“That needs to go down a little.” He pointed at her zipper. “Otherwise, people will see that it’s been moved.”
“Who would notice something like that?” she asked crossly as she brought the zipper down a few more teeth.
“Every man with working gonads.”
“Better?” she asked with scathing sarcasm, dropping her hands away.
Exquisite. He continued his inspection, seizing the chance to appreciate the way the knit clung to the contours of her waist and ample hips, halting mid-thigh to reveal those curvy stems all the way to her open-toed shoes.
Coming back, he couldn’t resist brushing one tendril of hair so it joined the rest behind her naked shoulder, which allowed him the slightest caress of her downy skin.
Her spine snapped and her skin pimpled. Her indrawn breath was erotic enough to stir his blood, but he steeled himself against more than a nod of approval before he opened the door.
The temperature, decor and light level were exactly the same as they exited his office, but everything was more intense. Bigger. Brighter. Louder.
He hadn’t been this naturally high since his sixth Christmas, when his aunt had somehow procured the set of toy race cars he’d coveted. Of course, things had gone to hell by his ninth birthday, but with this much good fortune in his lap, he was able to believe that prayers could be answered, miracles were real and dreams could come true.
“I’m gone for the day,” he told his assistant as they passed her desk.
His car was at the curb, thanks to his assistant’s ability to read his mind. He helped Mira into it, then texted Silvio Galetti as soon as he was seated.
“Home,” he absently told his driver as the car pulled into traffic.
“A hotel,” Mira contradicted him crossly.
“We need somewhere private.” Rocco’s mind was firing on all cylinders. “You’ve gifted me with the element of surprise. Let’s use it.”
“How?”
He hadn’t decided yet.
His phone pinged with a reply, but it came from Silvio’s assistant. Silvio was taking personal time with his family. They were out of the country, but she promised to have Silvio reach out to Rocco the next time she spoke to him. It might take a few days.
Their anniversary cruise. Right. Damn. If Mira did know that Otto wasn’t her father, Rocco wanted to warn Silvio.
There was an outside chance that Otto had told her that Silvio was her father, but Rocco doubted it. If Otto wanted that information known, he would have already used it. That nondefamation clause must still be at play, as Silvio had always suspected. And, if Mira was pulling her money, Otto would already be scrambling for funds, not wanting to pay a penalty that, presumably, would benefit Mira through her mother’s estate.
Which didn’t mean he wouldn’t tellMiraif he thought he could use the information as leverage.
Rocco glanced at Mira’s stiff profile. She hadn’t once referred to Otto as “my father” today. Did she realize how telling that was?
That must be what their falling-out was about, though. What else could shake her so badly she had come tohim?
Of course, there was also the matter of their sexual attraction, whether she wanted to admit to it or not.
He did hate her a little for obsessing him this way. His desire for her was probably coloring his reasoning right now, urging him to keep her close even though he couldn’t trust her. Not until he had a better understanding of her motives.
How could he discern them, though, if he wasn’t with her?
It was the sort of rationale produced behind the fly, rather than above the collar, but he took her to his home, anyway.
Mira was annoyed by how much Rocco’s picturesque apartment building charmed her. It was five floors and reminded her of a wedding cake with its pale yellow exterior and icing-like scrollwork of plaster around arched windows and fat balustrades.
Inside, the decor was equally appealing in its old-world elegance of polished parquet floors and arched alcoves and glass doors offering a view to a private courtyard with a pool surrounded by orange and lemon trees.
The staff greeted Rocco warmly before the elevator took them to the top floor. They exited onto a landing next to a stairwell of polished wooden banisters and carpeted marble stairs that zigzagged their way back down to the bottom floor.
Rocco waved a fob against the mechanism on one of the carved double doors, letting her into a miniature version of the foyer downstairs with an arrangement of fresh flowers blooming on a narrow table set in a recessed section of the wall. He dropped his fob into a dish there.
