style="font-size:15px;"> “You take my breath away.”
“Oh.” Oh? That’s it? That’s the best you can come up with? She tugged her hand and after a moment’s resistance he released her. “Thank you. And thank you for the flowers. They’re lovely. But you shouldn’t have.”
“I could not resist. Their fragrance reminded me of you.” He offered his elbow. Stacy couldn’t think of a courteous way to decline. Reluctantly, she threaded her hand through his bent arm and let him escort her from the cool interior of the hotel into the warm evening air. The lights of Monaco twinkled around them in the falling dusk. He paused outside the entrance. “The restaurant is only a few blocks away. Shall we walk? Or would you prefer a taxi?”
“You didn’t drive?” She’d pictured him as the powerful-sports-car type, the kind who careened around the hairpin turns at breakneck speed like a Grand Prix driver.
“I drove. My villa is in the hills overlooking Larvotto. Too far to walk. But there is no parking near the restaurant.”
She and Candace had taken the bus to Larvotto beach yesterday before she’d met Franco. In a country covering less than one square mile how likely was she to be able to avoid him until the wedding once this obligatory date ended? The odds weren’t in her favor. “Let’s walk.”
A breeze stirred her hair. He caught a stray strand and tucked it behind her ear. The stroke of his finger on the sensitive skin along her jaw made her hormones riot and her pulse leap. “I would like to show you the view of Larvotto from my terrace. C’est incroyable.”
No matter how incredible the view she had no intention of seeing it. Get this date on an impersonal footing. “How is it that you know Vincent exactly?”
A knowing smile curved his lips, as if he knew she wanted to tread safer ground. He turned and led her down the sidewalk. “We shared an apartment during graduate school.”
She frowned up at him. “But didn’t Vincent go to MIT?”
“Oui.”
“You lived in the States? No wonder your English is so good.” They turned the corner and the smell of Greek food from a nearby sidewalk café permeated the air. Her mouth watered and her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since the cake overdose this morning.
“Midas Chocolates distributes product on six continents. It pays to be fluent in several languages. Interpreters are not always available or reliable.” He turned down a narrow alley she would have missed and stopped in front of a salmon-pink building with a red tiled roof. The only signage was the address in brass script above an unremarkable wooden door. “Here we are.”
“This is a restaurant? It looks like a private residence.” She’d hoped for something less intimate, like one of the numerous cafés lining the streets. She still couldn’t get over how people brought their pets into restaurants. Stacy pulled her arm free on the pretext of adjusting her wrap and instantly missed his body heat even on this sultry night. Get over it.
“It is a secret kept by the locals. Good food. Good music. Exceptional company.”
She cursed the flush warming her skin. The man issued compliments too easily, and she didn’t intend to be swayed by his glib tongue. She’d been burned by insincere flattery once before. The humiliating aftermath wasn’t something she wanted to relive.
He opened the door with one hand. The other curved behind her waist, palm splayed. She could feel the imprint through the thin fabric of her dress as he guided her forward. She hurried inside only to stop suddenly in the tiled foyer.
This must have been someone’s home once, but now a maître d’s stand occupied the niche beneath a curving staircase. The dining rooms Stacy could see to the left and right were furnished with half a dozen widely spaced, candlelit tables draped in white linens. Crystal and silver glinted in the flickering light, and music played quietly in the background. Intimate, but not unbearably so. Some of Stacy’s tension eased. She could handle this.
But internal alarm bells rang as the hostess led them upstairs and finally stopped in a small private room with only one table. This very likely had once been a bedroom. Any plans Stacy might have had to keep this meal impersonal by watching the other patrons or trying to translate their conversations evaporated. The same music she’d heard downstairs drifted through exterior doors left open to a wrought-iron railed balcony. A gentle flower-scented breeze stirred the sheer curtains and made the candle flames dance.
Franco seated her. She startled when his fingertips brushed her upper arms, dragging her wrap back so that it bared her shoulders. He draped the lace over her chair, and then sat at a right angle to her, his knee touching hers beneath the table. She shifted away from the contact, but that didn’t stop the buzz of awareness vibrating through her.
An older man entered. He and Franco held a rapid-fire discussion Stacy couldn’t understand, and then he departed. “Was that French?”
“Non. Monégasque, the local dialect. It’s a combination of French and Italian.”
“Is that what you were speaking at your shop the day we met?”
“Oui, but French is the language spoken most often in Monaco. Do you speak French?”
“A little. I had the required two semesters in college and then I listened to some instructional CDs before coming here.”
He covered her hand with his on the table and stroked his thumb over the inside of her wrist. Her pulse bolted like a startled rabbit. “You may practice on me, if you wish.”
The spark in his eyes said she needn’t limit her practice to the language. Stacy pulled her hand free and tangled her fingers in her lap. Looking away, she chewed the inside of her lip and tried to ignore the tension knotting low in her belly.
Their server returned with a tray of tiny stuffed tomatoes and mushrooms, poured the wine and departed even though they hadn’t ordered yet.
“There aren’t any menus?”
“Non. Trust me. You will not be disappointed.”
Trust. He couldn’t possibly know how difficult it was for her to trust anyone but herself. “What if I have food allergies?”
“Do you?”
“No,” she admitted, feeling slightly ashamed for being difficult. She sipped her wine, sampled a crab-stuffed tomato and struggled to find a topic that would dilute the romantic atmosphere. “I was surprised to discover that Monaco relies heavily on French laws, including the French wedding ceremony and that they’ve removed the promise of fidelity from their vows. Why is that? Can French men not be faithful?”
Franco sat back, the smile slipping from his face. “I was faithful to my wife.”
That doused the warmth in her belly. “You’re married?”
“Divorced.” And bitter by the sounds of that one bitten-off word. “You?”
“I’ve never been married.” She’d never even been in a long-term relationship. She’d had one clumsy encounter in high school and a brief intimate relationship with a guy from work. She shoved the bad memories
