Instead, I take her hand.
"Misha," I say. Just Misha. No surname. No lies I'll have to maintain.
Her handshake is firm, confident. "Just Misha? Very mysterious."
"I prefer to let my sparkling personality speak for itself."
She laughs—a real laugh, surprised and delighted—and the sound wraps around something cold inside me.
Walk away, the voice of reason demands.She's a mark's daughter. She's twenty years younger than you. She's everything you can never have.
"So, Just Misha," she says, tilting her head. "What brings you to a cardiovascular research fundraiser? You don't look like a doctor."
"What do I look like?"
She studies me with unnerving directness. "Someone who's never had to worry about his heart."
If only she knew.
"I'm an investor," I say. The lie comes easily. "Always looking for promising research to fund."
"Ah. A man with money and no medical degree, looking to buy his way into saving lives." Her tone is teasing, not cruel. "How noble."
"I never claimed to be noble."
"No," she agrees, something shifting in her expression. "You didn't."
We talk for hours.
She tells me about her research interests—minimally invasive surgery, cardiac regeneration, bringing cutting-edge treatment to underserved communities. She tells me about her professors, her classmates, her impossible schedule. She tells me about the first time she watched a heart surgery, how she cried afterward because it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.
She tells me about her family too. Carefully. Carmine is "in business." Her mother died when she was young. She has brothers she isn't close to. She's the odd one out—the Benedetti who chose healing over whatever it is her family actually does.
She doesn't know. Or she suspects and refuses to look too closely.
I envy her that ignorance.
"Dance with me," I say when the orchestra starts playing something slow.
She raises an eyebrow. "Do investors dance?"
"This one does."
She lets me lead her to the floor. Lets me pull her close, one hand on the curve of her waist, the other holding hers. She is soft against me—warm and real in a way nothing in my life has been for years.
"You're a good dancer," she says quietly.
"My mother taught me." The truth, for once. "She said a man who couldn't dance was a man who couldn't be trusted."
"Smart woman."
"She was."
Bianca hears the past tense. Her hand tightens on my shoulder. "I'm sorry."
"It was a long time ago."
We sway in silence. I breathe in her perfume—something floral, jasmine maybe—and memorize the weight of her in my arms. The way her curves fit against me. The way she looks up at me like I'm someone worth looking at.
