Her eyebrows arched. ‘Right here in the city?’
‘Born and bred.’ This, Nico feared, could get tense very quickly, at least for him. He’d once told her where he was from, and how many siblings he had, and how one day he was going to make a million dollars. It all sounded so childish now, and yet he’d meant every word. Telling her again would feel wrong somehow, as well as weirdly shaming. As though something that had once been important to him had been nothing to her. After tonight, he knew he was going to think very carefully before he told Ashley anything more about their shared past.
Perhaps she’d sensed this too, because the next question came out of left field. ‘What’s your favourite food?’
He paused to think and then answered honestly, ‘Pizza.’
She laughed again, the sound whispering through him. ‘Pizza…but aren’t you a billionaire?’
‘I wasn’t always. And I don’t forget my roots.’
‘I’d like to forget mine,’ she replied baldly, her gaze meeting and holding his. ‘Maybe I already have,’ she added with a wry laugh that ended on a wobbly note. ‘Since I can’t even remember this evening. Maybe there’s a lot of things I’ve forgotten.’
It clearly unnerved her, this forgetfulness, more than she wanted to admit. Without even thinking about what he was doing, Nico reached forward and cupped her cheek with his hand, her skin cool and smooth beneath his palm. Her eyes widened as his thumb caressed the fullness of her lower lip, his palm cradling her face in a gesture that felt both intimate and tender and sparked something inside him—desire along with something deeper. ‘Don’t let it worry you,’ he murmured. ‘Sometimes…maybe…it’s better to forget things.’
She kept her vivid green gaze on his, his hand still cupping her cheek, his thumb resting on her lip. For a few taut seconds he was sorely tempted to close the remaining space between them, settle his lips on hers and taste their honeyed sweetness again. But this time it wouldn’t be the ravaging of earlier that day, when he’d been daring her to remember their first kiss, but a tender reckoning, a healing, a promise…but of what?
Then she asked in a whisper, ‘What do you need to forget?’
Softly as it had been asked, the question slammed into him, reminding him that this was utter, utter foolishness. Nico shook his head, dropping his hand as he leaned back. Hecouldn’tforget Chase Woodward’s treachery, the years of imprisonment and injustice or the way it had wrecked his brother’s life and torn apart his family. Those were things that he would always remember. Heneededto remember them, because they reminded him of who he was, what he’d endured and how he had triumphed.
And, whether she knew it or not, Ashley Woodward was part of that. Even if she wasn’t aware of it—and Nico still wasn’t entirely convinced that she wasn’t—she was his enemy. Getting emotionally involved with her, no matter how briefly, would be a big, big mistake.
‘I should go,’ he said brusquely. ‘And you should sleep.’
Her eyes widened as if he’d rebuked her, and in truth Nico felt as if he had. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that coming here, comforting her, had been a mistake. A complication he couldn’t afford.
She didn’t speak as he rose from the sofa and reached for his suit jacket. She watched him silently, her hand still tucked beneath her cheek as he shrugged it on.
‘I’ll send a car to pick you up at seven,’ he told her, and she gave a small, playful smile.
‘For ournot-a-date,’ she quipped, and Nico’s whole body went still.
They were the same words, and even the same tone, that she’d used on that fateful night, right before he’d been arrested. For a dream-like half-hour, they’d talked and flirted, half-hidden by a pillar, and even fumbled through a soft, sweet kiss that had felt like the purest thing he’d ever experienced. He’d been twenty years old and as green as a young boy.
In thrall to his own feelings, he’d asked to see her again, blurting the words, even though he’d known the daughter of the CEO did not step out with the lowest and most recent hire—no matter that Chase Woodward, in his magnanimity, had invited him to this ball. He still wouldn’t have wanted him dating his daughter.
Ashley’s expression had turned troubled, her eyes shadowed as she’d leaned back against the pillar. ‘I don’t know if my father…’ she’d begun, biting her lip, looking unhappy and nervous. He’d bumbled through something about how it didn’t have to be adate; they could just go for a walk, a coffee, anything… He’d been so pathetically desperate. The memory scalded him now, even all these years later.
She’d smiled then, shyly, like the unfurling of a flower, her lovely, heart-shaped face tilted up towards his. ‘All right, then. I’ll go out with you, on something that’snot-a-date,’ she’d said, and he’d smiled and even thought about kissing her again, before a hand had clapped hard on his shoulder.
And now she’d just said it again.Not-a-date. Coincidence…or a slip?
Ashley Woodward, he reminded himself yet again, was the daughter of his enemy, the former CEO of a business he’d intended to crush, and still most likely would dismantle. No matter how innocent or vulnerable she seemed now, she’d once set him up and then walked away. How could he forget that? How could he let this little amnesia act convince him?
The realisation slammed into him with a force that nearly left him breathless. Ashleyhadto remember what she’d done, and she must have gambled that acting as if she didn’t was the only way of escaping his revenge. It was so blindingly obvious that Nico felt ashamed for being pulled in by her ‘adorably confused’ routine. All those tears…were they really fake? Was it all an elaborate ruse to make him soft?
Could she be that cunning?
‘Nico…?’ she asked softly and when he turned to look at her, her green eyes wide, her soft, pink lips trembling, all he saw was a very bad actress.
He walked out of her apartment without saying a word, and without looking back.
Chapter Nine
ASHLEY STOOD ATthe entrance to the ballroom in one of New York’s most exclusive hotels, feeling entirely unprepared for the evening. After Nico had walked out on her last night, she’d lain in bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out what on earth had happened, and why this enigmatic man touched her so tenderly one moment and walked out without a word the next. More worryingly, she wondered why shecared. In the course of a few hours, Nico Galletti had engaged her emotions in a way she had absolutely no intention of letting him do ever again.
It had been easier, or at least simpler, Ashley had reflected, when Nico had been nothing more than an obstacle she had to navigate to protect her employees and her business. Now he’d become a man who’d touched her tenderly, answered her questions and made her tea…well, that became intensely problematic. Especially if she let herself think about the other element of Nico Galletti she found so worrying: the way he’d kissed and, more tellingly, the way she’d responded to him.
