To do something about the ache she felt in her that she was certain came directly from him—
Thankfully, she controlled herself.
“That sounds as if we won’t see you on the hotel floor,” she said, and it cost her to sound so mild, yet upbeat. It actuallyhurt.
“You won’t,” he replied.
Hannah could tell that he’d…come to some decision then. It was the way he looked at her. It was that frozen sort of feeling, there between them.
It was the finality in the way he’d said that.You won’t.
“I thought you lived on the next hill over. Or that’s what I heard in the village, anyway.”
“I have a great many houses,” he told her, and it seemed…
She was sure that there was more happening here, in the thickening air between them, than it sounded like there was. Because she could feel it.
And this time it was more than a flutter.
“Of course you do,” she agreed. “I believe that’s the whole point of being a celebrity billionaire chef, isn’t it? The real estate alone.”
“I’m happy to own a hotel, Hannah,” he said in that brittle voice of his. “But that does not mean that I wish to run one.” He lifted a brow. “If I did, I would have no need of you.”
She told herself he could not possibly have meant to hurt her. He had simply stated a fact. Her feelings were her own problem.
But that didn’t seem to ease the sting any.
“All I ask is that you keep your opinions to yourself, please,” he said quietly.
Quietly, but there was all that intense gray behind it.
And somehow, out here where half of Tuscany was watching, they’d ended up standing far too close together. She felt her toes curl up in her boots. She felt herself flush all over, and was glad that today she’d thought to bundle up sufficiently that no one needed to know that but her.
“What I can promise,” she said, “is that I’ll keep my opinions out of the papers.”
If it killed her.
“I thank you,” he replied.
And she could hear that sardonic inflection. But she was looking up at him, and there was something so stark about his expression. Something that on anyone else, she might have calledlost, there in the eyes.
She had never wanted to touch anyone as much as she wanted to touch him then.
But she didn’t. She couldn’t.
Instead, inside of her, she felt a great wave of shame—so intense that it hurt—because she still hadn’t told him about Dominic.
This was the moment. This was well past the moment, in fact, and she had no excuse for that. There was no justification for it, not when she’d spent the past couple of weeks in his company, enough to know that he was no monster. He was not abusive, or vindictive.
On the contrary, she found that all this time talking to him and working with him didn’t make her like him any less. Quite the opposite.
Tell him, she ordered herself.Tell him now.
But she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
He was too close. His stormy gaze dropped from hers, down to her lips, and some kind of resolve took her over.
He was her boss. They had already kissed once, that first day in the library, but she thought that had been left over from before—from that night in New York. There was no need to go back there.
