‘Intimate.’ Nikos was not so sensitive. ‘It’s called good business sense,’ he enlightened. ‘Not the people but the restaurants,’ he explained what he’d meant. ‘They change their mood with the mood of the city. By day they provide the sharp suits like me with a place to work while we eat.’ A dryness entered his voice. ‘By night they soften their appearance to provide a more relaxed ambience for their more sociable clientele. I love the dress…’
‘Oh.’ Startled by the sudden and totally unexpected compliment Mia blushed as she glanced down at the lilac silk dress. ‘It used to belong to my sister Bella.’ Critical fingers plucked at the dress’s dipping cleavage. ‘There used to be a strip of lace here but I unpicked it because I thought it looked less fussy without it.’
‘Oscar has not provided you with your own wardrobe?’
His eyes were slow to rise to catch her brief shrug. ‘He offered. But I did not see the need to buy more new clothes when the closets at Balfour were stuffed full of things no one else wanted to wear.’
A young waiter arrived to offer th
em menus then. Mia winged him a warm smile and when she realised he was Italian she fell into conversation with him. Veiling his eyes Nikos observed the change in her as she talked. Her voice had taken on a warm and earthy vibrancy Nikos had not heard before. The young waiter fell in love with her as Nikos watched. She had no idea of the power she was wielding, had not even noticed the waiter’s darkened eyes and the raised colour in his face. When her slender hands joined in the conversation the waiter was hooked, his eyes fixed on the creamy cleavage on show behind the expressive fingers.
And Nikos felt a sudden blistering urge to punch the young fool! Perhaps he moved, he wasn’t sure, but something made the waiter glance his way. The next second he was rushing out an apology and moving away at lightning speed.
‘He comes from San Marcello,’ Mia enlightened him as if his Italian was not good enough to follow their conversation, and with no clue at all what had made the waiter take flight as if someone had set fire to his heels.
Nikos knew. He could still feel the trails of it lingering behind his veiling eyelids. ‘A neighbour, then,’ he murmured.
‘Sí, by a hilltop or two.’ Settling back into her seat she shook the silky fall of her hair back from her face, then picked up her menu.
When he continued to sit there doing and saying nothing she glanced up at him and frowned, then followed it up with a sigh. ‘OK, what have I done to annoy you this time?’ she demanded. ‘Have I broken some very important rule of dining that is likely to earn me a plate of cold food?’
‘Brunel would call it breaking the rules anyway,’ he responded impassively.
‘Brunel…? What has he got to do with…’
Enlightenment dawned. Mia flicked a look across the restaurant to where the friendly waiter now stood to attention, striving to keep his eyes away from this corner of the room.
‘You are accusing me of flirting,’ she said in a hushed breath of stunned disbelief.
Nikos picked up his menu and opened it. ‘You tied him in knots. For a few interesting seconds I thought he was going to pull out a chair and join us.’
‘We were just talking about Italy!’ Mia impressed upon him in self-defence.
‘I got this really bad feeling that I was about to be sidelined. Not good for my ego at all.’ Nikos smiled. ‘Lesson one in the use of social skills, cara, concentrate solely on the man you are dining with.’
Not quite sure if she was supposed to laugh at the ridiculous image Nikos had constructed of the waiter muscling in on him, he diverted her with, ‘What would you like to eat?’
Mia dutifully buried her attention on the menu. A different waiter arrived to take their order. Nikos delivered it in the clipped cool tone that did not encourage the waiter to linger.
‘Talk to me,’ he said abruptly once they were alone again.
Lifting up her face she asked, ‘What about?’
‘Anything—the wine.’ He indicated to her glass.
Dutifully picking up her wine glass Mia sipped. ‘Nice,’ she said.
‘Is that it?’
‘Is this another lesson in social dining?’ she dared.
‘No.’ He almost let a smile catch hold of his mouth. ‘It is simply a request for you to extend your answer. You are Italian. I cannot believe you don’t have a better opinion about wine than just nice.’
Be interesting, in other words. Well, OK, she could try to do that, Mia decided, relaxing back into her seat. ‘Tia Giulia and I make our own wine from our own grapes,’ she announced. ‘It’s just a hobby really, but our wine tastes easily as good as this very expensive wine…’ she said with a wave of her glass. ‘We pick and tread the grapes in the traditional manner with our skirts held up like so—’ she gestured, unaware how entirely she had captured her audience ‘—and we laugh a lot—it is supposed to be good for the taste. If it is a good year, our neighbours will come to exchange other produce for bottles of our wine. Tia has some really wonderful old oak barrels in the cellar….’
Their first course arrived and Mia kept talking through it, taking a small forkful of sea bass laced with a delicious sauce she had never tasted before.
‘Your life in Tuscany was very different from the one you’re living now,’ Nikos observed when she paused for a breath.