But I’d learned differently, hadn’t I?
So I don’t react now.
Whether Flirty Guy deserves to be thrown under the bus for nudging that fine line with the boss’s wife or not, I don’t betray him.
Hell, I might need him down the line.
And the flash of gratitude that passes over his face before he schools it away tells me he’s very aware of the consequences of his actions.
Idiot.
I catch Giovanni’s narrowed eyes and lower my gaze before he sees it. I breathe a short sigh of relief when he tosses the bar keys to one of the others without breaking eye contact with me.
“Shut it down,” he says coolly. “We’re done here.”
My heart lurches. “That’s it?” I demand. “You just close it like?—”
“Like it’s mine so I can do whatever the hell I want?” he finishes. “Yes, cara. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
The men move instantly.
And before I can form another protest, Giovanni steps into my space and bends, one arm scooping beneath my knees, the other at my back.
“What are you doing?” I yelp as he lifts me clean off the ground.
“Taking my wife home.”
“I can walk!”
“You could,” he agrees calmly. “But you won’t. And you don’t want to piss me off by ruining those perfect feet any more than you’ve damaged them running from your husband.”
I struggle for exactly three seconds. Then reality hits and the fight fizzles out of me.
It’s been eighteen months since anyone has held me like this.
Brushing past strangers and customers at the bar doesn’t count. Nor do fist bumps from my friends or neighbours in greeting or in passing.
No one has held me close. Intentionally.
For several moments, the warmth of his body and the solid wall of his chest send shocks of fireworks through my body as the familiarity of his ice and earth, curated specially for him by a perfumer in Milan, steals my breath.
And as he strides for the trio of SUVs suddenly idling on the street, a fight breaks out inside me, one side wanting to scramble out of his arms and the other yearning to use that fist on his chest to pull him even closer.
And damn him… damn him for the way my body suddenly remembers without permission the streamlined, chiselled perfection of this man’s body and how it made me feel in and out of bed.
To counter the roiling emotions, I go still, reject surrender and reject acceptance.
But the one thing I can’t reject?
Recognition.
I’ve missed human touch.
But more than that, I’ve missed Giovanni’s singularly lethal, mind-melting touch, the expertise he brought to every one of them from the moment we met.
More men part, then flank us as we move out into the sunlight, where the middle, sleek black SUV waits with doors already open.
In under ten seconds, we’re moving.
