His jaw firms, and for a long moment, he just looks at me. “Don’t mention it.”
He leaves, and I walk over to sit on the bed. The duvet is cool and soft under my palms, and when I press my nose into the pillow, I pick up a subtle hint of his smell.
A wave of pleasure crashes through me.
You’re losing it.
Lifting my face off the pillow, I glance to my right. There’s a book on the nightstand. I pick it up and read the title.
La Vita Nuova.Dante.
Inside the book, I see it’s got English and Italian side-by-side. I wonder if Rowan speaks Italian.
In the bathroom, I wash my face, do my business on the toilet, and take a quick shower. But when I pull one of the T-shirts I sleep in out of my bag, all I smell is smoke.
I drop it, zip the bag, and shove it under the bed. I can’t sleep in that. I don’t want to dream of the fire.
Better to ask Rowan for a shirt. I’ll wash my things tomorrow and give it back to him then.
I pull on the hoodie Rowan gave me earlier today, zip it all the way up, and venture outside the bedroom.
Rowan’s on the sofa, typing something on his phone.
“Could I get something to sleep in?”
His eyes snap to mine and then drop to my bare legs. His hoodie is big enough to almost reach my knees, but I’m suddenly very aware of the fact that I’m wearing nothing underneath. My thighs clench together.
Rowan’s eyes are darker as he gets to his feet. “Of course.” When he brushes past me to enter the bedroom, a pulse of heat appears between my legs. He rummages in the closet and tucks some stuff under his arm, probably planning for tomorrow. Then he pulls out a neatly folded T-shirt. “Here.”
I take it from him and allow it to unfold. As expected, it’s huge. It’ll be as good as a nightgown on me.
“Does that work?”
“Yep.” I squeeze the T-shirt. “I’ll give it back to you tomorrow.”
When he doesn’t answer right away, I glance at his face. He’s looking at the shirt in my hands, his thumb dragging over his bottom lip. The silence stretches until his eyes lift to mine.
There’s a small scar right above his left brow.
“Keep it.”
CHAPTER 17
NERO
Beep. Beep. Beep.
I mutter a string of curses at the phone as I jam my thumb against the snooze icon.
I’m not a morning person. Never been one. For most of my life, my work happened at night.
Now Sandro and I have meetings starting from eight a.m., sometimes even on a fucking Saturday like today.
We’re pitching a plan for what might be one of the biggest projects we’ve done, and while the architect’s running the show, I’ll be on deck when we start talking numbers. The clients are a pain in the ass who like to hold mind-numbingly long meetings on weekends. Normally, I wouldn’t care but I feel a pang of disappointment about leaving Blake on her own today.
When we bought the firm, we kept most of the existing staff. Handy Heroes had good people, but the owner was running the business into the ground. He barely had enough to cover a month of payroll when we scooped it up.
I wasn’t a total stranger to the business. Back in New York, we controlled a good chunk of the cement industry. If a firm wanted to bid on a project worth more than three million, they had to be approved by us. The owners paid us ten percent of their contracts—or at least the smart ones did.
