“And was it?”
Hannah knew that this was an opportunity to tell him about Dominic. This was not onlyan opportunity—she was already well overdue for that particular confession. It should have been the first thing out of her mouth the minute she’d seen him. She shouldn’t have allowed a single sentence or moment or wholekissto go by without sharing the news that he was a parent.
She still didn’t know why she hadn’t done it. Why she hadn’t simply told him the way she’d always been certain she would, when she had imagined running into that gloriously decadent stranger again.
But even as she thought that, here in her office where the air between them seemed absurdly charged, she knew it was a lie. She knew why she hadn’t told him then. And why she hadn’t made up for that oversight since. She was afraid.
It was as simple as that. She was afraid that telling him about Dominic would fundamentally change the life she’d made here, probably forever. It was highly likely that it would be ruined altogether because there were so many ways he could react—and most of them were negative. This was a man who had come to confront her in person because he didn’t like stupid things she’d said to a third party. Look howthathad ended.
The truth was that she’d thought it was entirely too possible that letting him in on Dominic’s existence would be as life-altering as letting him intoherlife had been back then. And the trouble with life-altering events, she’d decided, was that it was impossible to tell how and where that alteration would occur. How it would really mess everything up.
Hannah had been afraid. She was still afraid.
Maybe even more afraid than before, because now she couldn’t tell herself that this man was a momentary madness and nothing else. She couldn’t assure herself that if she ever ran into him again, she would feel nothing and might even laugh that she’d ever felt sodrawnto him.
There was no comforting herself with that fantasy any longer.
She stared at him for what felt like an eternity, then she made herself look back down at her tidy spreadsheets and careful graphs, where there was only data. Nothing to fear at all.
“Nebraska is always a good place to land,” she told him when she was certain she could keep her voice even. “It’s always nice to be back home. It allows me to really think about how to make the next move, and where I want to go.”
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 makingabsolutely surethat 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 theintentionof 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 thingeventually.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 meantoveracting—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 toshowhow nervous she was around him. Because that was what it was, she was certain. Simplenerves. Notfluttering,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 maître 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.
