He leaned in slightly, his voice dropping as he threaded the lie with a hint of honesty. “But you…you were a complication I didn’t anticipate. I saw you and thought…” He let the sentence hang, his eyes holding hers. “…that you were the most interesting thing I’d seen in this town—beautiful and mysterious. We could pass the time together.”
He sat back, giving her space. “So, there it is. Business and a personal distraction.” He let the next truth escape, uncaged. “One I don’t regret engineering.”
A flicker of surprise crossed her face before her mask snapped back into place.
“I don’t trust easily.”
“Trust isn’t given,” he countered. “It’s earned. In increments. I agree you should not trust easily.”
She held his gaze for a long moment, her own a landscape of warring caution and curiosity.
“Then I suppose you’d better get started,” she said. Her gaze dipped to his mouth, then back up, a flicker of vulnerability swiftly masked by defiance.
He didn’t lean in or cross the line, only watched the tilt of her head, the rhythm of her breathing—the soft brush of her hair against her jaw.
“What are you doing in town, Sofia?”
She went still, her gaze turning deep and unreadable as she watched him. “I’m investigating a story. Once I have all my information, I’ll write about it.”
Tonio frowned. This sounded far more complicated than a girl searching for her birth father. What the hell was there to write about? “And what exactly are you investigating?”
Her mouth curved. “That I cannot share until I have all my ducks in a row.”
Before he could press further, the waitress arrived and set their breakfast special on the table—French toast piled withstrawberries and whipped cream, three eggs for each of them fried over easy, hash browns, two sausages, four strips of bacon, and four pieces of toast.
“That is a large meal,” he said. “I will help you if needed.”
She smiled, lifted her fork, and said, “No help needed.”
He watched in stunned fascination as she took her first bite of French toast, nodded in approval, and then tucked in with absolute focus. Tonio ate, realizing quickly that she wasn’t a woman who liked to eat and talk at the same time. Her attention remained on her food, and she savored every bite with clear delight, closing her eyes once or twice as if tasting something she’d long been deprived of. She polished off everything on her plate—even the four slices of toast—like a woman who hadn’t eaten a real meal in days.
And damn if he didn’t find it strangely endearing.
She glanced at his plate with wide, amused eyes. “I think you’re the one who needs help.”
He grinned. “You’re a foodie.”
“Oh yes.”
She said it with such relish that it made him laugh.
“It was a love I shared with my mom. She always teased that I’d eat everything in sight and never gain a pound. I never understood it, because she was even more slender than I was.”
The smile slipped from her face. She lowered her gaze, as if hiding.
“Hey,” he murmured, unable to stop himself. “Where’d you go just now?”
She looked up—and the raw pain in her green eyes hit him like a truck. He felt it in his chest, sharp and unwelcome, because he recognized that emptiness. He saw it in himself often when he looked in the mirror.
“My mom died recently,” she said softly. “And whenever I think of her, I feel this jagged pain tearing at my chest. It spreadsand swallows me whole. I can feel it happening now, and I fear I’ll be poor company soon. I’m sorry. I should go. Please let me pay—”
He didn’t let her finish. Instinct overrode thought. Tonio reached across the table, grabbed her by the waist, and hauled her toward him, ignoring the clattering of plates between them. Their mouths crashed together—hot, desperate—and he swallowed her gasp, tasting strawberries, whipped cream, and something uniquely her. She didn’t push him away. She leaned into him, a soft, broken whimper escaping her, something needy and desperate clawing its way to the surface.
He slid his tongue into her mouth, stroking, coaxing. She met him—awkward for the first second, then with rising heat, learning him, answering him. He kissed her deeper, licked into her again, nipped lightly at her lower lip, and she gave him another of those breathy, helpless sounds that went straight to his cock.
He was hard enough to split his zipper. And still he kissed her, again and again, as if he could chase every shard of grief from her body and swallow it himself. Damn stupid, considering he barely knew the woman, and this was not what he had come here for.
She tore her mouth from his and stared at him, breathing hard. Tonio watched the pulse fluttering at her throat, visible through the open collar of her silk blouse. He lowered his head and dragged his tongue slowly along that delicate spot.
