‘Don’t push it, Moncada.’
He narrowed his own eyes at her. ‘What?’
‘You’re not my boss and I’m not your employee. We’ve come to a mutually beneficial arrangement—a quid pro quo—so please don’t ruin my happy thoughts towards you.’
She had happy thoughts towards him?
That should not make his chest puff up.
‘I did not mean it to sound so formal,’ he said with a stiffness that in itself bordered on formality. ‘If I have in some way insulted you then I apologise. What I meant is that you are here, in my world, at my request. My world is an expensive place to live and it is only right that I pay for the things you need that will allow you to fit into it.’
Her stillness vanished and she bestowed him with a smile of such brilliance it could have blinded him. Instead of blinding him, though, it soared through the air shimmering around her and landed in his already aching loins.
‘Much better.’ She beamed.
With a silent curse, he snatched his phone up and called his chef, cancelling his lunch order, then got to his feet and grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair. ‘Time for lunch.’
‘We’re eating out?’
He gave a sharp nod. Dante could feel his control crumbling, the itch in his fingers to touch her almost unbearable.
God alone knew how he was going to survive the next five days without acting on it.
Cold showers. Lots of cold showers.
For now, he would deal with it by dining with Aislin in public.
‘Do you have a favourite food?’ he asked.
Her beam only widened. ‘Pizza.’
* * *
When they stepped out onto Dante’s street Aislin gazed up at the sun high in the cobalt sky and whipped her jumper off. She had a long black vest top underneath and the feel of the sun on her bare arms was a joy after the long winter.
As she tied her jumper around her waist, she noticed Dante looking at her as if she were a new species.
‘We’re not with your society friends yet,’ she told him cheerfully.
‘Is it not a little cold to be exposing your bare arms?’
‘You must be joking. Compared to Ireland, this is basking weather. I haven’t seen the sun since September.’
For all the crazy feelings surging through her, she hadn’t felt this happy in years. Dante’s generosity had lifted a weight from her shoulders.
The money he’d credited to Orla’s account, along with the forthcoming DNA-contingent hundred thousand, would be enough to substantially better Finn’s life. The extra eight hundred thousand they would receive would irrevocably change it but, for now, Aislin was thinking of more than her sister and nephew. She was thinking of Dante. She wanted to save that deal for him, for this man who could have thrown her out of his cottage without a cent for any of them.
They walked Palermo’s cobbled streets, two of his goons three paces behind them. She inhaled all the new scents and gawped at all the new sights—the barrows of fruit and vegetables, the stalls of flowers, tables and chairs crammed on the pavements with people sat drinking coffee, many smoking, the thrum of life a beat she felt pulsating in her limbs.
‘Your city is so vibrant,’ she observed. ‘It’s like nowhere I’ve ever been,’
‘Have you travelled much?’
‘Not much outside Ireland. I’ve been to London a few times and I spent a summer working in a French vineyard picking grapes but that’s it. I haven’t left Kerry in three years.’ She grinned. ‘This is very different to Kerry.’
‘In what way?’
‘It isn’t raining for a start!’ She sniggered. ‘I’m doing my home an injustice. It’s a beautiful part of the world and it doesn’t always rain. Sometimes the sun does grace us with its presence. Our village edges a forest so you can imagine the wildlife we have on our doorstep. I remember a stag finding its way into our garden when I was about ten. Orla screamed her head off when she saw it, the wimp.’