Christmas love affair?”
She grinned against his lips. “Now you’re talkin’.”
“Five days is too short.” He spoke the bald truth without stopping to think if the bald truth was wise.
She made a happy little sound and tucked her head down on his chest again. “Maybe you’ll stay longer, like until New Year’s. After all, a Christmas love affair would logically last until New Year’s Day, wouldn’t it?”
The idea of staying longer held far too much appeal. “Love affairs and logic. I’m not so sure the two go together.”
Her lips brushed the side of his throat and her breath flowed across his skin. “I suppose they don’t. And I’m sure you have important things you need to be doing in Montedoro, so I’m going to be happy with what I can get. The rest of today and four more days. Maybe five. Too short, but so very sweet.”
* * *
A little while later they made love again.
And then she cuddled in close to him and chattered away about all she’d been doing since she left him in Montedoro. She talked about her new friend, Tabby, whose family owned the diner across the street. And about the widow in the three-bedroom across the landing. She said that Viviana Nichols made the best cookies in the world.
“I love Viv,” she told him. “Her door’s always open and she’s easy to talk to. It’s already beginning to feel like I have a family here, you know? People I really like, good people I want to spend time with.”
He wasn’t surprised that she made friends so easily. She looked for the good in others and almost always seemed to find it.
Eventually, they shared a quick shower. He would have lingered to make love with her again, but he wanted to take her up to his place. So they put on their clothes and went up to the sixth floor.
“Wow,” Lucy said when he ushered her in the door. “I’d forgotten how big it is.” He’d brought her up to the apartment briefly when he’d first moved her to New York in October. “All these great windows. An open living space. A real, true New York loft apartment.”
“I’m so pleased you approve.”
She made a face. “It’s just too white, though.”
He said what the designer had told him. “Adds to the open effect.”
She shook her head, her green sweater drooping off one shoulder, making him want to reach out and slide it down even more—or better yet, to take it off her again. “It needs color. But I do like the art.” Large canvases, mostly modern abstracts in the vivid hues she so admired, covered the half walls that marked off the spaces: living, dining, kitchen, all large areas, each one flowing into the next. There were two bedroom suites on that floor—the master suite and a slightly smaller suite. Above, there was another bath, an office and a studio, along with two smaller bedrooms, one for his man, Edgar, when Edgar accompanied him, and one for his bodyguard.
Damien was about to take her up the wide steel staircase and show her the other floor when someone tapped on the door. He checked the peephole. “It’s Quentin and the food.” He let in the bodyguard and the man with the grocery cart full of meat, staples and produce from a nearby gourmet-food store.
Lucy smiled at the bodyguard, who gave her a respectful nod and then stood to the side so the deliveryman could carry the bags in from the cart and line them up on the kitchen peninsula. Once that was done, Dami signed the bill.
Quentin said, “I’ll show you out.” He ushered the deliveryman through the door and Dami shut it behind him.
Lucy began pulling things out of the bags. “Yum. Looks good. Is the chef coming soon?”
He came up behind her, drawn as though magnetized to her flesh, to her bright, joyous spirit. Just being near her made him feel electric with energy and heat. He clasped her hips and drew her back against him, lowering his mouth to the sweet-scented curve where her neck met her shoulder. “I am the chef.”
She turned in his arms and put her hands on his chest. “You can cook, too? I knew it.”
“Edgar cooks when I want him to, and brilliantly. But I left him in Montedoro this trip, so I’m on my own.”
She stepped out of his hold, scooped up a carton of milk and carried it to the refrigerator. “Come on, Your Highness. Let’s put the perishables away.”
He watched her move, so light and quick. Desire, stirred by simply touching her, flared higher. He thought what he shouldn’t be thinking: ways to keep her with him, to keep her close. Ways to have her for as long as he wanted her. Because he’d always been a junkie for sensation and she gave that to him—sensation. Pleasure. Excitement. The burning, false promise of continued delight. In recent years, there hadn’t been all that much that gave him the thrill he craved.
But Lucy did. Lucy, of all people. She gave it to him. She made him burn again, made him care. Made the world brim with color and happy laughter, with hunger and fire.
He kept reminding himself that she was his friend and he owed it to her to help her get whatever she needed—and what she needed wasn’t him. She had shining dreams and ambitious goals. He would only make her forget her dreams, distract her from her goals and leave her wiser in a bad way, hurt and disappointed.
“Dami. The groceries?” She sent him a glowing smile over her shoulder—and he was captured. Enchanted. Completely ensnared.
It was wonderful to feel this way.
His negative thoughts blew away. He decided to stop giving himself a hard time for taking her innocence, for not letting her go when she left him in Montedoro.
She wanted to be with him and he wanted to be right here with her. For now. He was making way too much of this, acting like Alex, his grim, thoughtful twin. He needed to stop that. Introspection, after all, had never been his strong suit.
There was no reason not to take this fine thing between them and go with it. At the moment, it was working for both of them. And who said it had to end badly? Of course he wouldn’t hurt her. He would never hurt her.
He reached into the nearest bag and pulled out a crusty loaf of bread and a tub of unsalted butter. As he put them away, he reminded himself that she understood the situation. She had no illusions about him. He’d made it clear that this was no more than a mutually satisfying holiday interlude, that this visit would be a short one.
He only wanted to be with her a little longer. Only four days. Maybe five....
* * *
Lucy went down to her apartment later to feed Boris. And then she went back up to Dami’s and spent the night in his bed. They made love for hours and it was beautiful. Making love with Dami was about as good as it got. She was so glad she’d chosen him to teach her about sex.
In the morning, she stopped in to check on Boris again and then took Dami over to the diner for breakfast. She introduced him to Tabby, who fanned herself and pretended she might faint when his back was turned. Quentin, the bodyguard, who was lean and sandy haired and mostly expressionless, came with them. He stood near the door, in front of the almost-life-size Virgin Mary and Jesus in the manger, where he could see the entire restaurant and keep Dami
