“It was,” he agreed. He smoothed her hair back from her forehead distractedly. “Come on, I’ll take you into the city for dinner.” She opened her mouth but he preempted her. “Don’t worry, we’ll stop by your apartment and pick up what you might need until tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow morning?” she asked, clearly surprised
He turned, rolling off the bed. “We’ll stay the night at my place in the city. I’m not flying to Nice until late tomorrow.
“You have a place in the city?”
He nodded. “My plant is in Deerfield, but I have a business office in the city. I need a place there for when I work late.”
He felt her eyes on him as he walked around the bed toward the bathroom. He was starting to think he’d feel her eyes on him even in his sleep.
Chapter Eighteen
Her mind was preoccupied almost exclusively with one—admittedly stupid—thought all the way home. Should I ask him inside my apartment, or would he prefer just to wait in the car? Asking Vanni inside seemed intimate. Somehow it didn’t seem to match up with the purely sexual affair she’d agreed to with him for a circumscribed period of time. She suspected he felt that way, at any rate, and so she wanted to act accordingly.
Earlier in his suite, he’d asked her politely if she’d like to shower there or at her home, to which she’d answered the latter. Then there’d been nothing left for her to do but sit in a chair in the sitting area and watch in mounting fascination the tail end of his grooming/dressing ritual.
He’d quickly showered after they’d made love, and then changed into a suit. It was a dark gray, with which he wore a white shirt, a slim black tie with two white stripes, silver cuff links, and a crisp white pocket square.
He’d donned his clothing in a methodical fashion, as efficient as a knight putting on his armor. He’d put on the pants, shirt, socks, and shoes in a large dressing closet, where she couldn’t see him. When he’d stepped out, she stared at him with a mixture of fascination and lust. He looked beautiful with the shirt unbuttoned, his ridged abdomen and powerful chest showing through the two-inch gap between the plackets. He hadn’t shaved, and an attractive dark scruff was on his jaw and upper lip. She watched, spellbound as he fastened his shirt and crisply tied his tie in the mirror over his dresser. His hair had still been a little damp around the collar by the time he snapped on his platinum watch and turned his gaze to her where she sat on a chair in the seating area, blinking at her expression of bemused fascination. She’d been a little undone viewing the Vanni Montand dressing ceremony, that ritual of blatant male sexuality and precision.
Now he sat there in the driver’s seat, smelling delicious from his shower and looking impossibly gorgeous. The idea of him inside her apartment seemed . . . just odd. Unlikely. Surely he’d rather wait in the car.
“I’ll just hop in the shower and change for dinner. It won’t take me more than ten minutes,” she said awkwardly when the car came to a stop in her apartment parking lot.
He didn’t reply. She studied his profile in the soft summer evening light.
“Um . . . do you want to come in?”
Much to her surprise, he nodded once and twisted the keys out of the ignition. Her heart jumped when he reached for his car door.
Oh my God, how is Amanda going to react? I haven’t even told her I was seeing anyone, let alone someone like Vanni Montand.
“I’m on the third floor. It’s a walk-up,” she mumbled apologetically a few seconds later as they approached her building. Again, she experienced that dazed, dreamlike sensation watching Vanni rise up the starkly mundane wooden staircase that led to her third-floor apartment. They passed an overlook to the parking lot below on the second floor. Emma’s feet halted when she saw Colin’s car in the parking lot. She’d been so preoccupied sitting in the car with Vanni and inhaling his subtle, addictive scent that she’d hadn’t noticed it before.
“Emma?” She blinked and looked at Vanni where he stood on the first step to the third floor, an expectant look on his face. Her brain whirred and then stalled. What excuse could she make? She couldn’t think of anything else to do but continue.
“Sorry,” she breathed, following him up the steps.
She led him to her door and fumbled the key in the lock. Suddenly, his hand was on hers. She looked up in surprise. His blue-green eyes seemed to glow in the shadows as he regarded her calmly. Soberly.
“I don’t care if your house is a mess, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he said.
Her house a mess? She almost laughed. It was a mess, but not in the way he meant it.
His hand turned the key in the lock. The door swung open.
Emma led him through the small foyer and into her modest but comfortable living room, a lump swelling in her throat. She paused abruptly on the threshold.
In some ways, the situation echoed the other night when she’d caught Amanda and Colin together. The pair sat close together on the couch and looked startled by her appearance. At least they weren’t kissing, though, Emma thought numbly.
In actuality, it was drastically different. Vanni came to a halt beside her, and Colin and Amanda might have been a mile away. His presence altered the dynamics of the situation almost beyond recognition. How could she worry too much over Colin and Amanda’s new relationship with him standing right next to her?
“Hi,” Emma said in a high-pitched voice.
“Hi,” Amanda replied. She gaped at Vanni. So did Colin. For a few seconds, no one spoke.
“Hi. I’m Vanni Montand.”