“I didn’t think I would see you again.”
The fact that she had noticed I was gone pleased me more than was reasonable. “I’m sorry I disappeared without notice. I had to go home for an engagement.” I looked down at the phone in her hand. “Why don’t you give me your phone number so this doesn’t happen again.”
“Smooth.” She sat a little straighter.
“I’m trying. Did it work?”
Before she could reply, a man’s voice cut in behind me.
“Hey, sorry, the line was ridiculous?—”
I turned.
Tall, neat, forgettable. Academic sort. Harmless face. Bad timing.
I hated him on the spot.
He stopped when he saw me standing there and glanced between us with the wary expression of a man realizing he had walked into a conversation already carrying more charge than he liked.
Emily cleared her throat. “Daniel, this is Pietro. Pietro, Daniel.”
I inclined my head just enough to be polite.
Daniel held the two coffees in his hands, clearly trying to decide whether I was leaving.
I was not.
“I was just saying hello,” I said, because technically that was true.
Daniel looked at Emily. “Right.”
There was a brief, uncomfortable silence.
Then Emily, who looked faintly horrified by all of it, reached for one of the cups. “Thanks.”
Daniel handed her the coffee, though his eyes stayed on me in a way that suggested he had understood rather more than I would have preferred.
Then, to my irritation, he sat down.
“Well, Pietro,” he said with the strained politeness of a man trying very hard to pretend he was unbothered, “it was nice meeting you. We were just?—”
I tapped the tip of my cane lightly against the floor. “Excellent. I’ll join you for a drink.”
Before either of them could object, I turned, lifted an empty chair from the neighboring table without bothering to ask the students sitting there, and placed it beside Emily rather than across from her. Close enough that my thigh brushed hers when I sat down. Close enough that her soft floral perfume reachedme, subtle and clean and far more distracting than it had any right to be.
“Pietro,” Emily said, and there was a warning in her voice now.
I ignored it.
Daniel gave her a helpless look, and to my astonishment she rested her hand lightly on my thigh.
I was almost certain she did it without thinking, some instinctive pacifying gesture meant to stop whatever she feared I was about to do. Even so, the touch burned straight through me, sending heat down my spine in a way that was both inconvenient and impossible to misunderstand.
I knew she felt it too, from the way her fingers tensed before she tried to pull her hand back. I covered it with mine before she could.
The movement was quiet enough that Daniel might have missed it if he had not already been watching closely. His gaze dropped briefly to where my hand rested over hers, then lifted again.
He took a slow drink of his coffee.
