not sure I’m ready to start dating again.”
“I’m not casting myself in the role of suitor,” he informed her dauntingly. “I’m extending the hand of friendship to a stranger, in an effort to ensure she leaves here satisfied that it was worth the time and effort it took her to make the journey in the first place.”
Good grief, was the man never at a loss for just the right words? “I already feel that way.”
“Excellent!” He added more wine to her glass. “So tell me, Diana, what were you, before you became a wife?”
“A university student, majoring in modern languages. I’d hoped to become a teacher after I graduated.”
“But you changed your mind?”
“Yes.”
“Because you decided you didn’t like children enough to want to spend six or more hours a day with them, ten months of the year?”
“Not at all! I love children. If it had been up to me—” She stopped, Harvey’s ultimate betrayal flaring up like a nagging toothache that never quite went away. “But it wasn’t.”
“You couldn’t have children?” Anton asked, his voice hypnotizing in its sudden deep sympathy.
“I don’t know, because I never tried. Harvey thought we should wait until he was established before we started a family, so I quit university and went to work as a translator for a law firm whose major clients were European.”
“What you’re saying, in a very nice way, is that you put your own career and wishes on hold, in order to promote your husband’s.”
“Something like that, yes.”
“I wonder how long it will be before this foolish man realizes what a treasure he cast aside—which is, of course, exactly what will happen, in time.”
“I rather doubt that.”
Reaching across the table, he wrapped her fingers warmly in his in a way that gave her palpitations. “But if it did, and he asked, would you take him back?”
“Never,” she managed breathlessly, and wondered what it was about him that left her feeling as if she’d never held hands with a man before.
Whatever the reason, she steeled herself to resist him. Because, of course, he was coming on to her, whether or not he admitted it, and given half a chance, he’d probably be quite happy to take her to bed and make love to her.
The problem was, although he’d probably dismiss such a happening as a pleasant summer interlude, she was an all-or-nothing kind of woman, no better at casual sex than she was at flirting. Emotionally vulnerable and needy as she knew herself to be, she couldn’t afford to lay her heart on the line again, just to have him trample all over it when he decided he’d had enough of her. She’d already gone through that with Harvey, and once was enough.
“That’s what I was hoping to hear,” Anton said, bathing her in a slow, seductive smile that threatened to reduce her rational judgment to a blob of molten hormones. “I’d hate to have to challenge him to a duel at dawn.”
She untangled her fingers from his while she still retained a smidgeon of common sense. “There’s no danger of that. My ex-husband is no more interested in me than I am in him.”
“What does interest you, then?”
“Catching up on my sleep.” She faked a yawn behind her hand. “It’s past my bedtime.”
He made a big production of looking at his watch. “You’re surely not serious?”
“I surely am.”
“But the night is still young, ma belle ange.”
Withstanding his flattery was definitely more than she could handle. “Not for me, it isn’t,” she insisted, forcing herself to her feet and clutching her purse to her breasts like a shield. “I’m fading fast, and your wine, excellent though it was, isn’t helping any. Good night, Anton. Thank you for a lovely evening.”
Before she could make the speedy exit she’d planned, he was on his feet and blocking her escape. “The pleasure was all mine,” he murmured, brushing his lips over the back of her hand.
That she could deal with. He was French, after all, and a Count, to boot. But then, instead of releasing it, he turned her hand over and pressed a soft, warm kiss in the center of her palm. And for reasons that completely eluded her, she felt the effect all the way to the soles of her feet. She wasn’t absolutely certain, but she thought she might even have let out a tiny whimper of pleasure, too.
Accurately guessing exactly the effect he’d had on her, he folded her fingers over the spot, and fixed her in a gaze veiled by his fringe of dense black lashes drooping at half-mast. “Until tomorrow, Diana,” he murmured.
Not if she had any say in the matter! Vividly aware of his gaze measuring her every step, she resisted the urge to bolt, and schooled herself to walk with a reasonable facsimile of decorum through the inn’s front door. Then, when she was quite sure she was out of his sight, she did bolt, scuttling up the stairs and down the narrow corridor to the sanctuary of her little room as if the devil himself were in pursuit.
The woman was a mass of contradictions, he decided, watching as the light came on in her room. Educated, refined and with a certain sophistication, on the one hand; on the other, curiously naive and unsure of herself.
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