty spoonful of burrata and several pieces of crusty golden bread.
I couldn’t recall any time my exes had ever served me or prepared food of any kind for me. My throat constricted a little as he took such care, making certain I received some of the basil sprig to go along with the burrata.
“Thank you,” I murmured, the words thick in my throat.
“Of course.” He watched my face carefully at my first bite of burrata-lathered bread. “Oh. My. God.” I pressed fingers to my lips in an attempt to stifle my artless moan. “That is amazing.”
His eyes fixed on my mouth, his expression losing its levity, becoming a stark and hungry thing. Suddenly I couldn’t even taste the food in my mouth. I could only feel his stare, palpable as a touch on my face.
“How is it?” Bianca asked abruptly, appearing beside our table.
I swallowed my bite and nodded doggedly. “It’s delicious.”
“Just wait until the rest of your food gets here.” She patted both our shoulders and then moved away.
We resumed eating, Luca regaling me with tales of growing up in this restaurant. “There’s no pot I can’t clean,” he bragged. “I can scrub and scour to glinting perfection.”
“Is that how you got those biceps?”
He looked down at an arm, flexing his impressive bicep. “What these?” He looked up and winked at me. “Flattered you noticed.”
I laughed nervously. “Your body is hard to ignore.”
Had I just said that? God. I was incorrigible. I didn’t know I still knew how to flirt.
He lifted his glass, drinking
slowly as he eyed me over the rim. He rubbed some bread in the cheese and oil on his plate and chewed, still looking at me. I felt naked under that stare. In this moment it was easy to remember how his mouth had felt on my sex, so hot and consuming. He ate me out with same intensity and hungry appreciation he gave to the food before him.
I cleared my throat. “Um. Who is Matti?”
He stilled and it occurred to me that in hoping to fill the uncomfortable tension, I’d just plunged us into a completely unknown topic.
His gaze skipped across the restaurant to Bianca. “Let me guess. My sister?”
I nodded.
His lips twisted. “That didn’t take long.”
“I’m sorry.” I shook my head. “I should not have—”
“Matti is Matteo. My younger brother. He died when I was twelve.”
“Oh.” My stomach sank. Way to go, Vee. Bring up his dead brother over dinner. “I’m so sorry.”
“We were swimming at the neighborhood pool. One moment he was next to me . . . ” His voice faded. He stabbed at the cheese fiercely on his plate. “I should have noticed. No one noticed until it was too late and he was at the bottom of the pool.”
“Oh. God.” I couldn’t imagine it. “That’s . . . horrible.”
It must have been so difficult for his family. I glanced to where his sister stood chatting with customers. I could hear Italian folk music wafting from the kitchen where his father cooked. They seemed like such happy people . . . and maybe that was because of what they’d lost. Because they understood the value of life better than most. They knew it was to be enjoyed, savored—and not wasted.
Luca shrugged again, except the gesture was anything but casual. I could read that in the tense lines of his face, in the rigid set of his broad shoulders. “I should have been aware. I should have . . . ” His voice faded and that’s when I understood.
I knew why Luca was a bodyguard. He lived to protect. To help others. To save lives. To make up for what he thought was a failing in his past. It was a compulsion etched deep in his soul, since the age of twelve.
He was staring down at his food, attacking it as though it were the unhappy memories of his past. There would be no telling him not to blame himself. These feelings were his, as real as the nose on my face. I would not insult him by telling him they weren’t valid.
I stretched my arm across the table, closing my hand around his.
He looked up sharply. Our eyes held. Understanding passed between us.
I didn’t say anything. There was no need. We were beyond words.
His hand turned over and he laced his fingers with mine. Our palms pressed flush together, pulses merging and fusing, and in that moment I felt more connected to this man than any other soul before. Not a single person back home. Not my family. Not my exes, even in our happiest of times.
I felt a communion with him—a man I’d known only for a few days. Was I delusional? Or was this truest thing I’d ever experienced?
Chapter Eleven
I should have worn proper shoes.
As in flats. Once the car stopped and we stepped out it didn’t take very many steps for me to realize my heels on hard ground = not smart.
To make matters worse, they were new. I thought the strappy gold heels gorgeous and would be very Bond girl—perfect for an autumn gala. Especially with my dress.
I’d taken the advice of the sales clerk and avoided my instinctive need to wear any one of the black dresses I already owned. The woman at the store called the color I had on “sangria” and the word danced through my head every time I caught a glimpse of the satin fabric swishing at my ankles. My dress was fitted through the hips and then slightly flared the rest of the way down to the floor. It felt like another step toward my personal growth. I was wearing a form fitting satin dress. A definite first. I would never have worn this while married to any of my exes. I was too self-conscious of what I believed were my physical shortcomings. Now I was happy with myself and would wear whatever dress I wanted to wear.
Luca guided me by the elbow but walked at a much slower pace than that of earlier today. Clearly he was sensitive to the fact that I wasn’t wearing tennis shoes anymore.
We’d done practically everything on my list. Except Buckingham. When I mentioned it following our lunch, he still insisted it was too crowded . . . and he still seemed to be laboring under the delusion that I was a person of importance who might be in peril. I didn’t dispute it. He’d been kind enough to play tour guide and I’d gotten to see Baker Street and the Sherlock Holmes Museum, after all. My inner book nerd was very happy.
And there had been the highlight of my day. Lunch at Moretti’s.
I snuck a glance at Luca’s handsome face and felt a painful clench in the center of my chest. I was besotted, and it was really too bad because he clearly had his boundaries. He would not cross the line with me again. As much as he had allowed me glimpses of himself today, as fun and intimate as our time together had been, our relationship was professional. Friendly . . . but professional. That was all I would ever have with him.
People streamed across the plaza. Luca had a word with someone even bigger than he was, if that was possible, and we were ushered past a rope barrier and onto a long red carpet leading up the steps to the museum.
It was like something out of a movie. Cameras clicked as I moved up the red carpet. Someone called my name and I looked in that general direction only to have my picture snapped.
I leaned into Luca. “How do they know who I am? Or that I would even be here?”
He gave me a slightly indulgent look. “The guest list is always released early for these sort of things.”
I nodded, but it still struck me as strange that anyone would consider me a celebrity.
Luca released a small huff of breath that was part laugh, part sigh. “You still don’t understand that you’re a celebrity, do you?”
“I don’t feel like I am,” I admitted. While my book had been a bestseller for a while now, I still shopped at the local Piggly Wiggly back home with no fanfare whatsoever. No one ever cared to get my picture as I was picking out a nectarine in Four Corners, Arkansas.
Luca shook his head as though I was somehow dense.
I bristled.
“Over here! V. M. Mathers!” I turned at the call, noticing a woman wildly waving my book and a pen. She hopped in place when she saw that she had my attention. “Please sign my book! Please!”
I hesitated and then started in her direction.
Luca tightened his grip on my arm. “It’s best to keep moving.”
“But she—”
“She could have attended your signing.” Fair point. But she was here and looked so very eager and full of longing and it really wouldn’t be any trouble.
“Vee,” he said in warning voice, clearing sensing my reluctance to comply with him. “We need to get inside.”
Still, I hesitated, glancing back at the woman shouting my name.
His voice hardened. “Vee, no.” I ignored him and inched toward her.
Something whizzed over my shoulder, narrowly missing my head.
Then there was a screech.
I followed the sound to a woman not two feet away from me on the red carpet. She wore a glittering gown of gold . . . that was presently covered with some sort of substance. The mess dripped down the front of her bodice.
“What the . . . ” I frowned, peering closer. Egg. She’d been struck with egg.
The stench of it hit my nose. I choked a little.
Rotten egg.
The poor woman held her arms wide at her sides, her face red and sputtering. I covered my nose with one hand and took a step in her direction. “Are you—”
Luca’s fingers circled my bicep and gave me a hard yank, pulling me from her—just as another object whipped past my head.
There was a sudden shift in the air as pandemonium broke out all around me.
“Down!” Luca shouted roughly beside me.
“Oof!” Suddenly I was pushed to the ground. His big body covered mine, smothering me, as a volley of eggs splattered the red carpet all around us.
I tried to lift my head. “What’s happening—”
“Stay down!”
The shower of eggs came to a stop. There was a slight easing of Luca’s weight off me as he lifted his head to inspect the area around us. I knew he wouldn’t approve, but I lifted my head and looked around too.
The woman who had been originally struck by egg was full on wailing now. She’d been caught in the crossfire. More slime and bits of shell trickled down her hair and onto her shoulders. Her beautiful gown was ruined.
There was shouting from the other side of the ropes, where the woman waving my book had stood.
A small man was on the ground, pinned beneath a very thick looking knee and thigh, presumably a member of museum security. It didn’t seem to discourage him though. He struggled and shouted obscenities as his stare locked dead on me. Me. I gulped a shaky breath. I had been his target? He’d been after me.
“Stay here,” Luca ground out near my ear and then he was gone, bounding toward the man security was lifting up from the ground.
I sat up, watching as Luca reached the man. He hauled back and struck my would-be attacker with startling ferocity. I heard the crack of his knuckles on the man’s face from where I crouched, trembling on the red carpet.
Security quickly stepped in, preventing Luca from another go at the man. Words were exchanged, but I couldn’t hear over the loud din and snap and pop of cameras.
Luca returned to me, a feral light in his eyes. I’d never seen him like this. He seemed like an animal just released from his cage.
Grabbing my hand, he hauled me to my feet. This time there was no consideration given to my shoes as he dragged me at a sprint up the steps and into the museum, leaving the melee behind.
We dove inside, dodging people who were flooding outside to see what all the commotion was about. He scarcely slowed his pace once we were in the building. I barely had a moment to process the great domed glass ceiling.
There were so many colors. A kaleidoscope of women in beautiful gowns. Servers weaving through people and high cocktails tables with trays of drink and food.
Naughty Brits: An Anthology Page 22