“A fair assessment.”
“My sister hates when people decide what she can and can’t do before she’s even opened her mouth. So I learned a long time ago that if someone wants to tell me something about themselves, they will. And if they don’t, it’s none of my business.”
He held my gaze for a beat too long, something unreadable passing through his expression.
“Emily Hart,” he said quietly, “you are proving unexpectedly dangerous yourself.”
My pulse gave one stupid, traitorous leap. “I thought we’d already established that was your thing.”
One corner of his mouth curved. “Unfortunately for you, it is.”
The shiver that ran down my spine came with excitement rather than fear, and that difference mattered more than I wanted to admit.
He didn't elaborate on the cane, and I didn't ask. I hadn't lied when I said it didn't matter. It wasn't what defined him, at least not to me. Maybe it had shaped him in ways I couldn't yet see. I wasn't naïve enough to think otherwise. But the man sitting across from me was what held my attention.
“Why Boston?” he asked, taking a small sip of wine just as the waiter arrived with our starters. Arancini, he said, setting the plates down between us.
I had a perfectly rehearsed answer for that question, one I had repeated so often to family, friends, and anyone else curious enough to ask that I had almost started to believe it myself. What struck me then was that it would also be the first lie I told Pietro.
“I wanted to see something different,” I said. “A chance to study on the other side of the country. Boston is full of history. It’s practically sacred ground for history nerds.”
“Makes sense.”
He didn’t question it, didn’t push, but that only made me more certain he had seen straight through it.
By the time the tiramisu arrived, I had stopped watching myself so closely.
Somewhere between the starters, Pietro’s dry little comments, the way he listened when I spoke as if nothing I said was too small to matter, and the absurdly good pasta I was certain to dream about later, the tight knot inside me had loosened without my permission. I was still aware of him, painfully so, but no longer in that rigid, braced way I had been at the start of the evening. I felt…at ease.
That should probably have worried me more than it did.
Instead, I found myself smiling as he pushed the plate a little more toward me after I’d claimed I was full and then stolen two more bites anyway.
“You are a terrible liar,” he said.
“I’m choosing not to be offended, because this tiramisu may actually have changed me as a person.”
One corner of his mouth lifted. “I hoped it might.”
When the evening finally came to an end, I was almost sorry for it.
Almost.
Then the bill disappeared with whatever rich-people sorcery Pietro had clearly arranged in advance, and a few minutes later we were standing outside the restaurant with the cool Boston night settling around us.
“I can get an Uber,” I said, adjusting my bag on my shoulder before he could say anything.
His gaze settled on me, steady and unreadable in the glow of the streetlights. “You can.”
I blinked. That was not the response I had expected.
He slipped one hand into the pocket of his coat. “If it makes you more comfortable, take the Uber. I’ll follow behind. I only want to know you got home safely.”
The offer, because it was an offer and not an assumption, caught me off guard.
He wasn't pushing. Just giving me the choice. "You can drive me."
Something softened in his face, subtle enough that I might have missed it if I hadn’t already started paying far too much attention to him.
