will be packed out.’ She laughed, anticipation bubbling up inside her. ‘Tourists...’
‘We can venture further afield. Name the place and I’ll reserve a table.’
‘Don’t be silly. You don’t have to...’
‘You don’t have to...?’ Arturo shot her a wry look from under sooty lashes. ‘Anyone who knows me at all would know that those four words would never apply to me because I make it my duty never to feel that I have to do anything I don’t want to do. If I didn’t want to take you out to dinner I would never have issued the invitation in the first place. Now, name the place.’
God, Rose thought, who would ever think that she would go for a guy who took charge? She was much more into the sensitive kind of guy who consulted and discussed. Arturo Frank couldn’t have been less of a consulting and discussing man, and yet a pleasurable shiver rippled through her as she met his deep, dark eyes. ‘Name the place? Now, let me think about that. How generous are you feeling tonight...?’
Rose shocked herself because she wasn’t flirtatious by nature. Her mother had always been the flirt, which was probably why she had ended up where she had. That was a characteristic Rose had made sure to squash, not that there had ever been any evidence of it being there in the first place.
But she felt like a flirt as their eyes tangled and she half smiled with her head tilted pensively to one side.
‘I’m just kidding.’ She grinned and ran her fingers through her tangled hair. ‘There are a couple of excellent pizza places in the next village along. I can call and reserve a table. So...in answer to your invitation, it’s a yes.’
‘I’m saying no to the cheap and cheerful pizza place,’ Arturo delivered with a dismissive gesture, eyes still glued to her face.
‘In that case...’
‘Leave it with me. I’ll sort it.’
‘You will?’
‘Expect something slightly more upmarket than a fast-food joint.’
‘In which case, I’ll naturally share the bill.’
‘That won’t be happening. When I ask a woman out, she doesn’t go near her wallet.’
There she went, tingling all over again! Behaving like the frothy, frilly, girly girl she had never been. He was so macho, so alpha male, so incredibly intelligent, and yet he cared about all the things she cared about. She prided herself on being savvy but she could feel the ground slip beneath her feet and she liked the way it felt, enjoyed the heady sensation of falling.
She wasn’t interested in any man who was just passing through, but a little voice asked inside her head... What if she took a risk? After all, where had being careful got her?
And an even more treacherous little voice whispered seductively, What if he delays his plans to move on...? In the end all nomads found their resting ground, didn’t they? And there were jobs aplenty for a guy as smart and proactive as he was...
‘Okay.’
‘You look a little bemused. What kind of guys have you gone out with in the past? Did they take out their calculator at the end of the meal so that they could split the bill in half? Call me antiquated—’ his voice lowered to a murmur ‘—but I enjoy being generous with the women I take out.’
So we’re going on a date.
Excitement surged through Rose in a disturbing, all-consuming tidal wave.
Maybe—she brought herself back down to earth—it wasn’t a date. As such. Maybe it was simply his way of saying thank you for renting a room in her house and having whatever food and drink he wanted at his disposal. He was paying her a lot more than she’d wanted but it was still a lot less than if he’d been staying in even the cheapest of the local hotels.
But the warmth of his gaze was still turning her head to mush when, an hour later and with no idea where they would be going, she stood in front of her wardrobe surveying the uninspiring collection of comfortable clothes that comprised her going-out gear.
It bore witness to the alarming fact that when it came to going out she had become decidedly lazy over time. Easy evenings with friends, the occasional movie, casual suppers at the kitchen table, for which she could have shown up in her PJs and no one would really have cared one way or the other.
In fact, working largely from the house as she did, her work clothes were interchangeable with her casual wear. Everything blurred into loose-fitting and shapeless.
Practical, she reminded herself, hand brushing past the baggy culottes to linger on the one and only figure-hugging skirt she possessed. Her wardrobe was filled with practical clothes because she was, above all else, practical. Her mother had had the monopoly on impulsive behaviour. She, Rose, was practical.
Yet she didn’t feel practical as she wriggled into the clinging jade-green skirt and the only slightly less clinging black top with the little pearl buttons down the front, the top four of which she undid. Then promptly did back up.
There was little she could do with her hair, but she liked the way it hung in a riot of curls over her shoulders, and when she plunged her feet into her one and only pair of high-heeled shoes...well, she would have dwarfed a lot of men but she wasn’t going to dwarf the one who would be waiting for her downstairs.
In fact, she would be elevated to his level. Eye to eye...nose to nose...mouth to mouth...
* * *
Waiting for her in the kitchen with a glass of wine in his hand, Art was just off the phone from one of the finest restaurants in the area. He wasn’t sure how he was going to explain away the extravagance but he was sick of mealtimes being pot luck, along the lines of a bring-and-buy sale in someone’s backyard.
He was also sick of conversations with her being halted by someone popping their head around the door. She worked from her house and so seemed accessible to any and everyone. While he had been busy planting questions in the heads of all those protestors squatting on his land in the misguided belief that they were going to halt the march of progress, he hadn’t actually got around to planting a single question in Rose’s head because he never seemed to find the time to be alone with her for longer than five seconds.
He was also disgruntled and frustrated at the tantalising glimpses of her personal life which he had been unable to explore. He accepted that that was just thwarted curiosity but it was still frustrating. He existed on a diet of being able to get exactly what he wanted, and that included a woman’s full and undivided attention.
She had told him something about herself and he had found himself wanting to hear more and had been unable to. When had that ever happened before? Given half a chance, there was no woman he could think of who wouldn’t have clawed her way back to that interrupted personal conversation with the tenacity of a tigress.
But no. It was almost as though Rose had more pressing things to do than talk to him.
And yet...there was something between them. He felt it and so did she. It was just not big enough for her to actually put herself out to try to cultivate it and that irked him.
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