night, he recalled, with an ache of nostalgia.
He remembered the beautiful waitress who had slipped him her phone number while his uncle was paying the bill. Later, he remembered sneaking out to her tiny room close to the Sacre Coeur and the long, sensual night which had followed. The sound of the church bell striking the hour and voices shouting in the street outside as she had moaned her pleasure beneath him. The bowl of strong, sweet coffee he had drunk amid the rumpled sheets in the morning. How sharpened his senses had been then.
He stared at Jessica, at the way her hair hung in two shiny wings by the side of her face, and he felt an unexpectedly savage kick of lust. He wanted her, he realised, with a sharp hunger he had not felt in a long time.
All weekend he had thought about just how much he wanted her and how her sweet, flowering perfume had invaded his senses. He felt a pulse beating deep at his groin. Maybe he just liked the kind of woman who would never make any demands on him.
The waiter came over with two glasses of champagne and made as if to leave them alone with their menus, but Salvatore waved him back, eager for the formality and constraints of the meal to be over. ‘Shall we order?’ he questioned unevenly.
‘Yes, of course.’ He might as well have announced, Let’s get it over with! Jessica knew exactly why he wanted to speed through the meal—she could read it in the way he was looking at her and the sudden tension in the air. The way his face had changed. The sudden tension in his body.
This whole occasion was a formality, she reminded herself painfully—it wasn’t real, it was phoney. And suddenly the nerves which had been simmering away came bubbling up to the surface. She forced a smile, clasping her hands together so he couldn’t see them trembling. ‘What would you recommend?’
‘Let’s have steak, and salad, oh, and a half bottle of Barolo,’ he added, glancing up at the waiter and then leaning back in his chair to study her once the man had gone. ‘So where do you usually go to eat?’ he questioned politely.
‘Small independents, mainly,’ she answered, horribly aware that they were now going through the motions of having a conversation. As if Salvatore really cared where she normally ate! ‘Though it’s hard when there are so many chains. I’m not really mad about—’
‘You’re looking very … delectable tonight,’ he cut in softly.
‘Am I?’
‘Yes, you are. Almost unrecognisable. That colour suits you.’
‘Thank you.’ Nervously, Jessica licked her bottom lip as she responded to a compliment she wasn’t really sure she merited. It was another borrowed outfit, loaned once again by Willow, but given more grudgingly this time.
‘He’s taking you out again?’ Willow had demanded in disbelief when Jessica had arrived back from work, pale-faced with shock as she’d shared her news.
‘That’s right. For dinner.’
She hadn’t said why. She hadn’t dared. She found it hard to believe it herself—that she should be pursuing something which had the power to wreck her admittedly dull, but relatively ordered life. She had been the one who had wanted this evening to happen and yet now it had arrived she felt as flat as a punctured balloon.
And that was the trouble. When Salvatore had taken her to that dinner party she’d had nothing to lose—she had been there acting as his girlfriend. She had been given a role and known how to play it. But tonight was different. The meal was one that she had demanded in order to put a gloss of respectability over something which wasn’t respectable at all. She was contemplating going to bed with her boss.
Tonight she was here as herself and never had the differences between them seemed so glaringly obvious. Had she really thought that they could just sit through a meal together and then go off to have sex as if it were the most natural thing in the world? Didn’t matter how much she wanted him or how long she’d had a stupid crush on him—deep down she knew this was wrong. It had to be wrong, surely, when two people came from such different worlds?
Jessica stared down at her plate. ‘It was a mistake to come here tonight,’ she said unhappily.
Salvatore surveyed the gleaming and neatly parted crown of her head, the way that her silk-covered shoulders were hunched in an expression of defeat. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because … oh, come on, Salvatore—you know why,’ she whispered.
‘I thought you wanted to eat dinner with me.’
‘Yes, I did—but maybe I was wrong to want it. Or maybe the circumstances surrounding it were wrong. Are wrong.’
‘You weren’t being so coy or so dismissive the other day,’ he said slowly.
‘I know that. And maybe I’m regretting it now.’
‘Are you?’ When she didn’t answer, his voice deepened into a silken caress. ‘Jessica, look at me.’
In the background she could hear the distant laughter and chatter of the other diners and the chink of glass and cutlery. Everything sounded as if it were coming from a long way away.
Reluctantly, she raised her head and stared into the bright blue eyes—instantly caught and mesmerised by their sensual light. She could feel the inevitable leaping of her heart, the heavy singing of excitement in her blood as she looked across the table into his ruggedly handsome face.
Had he known that would happen—one look and she would be captivated? Yes, of course he had. He wasn’t a stupid man and he must have capitalised on his undeniable power over women time and time again.
Reaching across the table, he took one of her hands in his, turning it over to study it. The nails were cut short and filed down sensibly and the skin was unusually dry. The women he usually dated had silky-soft flesh, buffed and creamed and indulged during their innumerable sessions at the beauty salon.
These were worker’s hands, he realised with a start, and suddenly he found himself wanting to pamper her. He had thought that this place might be a treat for her—but now he could see that it might be something of an ordeal. ‘We don’t have to stay here, you know,’ he said.
‘But we’ve only just ordered.’
‘We can cancel it. Go back to my place and have something there, if you’re hungry.’
‘I’m not.’
‘No.’ Their eyes met. ‘Neither am I.’
Jessica swallowed, because now his thumb was stroking a tantalising little circle on her palm. He was weakening a resolve which was already terminally weak. She looked at the sensual curve of his lips, scarcely able to believe that they had kissed her so passionately, and yet just the touch of him was making her shiveringly aware that they had. ‘Won’t it look … strange if we just walk out?’
Salvatore smiled. ‘Who cares what it looks like? I don’t spend my life seeking the opinion of others.’ He gave a shrug and his thumb began to stroke a bigger circle, and then to trace a slow path up the length of her middle finger. He smiled as he saw her eyes darken at the unconscious eroticism. ‘Come on,’ he ordered huskily.
In a way, it was the craziest solution of
