“We should—” He stops, shaking his head. “I have meetings this morning. With Dante. About the Corsican situation.”
“Right,” I say, trying to sound normal even though I feel like I’ve been hit by lightning. “Meetings. Work. Very important.”
Leo stands up but doesn’t immediately leave. He just looks down at me for a long moment, and I swear I can see the same want I’m feeling reflected in his eyes.
“Emma,” he says in a low murmur, a thousand emotions seeming to pass over his face before he takes a deep breath. “I’ll…see you at dinner?”
“Dinner,” I confirm, my mouth dry.
He leaves, and I sit in the garden for another ten minutes trying to get my breathing under control and failing miserably.
I spend the rest of the day trying to convince myself that nothing happened, that the moment in the garden was just my imagination running wild. But when Leo joins me for dinner that evening, all my attempts at self-delusion evaporate.
He’s changed into fresh clothes, and fuckmehe looks good. He’s wearing dark slacks and a white button-down with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, exposing his forearms. It shouldn’t be that distracting but itis.
His hair is still slightly damp, like he showered before coming down, and when he sits across from me I catch his scent: cedar and bergamot along with something clean and masculine that I’m becoming addicted to despite myself.
He smells so good. Like high-end cologne and quality soap and something that’s justhim. There’s this underlying masculinity that makes my brain go stupid every time I get close enough to breathe him in.
“How were your meetings?” I ask, desperate for something normal to talk about.
“Frustrating,” Leo admits, pouring wine for both of us even though I haven’t asked for any. He knows I’ll drink it anyway. He knows everything about me now. “The Corsican leads keep going nowhere. It’s like chasing shadows.”
“Maybe they don’t want to be found.” I accept the wine glass when he hands it to me. Our fingers brush during the exchange, and I feel the contact like an electric shock.
Leo feels it too. I can tell by the way his eyes darken slightly and how he pulls his hand back just a fraction slower than necessary.
“Maybe,” he agrees, his gaze holding mine for a beat too long before he looks away.
We eat in a silence that feels heavy with all the things we’re not saying. Every time I look up, I catch him watching me. Every time he looks up, I’m sure he catches me watching him too. It’s this constant feedback loop of awareness that’s making it hard to focus on anything except the fact that we’re alone in this room and there’s maybe three feet of table between us and I can’t stop thinking about what it would feel like to close that distance.
“We need to talk about something else,” I blurt out, because if I spend another minute sitting here in this charged silence I’m going to embarrass myself.
“Like what?” There’s amusement in his voice that suggests he knows exactly what I’m thinking.
“I don’t know,” I say desperately. “Politics. Philosophy. The best restaurants in Manhattan. Anything.”
“The best restaurants in Manhattan,” Leo repeats, his lips curving into a smile that makes my stomach flip. “That’s a dangerous topic between us.”
“Why?” I ask, even though I remember our last debate about Carbone versus Marea got pretty heated.
“Because you’re wrong about Carbone being overrated,” Leo says, tilting his wine glass in my direction and leaning forward, “and I enjoy proving you wrong.”
“You can’t prove I’m wrong because I’mnotwrong,” I counter, leaning forward too without meaning to. We’re closer now, closeenough that I could reach across the table and touch him if I wanted to. Which I do. I want to. Very much. “Marea has better pasta and you know it.”
“Marea has good pasta,” Leo concedes, his dark eyes locked on mine. “But Carbone has atmosphere. History. That’s worth something.”
“Atmosphere doesn’t make up for hour-long wait times and people who are only there to be seen,” I argue, and I’m getting into it now, my competitive streak kicking in despite the tension crackling between us. “Good food should speak for itself.”
“And Carbone’s food does speak for itself,” Leo counters. He’s smiling now, which transforms his whole face and makes my heart stutter. “You just can’t admit when I’m right.”
“You’renotright,” I insist, but I’m smiling too now, caught up in this familiar rhythm of our debates.
“I’m always right,” Leo says, and there’s this teasing quality to his voice that I’ve only started hearing recently.
“You’re impossibly arrogant,” I shoot back.
“You like it,” Leo says, and the way he says it—low and certain and just a little bit challenging—makes heat rush through me.