It had taken him mere minutes in the art gallery that first day to realize that she knew art, that she viewed it and absorbed it with a perspective unlike any he’d ever known. She seemed…desperately hungry for life, for any and every experience she could get.
She wasn’t like any other twenty-three-year-old he’d ever met. At least not like the crowd that hung around Matteo. She was smart and witty and had no compunction about calling him out on his jaded presumptions.
He had expected a touristy American to treat Milan like a backdrop—snapping selfies in front of canvases, mispronouncingCaravaggio, scrolling social media endlessly.
Instead, Ms. Fischer moved through each museum like she was starving for stillness, pausing for so long in front of a single portrait it made even him restless. And when he joined her, she didn’t try fill silence with inane chatter, even though the awareness between them thrummed into life. And when she spoke about brushwork or composition, it was with the clarity of someone who wasn’t trying to impress him.
His need to understand why she drew him so morphed into an obsession.
How had this woman and Matteo crossed paths? They seemed to belong on different planets. She suitedhistastes much more than those of his flashy brother and—
The thought stopped his stride, though not his gaze, as he arrived at the upscale café he’d asked the chauffeur to bring her to. Tourists and locals alike waited months for a reservation at the café, drawn by its elegant gilded ceilings that provided a perfect background for their pics.
Curled into a wrought-iron chair at the edge of the chic little spot tucked into a quiet courtyard, Ms. Fischer looked like one of the masterpieces she’d been obsessed with.
A painting in soft motion—sunlight catching the slope of her bare back as she leaned over a sketchbook. Her braid had loosened, sending flyaway tendrils to kiss the fragile line of her jaw. The low waist of her jeans dipped enough to reveal a strip of silky skin when she shifted.
The humming under his skin intensified as he watched her, as did a strange foreboding.
He hadn’t been in a relationship since Violetta’s death. After discovering his addictive nature when he tried to drown his pain—in drink or sex with strangers—he had effortlessly adopted celibacy as a form of control.
Cristo, he didn’t remember the last time he had checked a woman out, much less wanted her with this soul-consuming intensity. And yet, here he was, pulse quickening at the sight of a woman bent over a sketchbook. A woman who was his brother’s ex and far too young for him.
His fingers curled into fists at his sides—a pathetic attempt at holding on to control when he was already losing.
Sam looked up just as Alessandro’s shadow stretched across the table. No wonder her pulse had been going haywire in the last few minutes.
Tall, lean, dressed in black slacks and a dove-gray shirt rolled up at the sleeves, he looked like the opposite of sun—dark but still blindingly beautiful. Power thrummed under his skin in that quiet, coiled way he had, like the threat of a storm behind glass.
Her breath caught, not because he was simply beautiful—though he was, in that severe, carved-from-marble kind of way—but because he made a long-held wish of hers come true.
It had been three days of losing herself in art. Of walking until her legs ached and her heart pounded with something other than fear, of losing herself in stories that had been told long before she’d been a speck in the scheme of life.
She felt more alive than she had in years.
“Please tell me your appetite for art has been temporarily satisfied, Ms. Fischer.” His fingers moved toward her cheek and pulled back jerkily. “You look tired.”
A spurt of stupid, grateful joy rose through her too fast to stop. Without thinking, she rose and wrapped her arms around him.
It was a quick hug, her cheek brushing the fabric of his shirt, arms going around his waist, his corded arm caught between her breasts. Over in the blink of an eye. Yet the scent of him—clean, sharp and expensive—coiled through her, making her limbs heavy and aching.
His body stiffened under hers even as his heart thudded violently.
Sam jerked back in a rush, embarrassed heat flooding her cheeks. She’d always been a tactile person, but she had no business touching him like that. Flustered, she moved back toward her chair too fast and almost toppled it.
“Thank you,” she said, voice too bright, fiddling with the flaky cannoli on her plate.
“For what?” Alessandro asked, settling into the opposite chair.
“For calling in those favors and getting us access to those private collections,” Sam said, heart still pounding. And because she hated feeling like an unsophisticated bumpkin, she added, “I guess there are some perks to being your fake, last-minute mistress. Maybe my vacation would look drastically different if I became a rich Italian’s plaything for a while.”
She meant it as a joke. When she looked up to meet his eyes, she realized it was anything but. The words hung between them, sharp and strange, like a spark catching in dry grass.
His gray eyes held her in a challenge. “Is that what you’re looking for, now that any chance of making up with Matteo is impossible?”
Sam refused to let him provoke her. Because, for some goddamned reason, he was trying to. “Do you have no memories of being young and reckless and foolish and so achingly in love that nothing mattered?”
A sudden, raw bleakness flared in his eyes that made her stomach tighten. He looked as if he was far away, where she couldn’t reach him.
