Page 17 of Read This Before the Villain falls in Love with You

I raise an eyebrow at her red face. "You are sneaking off to see a guy."

Sofia stammers. She looks down at the grass. "I do not know what you mean."

I roll my eyes. "Right, of course you do not. And I came to Italy on a summer trip."

"You are awful," she grumbles, fighting back a grin.

"I just have working eyes," I call out as she turns around.

She sticks her tongue out at me, actually sticks her tongue out, and disappears down the path toward the house, leaving me alone with the fountain and the judgmental cherub and entirely too much time to think.

An hour later, gravel crunches under my shoes as I follow the dirt path down toward the vines. The midday heat presses against my skin. Matteo mentioned the word training over coffee, and my feet carry me straight toward the open rows of grapes before I can talk myself out of it.

Wooden target stands line the far fence. Luca stands twenty feet back with a black rifle gripped tight in both hands, his shirt discarded on a wooden bench nearby. Sweat slicks the broad expanse of his back, catching the bright sun every time his chest expands.

My feet freeze in the dirt. I grip the strap of my wristwatch and stare, completely pinned to the grass under the shade of the olive trees.

He lifts the rifle, fires twice into the center target, and pivots left to take the next one without breaking rhythm. The muscles across his shoulders bunch and shift in the sun, sweat tracing a line straight down the center of his back. Every step is smooth and quiet, resetting his stance before the spent brass even hits the gravel. My throat goes dry watching him move, but I keep my jaw clenched and refuse to turn away.

This is absurd , I think. This is a man who had me thrown in the trunk of a car. This is a man whose brother drugged me. I am not going to stand here ogling him like a golden retriever watching someone open a bag of chips.

My body, unhelpfully, continues ogling.

Enzo mutters a joke from across the gravel. Luca throws his head back and laughs, a deep sound that carries on the breeze. It softens the hard angle of his jaw in a way that feels utterly illegal. It ought to come with a warning label.

He lowers the rifle and wipes his forearm across his jaw, and that's when he looks up.

Across the vineyard, over two full rows of vines heavy with fruit I don't know the name of, his eyes find mine like he knew exactly where I was standing before he even looked.

My fingers dig into the rough bark of the olive tree beside me. The sun beats down on my bare neck, but a sudden chill runs straight down my spine. Across the dirt, his chest rises and falls in slow, steady breaths. A drop of sweat slips from the hollow of his collarbone, tracing a dark path down the center of his chest. My eyes follow it before I can stop myself, and my throat tightens.

He does not move a muscle. He keeps the black rifle resting against his hip and does not blink against the harsh sunlight. Dark eyes stay locked on mine across the rows of green leaves, steady and heavy, waiting to see if my boots take a single step backward into the trees.

Enzo barks another comment while reloading his magazine, but Luca doesn't react this time. He ignores his brother completely. He keeps his eyes locked onto mine across the rows of grapevines, standing motionless while the world carries on around him.

My pulse does something traitorous and fast, and I hate it, I genuinely hate it, because I've spent my entire career being the person who doesn't get rattled, the person clients hire specifically because nothing shakes me, and here I am getting shaken by a man standing shirtless in a vineyard like some off-brand romance novel cover that got left out in the rain.

"You're staring, Nora." I catch myself whispering the words into the breeze, biting the inside of my lip when I realize I spoke aloud. Not that he could possibly hear me from fifty yards away.

He tilts his head, just slightly, the barest fraction of movement, like he's asking a question without using any words. I have no idea what the question is. I have several guesses, and none of them are appropriate given the current state of our relationship, which is technically hostage and captor, a dynamic I keep forgetting exists whenever he does that thing with his jaw.

I could look away. I should look away. Looking away would be the sane, dignified, professional response of a woman who negotiates for a living and does not get flustered by muscle and sweat and a well-timed laugh.

I couldn't look away.

Neither does he.

The vineyard stretches between us, loaded with green leaves and ripening grapes. Behind him, Enzo yells something about target groupings that goes completely ignored. The silence between Luca and me pulls taut, heavy with an electric friction I have no intention of acknowledging.

But it's there.

God help me, it's there.

Chapter 6

LUCA

Two hours ago in the vineyard, she stood by the olive trees and stared at the sweat tracking down my chest. She thought she was hiding it. She was not. I watched her pulse flutter in the hollow of her throat from fifty yards away, her fingers digging into the rough bark, refusing to take a single step back even while Enzo loaded magazines beside me.