“No,cara.I went out intending to drink myself into a stupor.”
She shivered. “Same.” She couldn’t pull her eyes away, no matter how hard she tried. “Not very responsible of us.”
He made a noise that sounded like agreement.
“You seem like the last person on earth who does irresponsible things.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You just have a…gravity about you.”
He lifted one brow. He was so close to her, and that was making her brain feel all kinds of scrambled.
“I do not generally drink to excess.”
That made sense. This man was all about measured control. She couldn’t say how she knew that either, but she had no doubt she was right.
“So why did you, that night?”
“I could ask the same of you.”
Her heart hammered. While her memory was hazy where Luca was concerned, she had no such difficulty remembering the events that had preceded their meeting. The ick she’d been trying to process, the feeling that she was spiralling into a situation without end. It wasn’t her fault, and yet, for some reason, something held her back from sharing the truth with Luca. She didn’t want him to know about the indecent proposition, about how stupid she’d been to borrow money from people like that.
Not stupid. Desperate. But that hardly seemed to matter. She’d put herself in a situation that had left her vulnerable to a truly terrible outcome. Her dad would have been furious, if he’d known.
“Were you celebrating?”
She shook her head slowly.
He made another sound of agreement. “You were upset.”
“You remember?”
“Process of elimination. It’s an educated guess.”
She gnawed at her lower lip. “I’d had a difficult day.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“Are you offering free therapy?” she couldn’t resist teasing.
“I suppose I’m asking if I need to know. Or if you want me to know.”
“No,” she said, hoping that was true. After all, she’d deposited a chunk of money into the loan sharks’ account. She’d make good on her debt within the year. Surely that freed her from that situation. And she was all the way in Italy now, far away from their reach. “It’s okay.” God, she hoped it was okay.
“That’s probably for the best.”
“I thought the goal was to get to know each other.”
“The essentials,” he said, frowning slightly. “Easier not to blur lines if we keep it to that.”
Blur lines, of course. Like the kind of lines they were blurring right now, by sitting so close, with his hand resting lightly on hers, their knees brushing. “Do you think it’s possible?”
His eyes roamed hers. “Do I think what is possible?”
“This. Not letting the lines get blurred.”
“What is your concern?”
