Liv laughed. Why was she feeling so happy? It was completely ridiculous, but she just couldn’t help it. Determined to pull herself together, she rose to her feet. ‘I’ll make the dough now. You can help. Wash your hands.’
‘Hayley’s mum won’t let her make pizza dough because she says it makes a mess.’ Max reached for the weighing scales and lifted the flour out of the cupboard. ‘I told her that you love mess.’
‘Mess and I are certainly intimately acquainted,’ Liv said dryly, glancing around her kitchen and wondering why it never stayed tidy.
Because she was happy to let her son make pizza dough.
Max emptied some flour onto the weighing scales. ‘Oops.’ He stood back as some of it sprinkled over his toes. ‘You can do the water.’
The doorbell rang just as Max plunged his fingers into the gooey mixture.
‘That will be the postman.’ Liv wiped her hands and walked towards the door. She was still in her pyjamas, her hair was tumbling loose past her shoulders and her feet were bare, but as she had no intention of stepping outside, she decided that it didn’t matter.
Keeping her body out of sight, she opened the door, a cheerful smile on her face as she popped her head round.
Stefano Lucarelli stood there, a large white box in his hands and a cool, confident look on his handsome face. He was wearing a long black coat over jeans and a chunky roll-neck jumper that brushed against the blue shadow of his jaw.
‘Buongiorno.’
Memories of that amazing kiss came flooding back with disturbing clarity and for a moment she wondered whether he was real or whether her mind had conjured him up because she’d been thinking of him all morning. Was he a product of wishful thinking?
‘What are you doing here?’ Liv winced as she listened to herself. It was no wonder she was single. ‘I’m sorry. That sounded rude. It’s just that I—’ He looked far too good to be standing in her doorway.
‘Invite me in.’ His silken command left her more flustered than ever.
‘You must be joking.’ She thought of the pyjamas she was wearing. ‘Why would you want to come in?’
‘Because I don’t want to eat dessert on my own.’
Her gaze shifted from the gleam in his eyes to the box in his hands. ‘You brought me dessert?’
‘Belgian chocolate log, complete with whipped cream.’
Liv started to laugh. ‘It’s ten o’clock in the morning.’
Stefano gave a dismissive shrug. ‘If you’re going to commit a sin, you may as well get it over with early in the day.’ His Italian accent somehow made the words seem more sinful than the subject and the way he was looking at her made her insides turn to liquid.
‘You can’t possibly come in,’ she said in a strangled voice. ‘If you leave your Ferrari there, it will be gone when you leave. And anyway, I’m still in my pyjamas.’
‘Are you? You probably shouldn’t have told me that.’ His gaze focused on her for a moment. ‘You have amazing hair. I had no idea it was so long.’
His words were so unexpected that everything she’d been about to say fizzled and died in her head. He liked her hair?
No, of course he didn’t. How could he possibly? ‘Now, you’re being ridiculous,’ she said gruffly. ‘I look as though I just crawled out of bed.’
‘Precisely.’ His low, sexy drawl somehow connected to every nerve ending in her body.
Scarlet with embarrassment, she kept her body behind the door. ‘I can’t let you in.’
He smiled. ‘Yes, you can.’ He stepped forward and nudged at the door with his powerful shoulders.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Blasting you out of your comfort zone.’ He strolled into her flat, pushed the door shut and scanned her body with a single glance. ‘Nice pyjamas.’ Amusement shimmered in his dark eyes. ‘Pink baby elephants are absolutely my favourite animal.’
Aware that only a thin layer of cotton lay between his disturbingly thorough gaze and her naked body, Liv tried to cover herself and then realised the futility of the gesture and gave up. Why was life so unfair? When he’d taken her to dinner she’d been wearing her most ancient skinny rib jumper and now he’d arrived at her flat and she was dressed in cosy pyjamas that clung to her bottom and did nothing to hide the generous proportion of her top half.
Why couldn’t she have been wearing a skimpy lacy number?