Chapter Three #2
Which was, she thought, a very diplomatic way of saying that being at home in the little town where she’d grown up, surrounded by her prickly family members, was an excellent way to force a person into making absolutely sure that she could get out again.
Because Hannah had decided long ago, when she was all of ten and obsessed with Amelia Earhart, that she had no intention of staying there.
And even if she’d had the intention of staying there, it wasn’t as if anyone in the house she’d grown up in was at all welcoming. So. It had all worked itself out, in the end.
But she didn’t tell him that. Just like she didn’t tell him about Dominic—again.
She focused on the data and told herself she would do the right thing eventually. When the time was right.
Hannah was sure she would know when that was.
Another week passed, and the Tuscan hills got even colder. Hannah moved on from sitting in too-close rooms talking about data and the hotel to having Antonluca shadow her as she moved through her day, the better to get a more dynamic sense of what happened at the hotel at any given moment.
He had requested immersion, apparently, and that was what he was getting.
And while Hannah was initially delighted not to be in such close quarters with him for hours each day, she quickly realized that this part of his long introduction to La Paloma was almost more of a challenge. Seeing the man in motion made her…too aware of him.
Much too aware of him.
“I’m surprised you don’t already have a hotel,” she said one day. “Or a whole host of them.”
“I like food.” His dark gaze moved over her face in that way he had, that made her want to make wishes for things she knew better than to want. “I’ve always preferred restaurants over hotels.”
But he was saying this while they were finishing a sweep of the hotel’s restaurants, the three of them ranging from casually elegant to downright lavish.
Hannah found herself studying his face, trying to read his expressions, doing her best to figure out what he thought about the various offerings.
About the decor. About the entrées he could see served before him. About the service itself.
About…everything.
She was also aware that it didn’t really help that all the servers knew precisely who he was and were acting—by which she meant overacting—accordingly.
“You will be able to make all the hotel’s restaurants in your image as well,” she said, cheerfully, because it felt like the worst kind of surrender to show how nervous she was around him.
Because that was what it was, she was certain.
Simple nerves. Not fluttering, just nerves being nervy, or whatever it was nerves did.
“They have always been rated consistently high across the board, but that is not in the same stratosphere as an Antonluca property, of course.”
It seemed to her that it took him a forebodingly long time to turn and look down at her, his expression finally readable.
And it was sheer arrogance.
“Yet my understanding is that they eat meals here, rather than have circus-like experiences.”
Hannah felt herself flush. She smiled at the ma?tre d’ as they passed, then marched her way out, wishing fervently that she was not so keenly aware of how closely Antonluca followed behind her.
Once they were outside, she fought her own body not to indicate that she was cold.
Because this particular restaurant, the fanciest of their three offerings, stood in its own building on the hilltop and the wind this evening felt like knives.
But she faced him anyway and pretended she was warm.
“You are still holding on to that,” she observed, trying her best to sound…well. Something close enough to amused. “All these years later.”
She expected him to deny that. Then bluster on the way men often did, pretending they had no feelings about anything.
But Antonluca was an Italian man. He did nothing of the kind.
“But of course I am still holding on to it,” he replied at once, and not as if he was remotely amused. “You essentially called my life’s work a sideshow. A circus, Hannah. What reaction did you expect me to have?”
“I ate in your restaurant in Florence,” she told him. He scowled at her, so she tipped her chin up and folded her arms, which had the added benefit of making her feel slightly warmer, too. “I believe it was one of the earlier ones in your portfolio.”
“It was my second restaurant,” he said coolly. “But the first one I opened myself.”
“Like your flagship restaurant in Rome, it is a small, cozy, neighborhood sort of place.”
“You sound like Wikipedia.”
“That was actually written on the menu in Florence,” Hannah acknowledged. “But do you want to know what I think?”
“It seems as if you plan to tell me.” His voice was a dark thread of menace, somehow colder and hotter than the December wind, all at once. “Whether I wish to hear it or not.”
“It made me understand why you’re so famous,” Hannah told him quietly.
She had waited in line outside for over an hour and a half and had sat at a tiny table crammed in between two larger, more boisterous parties.
She’d ordered three things. A salad, a plate of pasta, and a single cannoli.
And every single bite had been transformative.
“It wasn’t an art installation on a plate.
It was a meal. Possibly one of the best meals I’ve ever had. ”
“An art installation,” he repeated, in disbelief. Those gray eyes of his blazed at her. “An art installation on a plate.”
“I’m just telling you my impression.”
“And here I thought you wanted to keep your job.”
Hannah supposed that she should have been intimidated by that, but she wasn’t. If anything, it was a relief. It reminded her of the stakes here. It reminded her of exactly who they were, and what that meant.
Yes, there were things she should tell him. But also, yes—he was a powerful man who could fire her once again, and then what would she do? How would that help Dominic?
She really should have thanked him.
“I do want my job,” she told him, after a moment, because she had to breathe first. “But in order to keep it, I suspect that you will need to know that you can trust me. If not me, personally, than certainly that I will tell you the truth.” She considered that obvious, glaring falsehood and added, “I am always scrupulously direct when it comes to my opinions, especially at work. You can depend on that. You’ll notice that I never apologized for what I felt about your food in New York.
Only for the indiscretion in talking about it to someone who was not, as it turned out, a friend, after all. ”
He shook his head at that and had the look of someone who might have laughed, if they were the laughing kind. If he was actually the picture they trotted out and claimed was him. “You think this is a mark in your favor, do you?”
“I do.” When his storm-tossed eyes slammed into her, she managed to shrug. “You are a very wealthy man. I’m sure you have more yes-men than you know what to do with. La Paloma liked the fact that this is not a role I know how to play.”
“Neither does Paloma herself,” he muttered.
It did occur to her then that they were standing here, outside a restaurant, in weather cold enough to keep everyone else safely and firmly indoors. There were no staff, no guests, anywhere nearby. They were as close to alone as it was possible to be in a fully booked-out hotel.
Something she couldn’t stop thinking about, feverishly, when he stepped toward her as if he was about to—
But he didn’t do it. He didn’t put his hands on her. He didn’t lean in any closer. He didn’t so much as graze her with a stray finger, yet her entire body reacted as if he’d plugged her directly into an electrical outlet, like one of the bare trees strung with lights around them.
Worse than that, since she was standing here in the cold with nothing resembling a coat, she was fairly certain that he could see every last reaction her body had to all those things he didn’t do.
Something simmered, there in that dark gaze of his. She thought she saw something awfully close to triumph, but then he stepped away again. And the spell was broken.
Hannah told herself she was relieved.
“I’ll take that under advisement,” he growled at her, and then set off for the main building at a pace that had her very nearly running to keep up.
And later, at home, after she’d settled Dominic into bed, she found she dreamed up a hundred different endings to that interaction. All of them involving his mouth on hers, or other tender parts of her body.
That was the trouble. She remembered entirely too well what it was like to lose herself in him. She remembered the particular wildfire of his touch and the way he seemed to read and understand every single one of her body’s responses.
Alone in bed in her cottage, snuggled down deep beneath the covers, she shivered. She fluttered.
More than once.
And then, as the days grew shorter and darker still, the real holiday bustle began.
Hannah had to trade in her intimidating heels for boots that she could wear to trample over the field at the base of the hill where they were setting up the hotel’s own Christmas market.
It was this part of their so-called Christmas Jubilee that Hannah was the most proud.
She had pitched it to La Paloma herself, having been so entranced by the winter markets all over Europe—particularly in Florence—and was sure that the hotel could do something exciting.
She was overseeing the setting up of the many booths on the morning the market began, happily wearing layers against the cold, when she became aware of that same brooding presence, right there at her shoulder.
“I have never understood the appeal of a Christmas market,” Antonluca told her flatly when she looked over at him.