if I say no to your dinner invitation?” she asked.
“I will be disappointed, but that will have no impact on your employment, advancement or type of opportunities given here at Scorsolini Shipping. To be fair, I must also tell you that even if you were to become my lover, that would not impact those same things in a positive way, either.”
“I never for a moment would have expected them to.”
“You are very naive.”
“There’s nothing naive about believing that a person should earn their job advancement.”
He smiled, but his eyes were serious. “I like that about you and I agree.”
“Good.”
“So, will you allow me to take you to dinner?”
Every logical impulse in her body screamed at her to tell him no. She didn’t want to get into a relationship, but dinner wasn’t exactly a promise for the future. Maybe he was only interested in friendship. But he’d mentioned being her lover. That implied a lot more than chatting over coffee.
Oddly enough, it was the prospect of the more that had her so horribly tempted. She’d dated so little in her life and she’d never spent so much as half an hour with a man as intriguing as Marcello. Not unless you counted Angelo Gordon, but he belonged to her friend and even he didn’t stir her latent sexuality the way that Marcello did.
Ray certainly never had, the lying sneak.
This wasn’t about love and happily ever after, she told herself, it was about experiencing feelings she’d denied herself far too long.
“Okay. I’ll have dinner with you.”
CHAPTER THREE
HE TOOK her to a small, family run restaurant outside of Palermo. It was a quarter to nine by the time they reached it. She’d learned Europeans often ate late. The owner was more than happy to give them a table.
As a dinner companion, Marcello lived up to every concept she had of him. He was charming, attentive and so sexy that her body thrummed with an awareness she’d never experienced with another man.
He poured her a second glass of the rich red wine he’d ordered with dinner. “So, Angelo said you were ready for a change and that is why you came to Sicily.”
She’d noticed since coming to Palermo that Sicilians made a distinction between themselves and other Italians, as if they were their own separate country. Marcello did the same thing even though technically, he was from another country altogether. She had heard that his mother was Sicilian. Perhaps that accounted for it.
“Yes, I needed a change.”
“Was there a man involved?”
Strangely she did not find his question intrusive. In an inexplicable way, she felt she could tell him almost anything. “Yes.”
“What happened?” he asked with an expression that compelled her to share her deepest secrets with him.
“How do you do that?”
“What?”
“Make me feel like I should tell you everything in my head.”
“Ah…there is a lot more to being the head of an international business than being able to count money.”
She laughed. “I know that, but I wasn’t aware that playing the role of father confessor was part of it.”
“You would be surprised. Now tell me about the boyfriend.”
“I thought he loved me, but he used me to get pictures of Tara and Angelo so he could break into tabloid journalism.”
“He was the one responsible for those stories about them in the scandal rags last year?”
“Yes. They hurt Tara, a lot. She’d been savaged by the press once before and Ray’s antics got her fired before Angelo found out what had happened.”
“I hate the tabloids.”
“But you’re in them so often.”
“Like I told you, I create a facade for them to latch on to so they leave my real life alone.”
She’d done the very same thing as a small child. She’d created an image of an outgoing, confident girl that hid her private thoughts and feelings. No matter how intrusively doctors, or even her own parents, played their roles in her life, there was an interior Danette who remained sacrosanct to her alone.
Knowing they shared such a coping mechanism made her feel close to him in a way she would not have thought possible.
“Tell me more about Ray,” Marcello said.
“There isn’t much to tell. He was looking for the main chance and took it, not caring who he hurt or how much he hurt them. I think that’s what devastated me the most. He couldn’t have known my best friend was going to get involved with a media interest like Angelo Gordon, or that her notoriety would be so easily revived.”
At least that’s what she’d thought. “Our relationship started out for the usual reasons…I think. My family is wealthy and maybe he figured all along that I might take him into circles he could use to advance his career goals, but I really think that he saw the main chance and just went for it.”
“And this hurt you?”
“Very much, but I’m over him now.” And she was. It had happened faster than she’d thought it could.
The move to Italy had been the right choice.
“The betrayal by a lover is the most devastating.”
“He wasn’t my lover, thank goodness.”
“So, the relationship wasn’t very old?”
“That depends on how you define old. We were together for a few months.”
“And he did not take you to bed?”
“It wasn’t for lack of trying on his part,” she said, stung that Marcello should think that she wasn’t fanciable.
“No doubt. Why did you hold back from him?”
“It never felt right. It made him angry, but I didn’t realize how much. He said some very cutting things when we broke up.”
“I see.”
“Do you? What do you see, Signor Scorsolini?”
“First that you must call me Marcello when we are away from the company.”
She smiled despite the heavy feelings in her heart from her trip down memory lane. “All right.”
“Second, that the man was a fool and obviously not very good in the seduction stakes.”
“Or
