For real?
“I’m not sure I can handle another of Tris’s limoncellos.”
“Fair enough. See you in a few minutes,” he says, stopping next to the first door we reach in a hallway that I know most New Yorkers would find absurd. This place is huge. Does he own the whole floor?
I say, “OK,” mostly because I’m not sure what else to say. He clearly doesn’t want to go any further—at least not yet—soget into my bedprobably wouldn’t be appropriate. Enzo flips on the light and leaves me in the room. Elegant, just like the rest of the place. Actually, it reminds me of the restaurant we went to tonight. All whites and brown. Impeccably decorated, but obviously not used much.
I change, grateful I took a pair of leggings and a sweatshirt in addition to the brand-new negligee. Might as well freshen up too. A few minutes later, I head back down the hall. He’s back in the kitchen already, somehow more handsome than before.
I’ve seen Enzo in sweats a million times in my life. But for some reason, the abrupt change from the put-together billionaire who strode through that restaurant tonight like he was right at home and the comfortable PA boy that I grew up with is super hot.
“Hey,” he says, the smell of heaven just now reaching my nose.
“Is that coffee?”
“It is. Figured since you were done with the limoncello, I would be too. Besides, I don’t know many other people who can drink coffee after midnight and still go to sleep no problem.”
I laugh, sitting on one of the stools at the kitchen island.
“You remembered.”
And it’s true. Enzo and I have that same strange affliction. Caffeine hardly affects us. Although I still feel the lack of it, it doesn’t make me jittery or sleepless. Devon was always jealous of us for that.
“I remember a lot of things,” Enzo says as he hands me a cup of heaven.
“Such as?”
He leans back against the counter opposite the bar where I’m sitting and looks at me so intently I begin to squirm. It should be illegal to look that hot in a hoodie.
“I remember the night you turned twenty-one,” he says.
“Yeah, you said so.” But we both know he’s talking about something other than beer shots now.
“I remember the way you looked at me after a half-dozen shots.”
I take a sip of the coffee, avoiding his gaze. It’s exactly how I like it.
“I didn’t think you noticed.”
“Oh, I did.”
When I look up at him, he’s smiling. And my perception of that night slips a little more. I decide to push him a bit.
“So what changed?”
“I was scared then.”
Those words, coming from this supremely confident, successful man, just don’t add up. Or maybe it’s that they don’t compute.
“Scared? Of what?”
“Of screwing up my relationship with Devon. Of hurting you.”
“You’d never hurt me.” The words come out reflexively, before I can think them through, but I know it’s true, like I know one plus one equals two. He just wouldn’t—it’s that simple.
“Not intentionally, no. But you’re not exactly a one-night-stand kind of woman, Char.”
I laugh, and thank him for that.