“Right. And mood?”
“Mood is the easiest one to judge. It’s—”
Susannah clamped her mouth shut. How stupid not to have thought of revising the list once Romano had invited himself along.
“Mood,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant, “mood is, ah, whether a dinner here would put a couple in the mood for, ah, for… You know.”
Of course he knew. But he liked the fact that she was squirming under his gaze. Her cheeks were turning pink. Her throat, too. She was wearing a sweater with a vee neckline and he wondered, idly, just how far down her body that soft glow of color would stretch.
So he smiled pleasantly, linked his hands on the table and gave her a look that would have done a choirboy proud.
“No,” he said blithely, “I don’t. The mood for what?”
Was he dense? Or was he playing games at her expense? Either way, Susannah wasn’t going to prolong the agony.
“Sex,” she hissed, just as the waitress arrived to take their orders.
“I can come back later,” she said, and winked.
Susannah turned a shade of crimson Matthew had never believed possible.
“We’ll order now,” she said.
And they did.
* * *
They drove back to her apartment in silence
“A one for ambience,” Matthew said.
Susannah nodded. “And for decor.”
Matthew agreed. “The food was good, though,” he said.
He figured it was good, anyway, considering the platters that had kept coming from the busy kitchen. But he’d been busy, too, watching Susannah delicately lift a rib to her mouth, nibble at it with even white teeth, then run the tip of her soft pink tongue around her lips, so busy that he’d hardly managed to choke down a bite.
“Yes,” Susannah said, “it was.”
It must have been. The couple at the next table had devoured a stack of ribs and a platter of chicken. She’d forced herself to eat one rib, but it hadn’t been easy, watching Matthew lift a chicken leg to his mouth, watching his white teeth sink into the soft flesh.
“Five hearts for food,” she said briskly, and scribbled in her notebook. “And the list of wine and beer was pretty thorough.”
Matthew pulled his rented Porsche to the curb in front of her apartment building.
“That ale,” he said, “the one from that microbrewery? It was excellent.”
“Good.” She made another note. Then she undid her seatbelt, gave him a quick smile and reached for the door.
“I’ll see you up.”
“No! No, it isn’t nec—”
But Matthew was already out of the car, opening her door and waiting for her to step out.
“This really isn’t necessary,” she said politely, as she stepped onto the sidewalk. “I’m perfectly capable of finding my own way upstairs.”
“I’m sure you are.” Matthew took her arm. “I know it’s probably politically incorrect, but I don’t believe in letting a woman go upstairs alone at night.”
“Such an antiquated, machismo thing,” Susannah said, beaming at him as they quick-marched through the lobby. “I’m sure your dates must be terribly impressed.”
“My DBs,” he said, beaming right back at her as the elevator doors opened. “Isn’t that what you meant to say?”
She lifted her chin. “If the shoe fits,” she said, tossing her head.
They stood locked in silence until the doors opened. Then they walked to the door of her apartment.
“Key,” Matthew said, holding out his hand.
Arguing, she suspected, would be useless. She dug in her purse, took out her keys, slapped them into his palm with all the delicacy of an operating room nurse handing over a scalpel. He put the key in the lock, turned it, opened the door an inch and handed the key to her.
“Good night, Susannah.”
“Good night, Mr. Romano.”
His teeth glittered in an icy smile.
“Try calling me Matthew. It’s much more appropriate, considering the shock you gave our waitress tonight.”
“Matthew,” Susannah said, willing herself not to blush at the memory. “Thank you for a completely unnecessary evening.”
He couldn’t help it, that made him laugh. Even her lips twitched ever so slightly.
“You’re welcome.” He turned, took a couple of steps, then swung back and looked at her. “Your checklist,” he said.
Susannah arched a brow. “What about it?”
“We did numbers one through four. We never got to number five.”
She shrugged. “Mood? The answer’s obvious, I think.”
Matthew nodded. “It is,” he said, and walked slowly toward her.
Susannah saw the look on his face. Her heart began to gallop.
“There can’t be any debate about it,” she said, far more calmly than she felt. “Aunt Sally’s gets a broken heart for mood.”
His mouth tilted in a smile that made her take a step back.
“I agree. If a man and woman were hoping for a place to put them in the mood for sex, Aunt Sally’s would never score.”
“Matthew,” Susannah said uneasily.
“Susannah,” he said, and reached for her, and she went straight into his arms. They closed around her. She moaned, rose on her toes, linked her hands behind his head and sought his mouth. His teeth sank gently into her bottom lip. Her tongue caressed his. His hands swooped under her jacket, under her sweater, and cupped her breasts.
And, just when she thought her knees were going to buckle, he let her go.
“Tomorrow night,” he said calmly. “Same time.”
Susannah nodded. “Of course,” she said, just as calmly.
She went into her apartment, shut the door, leaned against it and told herself that only an idiot would slide to the floor.
In the elevator, heading to the lobby, Matthew had a very similar conversation with himself.
* * *
The Gilded Carousel was supposed to be elegant.
Posh, the recommendations had said.
Do I look posh? Susannah wondered the next evening as she looked in the mirror.
She’d borrowed a calf-length beaded dress from a photo shoot. It was midnight blue shot with silver sequins and had a scooped neckline and long sleeves. She’d borrowed a pair of high heels, too. There hadn’t been much choice, really. She had nothing even close to posh in her wardrobe, and she certainly wasn’t going to go out and spend a small fortune on a dress she’d never use again.
A smile touched her mouth.
She wasn’t sure about looking posh—whatever that meant—but she did look…
Pretty.
It wasn’t a word she used very much, especially about herself. Her looks were fine. She didn’t agonize over the fact that her hair curled too much on humid days, or that her mouth was just a bit too large, or that her skin tended to freckle if she spent too much time in the sun, and she was eternally grateful that she had thick, dark lashes, because that meant one less bit of makeup to have to bother using when she was in a rush.
Not that she’d dressed in a rush tonight. She’d taken a long bath instead of a shower, in a tub scented with lily of the valley bath oil. She’d brushed her hair dry so the curls were glossy. She’d splurged on lacy underwear because the dress called for it, certainly not for any other reason.
And the result was that she looked pretty.
Would Matthew notice?
Not that she wanted him to. It was only that a romantic evening—a real one, which this, surely, was not—would involve a man complimenting a woman on how she looked, wouldn’t it?
Susannah stared at her reflection. A romantic evening, she thought.
The doorbell rang.
She frowned, glanced at the clock. She’d made it a point to be ready early. But Matthew was earlier still.
“Good evening,” she said formally, when she opened the door—and tried not to let her mouth drop open, too.
He was wearing a tux. A tux! The last time she’d gone out with a guy in a tux had been in high school, the night of her senior prom, and dear, sweet Sam had certainly not looked like this in his rented-for-the-occasion evening wear. His pants had been too short, his jacket sleeves too long, and his collar had tilted to the west.
Matthew’s collar didn’t tilt at all.
The tux fit as if it had been made for him—which, she had no doubt, it had. He looked—there was no other word—gorgeous.
The sexiest man alive, she thought, and a dangerous little hum of excitement danced through her blood.
“Hi.” Matthew gave her a lazy smile. “I know I’m early,” he said, and wondered if his nose would start growing for the lie. “I didn’t mean to be, it just worked out that way.”
Of course, he’d meant to be. He’d hoped to catch her in her robe again, or maybe even as she was coming out of the shower, when she’d have looked soft and flushed and…
“Beautiful,” he said softly “Susie, you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Susannah pinkened. “It’s the dress.”
“Like hell it is ” He smiled. “Not that the dress isn’t spectacular. Turn around so I can admire the view from all angles.”
She laughed, blushed harder, but did as he asked.
“They said the restaurant was—”
“Posh.” Matthew grinned and swept a hand the length of his jacket. “I know. That’s the reason for the monkey suit.”
“Don’t apologize. You look…” Their eyes met “You look…very nice.”
“Thanks.” He reached past her, took the silk coat she’d borrowed from Claire from the chair where she’d left it and draped it around her shoulders. His hands drifted across the nape of her neck, lingering for no more than a second.
A tremor went through her.
“Cold?”
Susannah smiled brightly and picked up her small silver evening bag. “No, no, I’m fine. Just a—”
“A goose walking across your grave.” He grinned again. “My grandmother says stuff like that. Doesn’t yours?”
“My grandmother?” Susannah thought of her prim New England grandmother, a woman who’d refused to admit anyone existed unless they could trace their ancestry to the Mayflower, and never mind that the Madison family had been dead broke for years and years, and she laughed. “My grandmother—the only one I ever knew, anyway—would probably have fainted if anyone ever said anything so earthy around her.”
“Ah,” he said, “well, Nonna is Sicilian. She’s earthy, all right.”
“Sicilian?” Susannah asked, looking at him. “Really?”
“Oh, yeah. She came to this country when she was twelve, but you’d never know it.” The boyish grin spread over his face again. “She used to whack me across the backside whenever she figured I needed it, but I loved her anyway. And she made the most incredible lasagna. We had dinner at her house every Sunday when I was a kid. It was my father’s one day off, and we used to put on our good clothes, go to church, then go to Nonna’s for dinner. She lived right around the corner from us, in North Beach.”
“North Beach in San Francisco?” She couldn’t keep the surprise from her voice. “Isn’t that—”
“Little Italy. They still call it that, I guess.” Matthew opened the door and Susannah stepped past him into the hall. “All I know is, if the guys I grew up with saw me in this outfit, I’d end up having to defend my honor.”
She laughed, and he laughed, but her head was spinning. Matthew Romano, born in one of San Francisco’s old ethnic neighborhoods?
So, maybe he hadn’t spent his life just sitting around and counting his money, after all.
* * *
The Gilded Carousel looked as if it might be the real thing.
“Posh isn’t even the word,” Susannah whispered over a flute of Dom Pérignon.
“Uh-huh. I keep thinking they’re going to ask to see our pedigrees.”
“My grandmother—remember her?”
“Certainly. The old broad with the fancy ancestors.”
Susannah laughed. “That’s her. She’d be happy to oblige.”
“Well, hell, Susie, why not?” Matthew smiled. “I’m impressed. A gen-u-ine descendent of Mayflower stock is nothing to sneeze at.”
“Trust me, Matthew, it’s meaningless. I grew up in a big, run-down house on Beacon Hill.”
“Boston?”
“Uh-huh. And I grew up hearing all about the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers—and pretending that, when the lights suddenly went out, it was because of a power failure, not because the electric bill hadn’t been paid.”
Susannah straightened in the gilded, elegant chair. Why on earth had she said that? She never talked about her childhood. Never. What was the point? Life was what you made of it, and she’d been working like a demon to make the most of hers as long as she could remember.
“Sorry,” she said, forcing a smile to her lips. “There’s no reason to bore you with my family history.”
“I’m not bored at all. Actually, I’m amazed that the Mayflower crowd has the same problems as the bunch from Little Italy.”
“Not all of it.” Susannah waited while the waiter served her shrimp scampi and Matthew’s boeuf en croute. “Some of them have money. And some of the ones that don’t aren’t embarrassed to go out and earn it.”
“But not Grandma?”
Susannah pretended to be shocked. “Grandmother, if you please. No, not her. One didn’t discuss finances. It was…lower class.”
“In other words, it was better to pretend there’d been a power failure than to admit you couldn’t pay the electric bill,” Matthew said, and smiled.
“Exactly. My father agreed. Or didn’t want to quarrel with her. Whatever. He had no real skills, so he toyed with selling stocks and insurance to people he knew—people who, I suppose, felt sorry for him—but when he died, we were really broke. The house went for taxes. My mother went to work. She got a job as a saleswoman in—” she smiled “—in a posh little shop where she spent her time waiting on people who’d once pretended to be her friends.”
Matthew’s smile disappeared. “It sounds like a rough childhood,” he said, his eyes fixed on her face.
“No. Oh, no. I know that lots of people have it much worse. And, in a way, I suppose it was a good lesson.”
He reached across the table, his hand curling around hers.
“In making sure the electric bill gets paid?” he asked, smiling a little.
Susannah laughed. “Yes. And in the importance of being able to make my own way in this world.” His hand felt wonderful, holding hers. Hard. Warm. Protective. Carefully, she disengaged her fingers and sat back. “Don’t look at me that way, Matthew. Really, I know it’s silly to complain about having grown up pretending to be rich. I mean, we always had food on the table and a roof over our heads. Lots of people have less.” She picked up her fork and stabbed a shrimp. “Anyway, that’s all in the past. Grandmother died years ago, and my mother lives in an apartment. she’s got a job she likes, and friends…”
Suddenly, she seemed to hear the endless prattle of her own voice. The fork dropped from her hand to the table. She dipped her head, made more out of recovering it than it was worth. When she looked up, her expression was composed and serene.
“We might have to score the Gilded Carousel a broken heart for ambience,” she said lightly. “Any place that makes me cough up the family secrets couldn’t possibly have ambience. My grandmother would tell you that.”
Matthew nodded. She wanted to change the subject. Well, that was fine. This entire conversation was making him uneasy. Not the things Susannah had told him about herself. He wanted to know more about her, and he’d been completely caught up in listening to her and in watching the play of emotion on her lovely face.
Seconds ago, for no good reason, he’d suddenly found himself thinking how much his nonna and Susannah would like each other.
It was such a pointless thought that it had made everything around him blur.
Now he was thinking something even more pointless.
He’d sat opposite scores of beautiful women in his life, half listening as they babbled about everything from parties to politics. He knew how to look interested and how to say all the right things, but he couldn’t, for the life of him, recall ever wanting to take a woman into his arms and tell her—and tell her…
The hair rose on the back of his neck.
Carefully, very carefully, Matthew put down his fork and his knife.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said politely, “but I’m afraid we’re going to have to pass on coffee and dessert.”
Susannah looked up. Heat swept through her veins.
She had embarrassed him. Embarrassed herself. She could see it in his face. His smile was polite, his eyes cool, and she knew that he was counting the minutes until he could end the evening.
Whatever had possessed her to tell him the silly story of her life? Matthew Romano was her boss. He was a man who’d tried to seduce her. His interest in her began in the office and ended in bed, and since she’d made it clear she wouldn’t be making any stops there, that was the end of it.
Why had she bored him with all her very private baggage?
She knew better than to make things worse by apologizing. Instead, she pasted a bright smile to her lips, folded her napkin and dropped it beside her plate.
“Mind? Matthew, that’s perfect. I was going to suggest the same thing.” She tried not to think about how quickly he rose from his seat or how, when he helped her with her coat, there was no lingering brush of his hand against her neck. “I have an early meeting tomorrow. You know how it is.”
He didn’t. He didn’t know how anything was, not at this moment, but he wasn’t going to admit that to her or to himself.
“I do, indeed,” he said pleasantly. “In fact, I have a meeting, too. In Los Angeles.” He took her elbow as they left the restaurant and walked to his car. “I meant to mention it, Susannah. I might not be back for a while.”
The Sexiest Man Alive Page 11