Chapter Two #2
Antonluca moved closer to her, and this was a different time.
A different country. This was his country and if he hadn’t been standing here in front of her, watching her react to the sight of him, he would have been certain that she’d set this up somehow.
That she’d gone to the trouble of anticipating Paloma’s whims—a risky proposition at best—and had then inserted herself into the project, hoping that it would one day throw her into his path.
He would have been certain of it because he already knew that people went to great lengths to insinuate themselves with him.
It was one of the major reasons that he had more or less cut himself off from anyone he hadn’t known for years upon years.
Because he could no longer trust the motivations of people who appeared out of nowhere.
He could never be certain if they wanted to know him or his empire.
But Hannah did not look triumphant. She looked shaken to her core.
And before he knew it, he was standing before her, close enough to touch.
She was wearing those heels again, the ones that he remembered vividly from New York. She had charged down the street in them as if they were flats. More importantly, they had made her tall enough so that all she had to do was tilt her head back, just a little, to look him in the face.
When he was not a small man.
Antonluca had worked hard for the whole of his life to strip himself of the recklessness and rashness that had plagued his family since before he was born, if what he recalled of his mother’s stories was true.
Cooking had saved him. Cooking was the art of marrying precision with process, and he’d been good at that.
He’d excelled at it. And running a kitchen involved intense focus and control not only of himself, but of others, and he’d excelled at that, too.
In these last years, he had decided that what he needed most of all was peace. No carrying on in kitchens. No drama, no concerns about the fakeness of the people around him, no need to worry about who wanted to cozy up to him or worse, one of his more vulnerable siblings.
If he retreated to Tuscany, which had always seemed to him—a street kid from the grand old mess of a city that was Rome—as a beacon of hope and tranquility, he was sure that he could find it.
But she had shattered any hope of finding peace three years ago.
So Antonluca shattered it further now by moving closer still, sliding his hand along her jaw as if he had the right, then drawing her closer so he could settle his mouth to hers.
It felt like burning himself alive, beautifully.
It felt like coming home.
But he pushed that concerning notion aside, because their mouths fit together perfectly. Still. And the heat between them was still there, instant and overwhelming and perfect.
Antonluca was a connoisseur of flavor and hers had no equal.
He licked his way into her mouth and then enjoyed that slick, hot, connection. The way she kissed him back immediately, as if she had hungered for him in precisely this way, the same way he had for her.
Across time. Across the sea.
The kiss deepened, got darker and richer.
He remembered this, too. The way this fire danced inside of him, lighting him up, making his cock hard at once, as if he’d never touched anyone but her. Nor ever would.
He remembered the way she had gifted him her innocence with that smile of hers, shy but bold at the same time, and how he had thought to himself then that he would do anything at all to make sure that every memory she had of that night was a good one.
Even though this was the woman who had betrayed him in the press.
Something that hadn’t changed in all these intervening years, now that he thought about it.
And maybe she was having second thoughts herself, because she pushed away then. She stepped back to put space between them, her fingers rising to press against her lips.
Once again, they stared at each other as the cold December morning beamed in from outside.
Hannah dropped her hand and he watched as she put her armor back in place. When he kissed her, she was supple and pliable in his arms, but as he stood there she…became someone else.
Cool. Remote. Formidable, even.
But she was still Hannah. He could see it in her eyes.
Those beautiful green eyes that reminded him of summer.
“I don’t even know your name,” she said.
This, Antonluca found difficult to comprehend. “Of course you must know my name. Or did you think you were meeting with a ghost?”
Her green eyes narrowed slightly. This, he discovered, made her no less beautiful. Not even when her lovely chin lifted in what could only be called a quiet act of aggression. “You are only known in these parts as il maestro, I fear.”
Antonluca would not have believed anyone else who said such a thing to him, but this was Hannah.
Because he knew that she had not recognized him that night in New York.
But surely she must have figured out who he was since. He thought it was unlikely that his business manager wouldn’t have mentioned that it had been Antonluca himself at the restaurant at night, though he might not have known what had happened afterward.
Now, as then, she looked at him so guilelessly that he simply couldn’t believe that she would lie. Or that she could.
When, truly, he should have known by now that everyone lied, and especially to him if they thought they might benefit from it in some way.
He almost wanted to remain a mystery to her forever, because he couldn’t remember the last time someone hadn’t known who he was on sight. He almost wanted to keep this revelation going for as long as it could.
But something in him wanted her to know him more.
So he told her, straight and almost harsh. “I am Antonluca Aniello, Hannah.”
And then he watched her turn so pale he thought for a moment that she might collapse.
He even moved slightly forward, prepared to catch her, but she didn’t swoon.
Or crumple at his feet. She stood very still for a very long time, swayed only slightly, and then turned away from him, moving back across the library floor.
He thought she might actually walk out—but it seemed she was pacing, because she turned around again, and marched back to him in the same agitated fashion.
“You,” she said as if she could not comprehend it. As if it didn’t make sense. “You are Antonluca. The Antonluca.”
He inclined his head. “I am.”
He said no more than that. And he watched, fascinated, as a deep, bright color shot back into her cheeks.
“That’s why you came to New York.” Her gaze was wider now, and slicked with something he couldn’t quite identify.
“You weren’t a random stranger at the bar, a beautiful escape from the worst weekend of my life.
You were there because of that article.” She swallowed as if it hurt.
“Was this your plan all along? To…to…punish me for what I said to my…”
She couldn’t say it, but she didn’t have to say it. He was appalled all the same.
He shook his head, emphatically. “I came to confront you and had no intention of doing anything more than that.”
“But you did.” Her green gaze never left his face. “You did far more than that.”
Once again, Antonluca felt the stirrings of his temper that, apparently, only she could produce in him.
“By all means,” he gritted out. “Let’s interrogate what happened between us that night, but we must not forget that the reason I was there in the first place was because you, the manager of my restaurant, disparaged my food.
If there is a more perfect example of biting the hand that feeds, I do not know what it is. ”
“I had a conversation with a friend,” Hannah said, as if she had wanted to say this for a long time.
As if the words were coming of their own accord.
“A friend I’d had many private conversations with before.
It never occurred to me in a million years that she would take that conversation and publish it.
” Her eyes were accusing again, but not, he thought, aimed at him this time.
“She betrayed me. And I expected to get fired, of course. I’m not justifying what I said, or pretending that you didn’t have every right to be furious. ”
“I thank you, cara, for your permission.”
She glared at him and that bone-dry tone of his, and all he could think about was that he had messed up her lip gloss. He wanted to mess it up even further.
Which did not exactly make it easy to access the fury he had felt when he’d flown across the planet to upbraid her three years ago.
“I take full responsibility for the indiscretion,” she said then, in a cool sort of way that managed to lodge itself directly under his skin. “That is what I told everyone involved back then. And would have told you, too, had you mustered up the courage to tell me who you were.”
“It was not a matter of courage,” he retorted. “It was self-preservation.”
“Yes, of course. Because a famous billionaire needs protection from a no-name restaurant worker. That’s how the world works.”
“Hannah.” And even from between his teeth, he liked her name in his mouth. “I did not take advantage of you. I expected to sit down at a table and have a discussion with you. Probably not a pleasant one. I did not anticipate what happened.”
And Antonluca knew that she remembered it. He could see it. He knew that she’d been as shocked as he was that a simple brush of hands could change everything so profoundly, but it had.
It had changed him, and he hated it.
“It seems as if you found an excellent way to take revenge on me,” she replied, her green eyes dark. “I suppose I should congratulate you.”
He moved in closer then, and ran his thumb over her lips. Those full, sensual lips that he craved another taste of, even now.
“Be honest,” he said in a low voice that he could hardly credit as his own. “Did anything that happened that night feel like revenge to you?”