Chapter 5 #3
“Do you have siblings?”
“One sister,” I said. “Sophie. She’s fourteen and convinced she runs the household through intimidation and sarcasm.”
The severity of his expression eased just enough to make him look younger. “I have a sister too. Victoria. She’s ten and already a menace.”
“That sounds affectionate.”
“It is. She’s terrifying.”
I smiled. “Sophie too, honestly.”
“You’re close?”
“Very.” I traced one finger lightly along the stem of my wine glass. “She’s disabled now. There was a car accident a few years ago. My brother died and Sophie…”
I stopped, the words catching a little as they always did when I got too close to that night.
“She survived,” I said instead. “But things changed.”
The look that crossed his face then was so brief I might have imagined it if I hadn’t been looking straight at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I gave a small shrug that convinced neither of us. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to turn this depressing.”
“It’s not depressing.” His voice was calm, steady. “It’s your life. I asked because I want to know about you, Emily.”
Nobody had said it like that before. Simply. Like it was obvious.
He glanced down then, just briefly, and nudged his cane a fraction against the side of his chair. “Aren’t you going to ask?”
I followed the movement with my eyes, then looked back at him.
“No.”
His brows lifted. “No?”
“No.” I took a sip of wine, buying myself a second. “Because it doesn’t matter.”
He went very still. Not offended, more like surprised. People like Pietro probably weren’t often surprised.
“That,” he said after a moment, “is not the answer I was expecting.”
I set the glass down carefully. “Would you rather I lied and said I was trying to be noble?”
“I would rather know what you mean.”
“I mean,” I said, meeting his eyes, “that you walk with a cane. I saw. I also noticed you looked like you wanted to bite my head off when I grabbed that book for you in the library, so I assumed you preferred not to be handled like fragile glass.”
To my surprise, that pulled a quiet huff of laughter out of him.
“A fair assessment.”
“My sister hates when people decide what she can and can’t do before she’s even opened her mouth. So I learned a long time ago that if someone wants to tell me something about themselves, they will. And if they don’t, it’s none of my business.”
He held my gaze for a beat too long, something unreadable passing through his expression.
“Emily Hart,” he said quietly, “you are proving unexpectedly dangerous yourself.”
My pulse gave one stupid, traitorous leap. “I thought we’d already established that was your thing.”
One corner of his mouth curved. “Unfortunately for you, it is.”
The shiver that ran down my spine came with excitement rather than fear, and that difference mattered more than I wanted to admit.
He didn't elaborate on the cane, and I didn't ask. I hadn't lied when I said it didn't matter. It wasn't what defined him, at least not to me. Maybe it had shaped him in ways I couldn't yet see. I wasn't na?ve enough to think otherwise. But the man sitting across from me was what held my attention.
“Why Boston?” he asked, taking a small sip of wine just as the waiter arrived with our starters. Arancini, he said, setting the plates down between us.
I had a perfectly rehearsed answer for that question, one I had repeated so often to family, friends, and anyone else curious enough to ask that I had almost started to believe it myself. What struck me then was that it would also be the first lie I told Pietro.
“I wanted to see something different,” I said. “A chance to study on the other side of the country. Boston is full of history. It’s practically sacred ground for history nerds.”
“Makes sense.”
He didn’t question it, didn’t push, but that only made me more certain he had seen straight through it.
By the time the tiramisu arrived, I had stopped watching myself so closely.
Somewhere between the starters, Pietro’s dry little comments, the way he listened when I spoke as if nothing I said was too small to matter, and the absurdly good pasta I was certain to dream about later, the tight knot inside me had loosened without my permission.
I was still aware of him, painfully so, but no longer in that rigid, braced way I had been at the start of the evening. I felt…at ease.
That should probably have worried me more than it did.
Instead, I found myself smiling as he pushed the plate a little more toward me after I’d claimed I was full and then stolen two more bites anyway.
“You are a terrible liar,” he said.
“I’m choosing not to be offended, because this tiramisu may actually have changed me as a person.”
One corner of his mouth lifted. “I hoped it might.”
When the evening finally came to an end, I was almost sorry for it.
Almost.
Then the bill disappeared with whatever rich-people sorcery Pietro had clearly arranged in advance, and a few minutes later we were standing outside the restaurant with the cool Boston night settling around us.
“I can get an Uber,” I said, adjusting my bag on my shoulder before he could say anything.
His gaze settled on me, steady and unreadable in the glow of the streetlights. “You can.”
I blinked. That was not the response I had expected.
He slipped one hand into the pocket of his coat. “If it makes you more comfortable, take the Uber. I’ll follow behind. I only want to know you got home safely.”
The offer, because it was an offer and not an assumption, caught me off guard.
He wasn't pushing. Just giving me the choice. "You can drive me."
Something softened in his face, subtle enough that I might have missed it if I hadn’t already started paying far too much attention to him.
“All right.”
The drive back was quieter than dinner, but not awkward. Softer, maybe. The city blurred past outside the window while something low and old played through the speakers, and every now and then I caught him glancing at me.
When he pulled up outside my building, neither of us moved.
“Well,” I said, because I had reverted to the conversational skills of a nervous Victorian.
“Well,” he echoed, with a faint smile.
He got out before I could reach for the handle and came around to my side, opening the door with that same unhurried attentiveness he seemed incapable of turning off.
I stepped out, and together we walked to the front of the building, the silence between us full of things neither of us quite seemed ready to say.
At the door, I turned back to him.
The streetlight caught the silver of his cane, the dark line of his coat, the sharp planes of his face softened now by something warmer than the intensity he wore so easily.
He looked unfairly beautiful.
“I’m not very good at pretending indifference,” he said after a moment. “So I’m not going to play games and wait three days to text you.”
A smile tugged at my mouth before I could stop it.
His gaze held mine. “I would like to see you again, Emily.”
There was nothing casual in the way he said it. Just simple, deliberate certainty.
And that felt more dangerous than all his sharp looks and dark suits put together.
“I’d like that too,” I said softly.
Neither of us moved.
Then, before I could overthink it, I leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek.
When I stepped back, he had gone very still.
Completely still.
His fingers lifted slowly, almost absently, and brushed the place I had kissed as if he could still feel it there.
I smiled then, because for the first time all evening, Pietro Benetti looked a little undone.
“Goodnight,” I said.
And before he could recover enough to stop me, I slipped inside and left him standing there beneath the light, one hand still near his cheek.