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And she pulled away like it didn’t feel all kinds of wrong—she pulled away like it meant nothing. “Goodnight, Dimitrios.”

But his softly voiced, “Sweet dreams, Chloe,” stayed with her all damn night.

“I’m going to be rolling back to London if I keep eating like this,” she quipped, stabbing another piece of calamari and lifting it to her lips. “It might be winter in the Cotswolds but Jane cooks like we’re floating in the middle of the Med, and I am one hundred per cent here for it.”

Dimitrios’s smile made her insides melt. Despite the cold austerity of the enormous dining room, they were sitting close enough for their feet to brush beneath the table and she couldn’t get enough of that incidental contact.

Ellie had been deposited back at school that morning, and all day, Chloe had worked on turning his house into a Christmas masterpiece, but her mind had been distracted by what would come. And now? Sitting opposite him, eating dinner, when she was pretty sure they both wanted to disappear upstairs and lose themselves in this. Yet there was something addictive about delayed gratification. Knowing how badly she wanted him, that it was inevitable and would be incredible, just made everything more vibrant. Even the food tasted better.

“She worked for me in Greece,” he said. “I brought her back when I moved.”

Chloe considered that. For some reason, it hadn’t even occurred to her that the other woman had been with him longer than he’d been in the UK.

“You’re surprised?” he said, reaching for a piece of bread and liberally coating it in taramasalata.

“Not in a bad way.” She shrugged. “I just presumed she came with the house, too. Like the furniture in here.”

He laughed softly and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. “She’d love that. But, no. She’s worked for me about four years. I have assistants in the office, housekeepers for each of my properties, but Jane sort of keeps it all glued together.”

Was that…jealousy? Something sharp barbed inside of Chloe, taking her breath away. It was the admiration in his voice, the quick admission that he relied on someone. A beautiful woman who was constantly in his sphere.

“And she cooks, too?” Chloe said, trying to flatten the envy from her voice.

“That’s her passion. I’m just lucky she’s happy to do this. I have told her repeatedly I can hire a chef, but she insists that’s not what she wants. So unless I’m entertaining, it’s Jane.”

Four years was a long time. Chloe, who’d only known Dimitrios a matter of weeks, had no right to feel anything about the people who were in his life before—and would be after she left. It was ridiculous. She had friends, colleagues of the male variety. Just because she was currently in a ‘never dating again’ phase didn’t mean she couldn’t have men in her orbit, nor that there was anything wrong with it.

“Do you entertain much?”

“Not really. And not since Laura died.”

She chewed another piece of calamari thoughtfully. “Ellie was telling me about her mum’s Christmas parties.”

“Was she?” The question was sharp, almost accusatory. She glanced at him quickly, but his face now showed curiosity. “I’m surprised,” he said, after a pause, sipping his wine. “She barely mentions her mother to me.”

Chloe made a sound as she considered that. “Perhaps she doesn’t want to upset you?”

“Upset me?” he repeated, obviously surprised.

“You were close to them, too. You’re grieving as well. She strikes me as a thirteen-year-old with above-average emotional intelligence.”

“Talking is important,” he said, not disagreeing with her statement, though. “It’s important for her.”

“So she talked to me,” Chloe said.

“She doesn’t even talk to Jane.”

There it was again—a barb of envy at his statement. Like he couldn’t believe Ellie would choose to open up to Chloe over Jane. “I don’t know what to tell you, Dimitrios. We were baking in the kitchen, and it came out. Though I will say, that’s something I’ve seen time and time again with my nieces and nephews. Sometimes they open up best when they’re distracted. For my oldest nephew—he’s fifteen—it’s whenever he’s being driven somewhere. For my other nephew—he’s eleven—it’s when his dad’s watching the football,” she added with a smile. “Maybe for Ellie it’s being in the kitchen?” She hesitated but forced herself to continue, for the sake of the teenager. “You say Jane loves to cook? Have they ever done that together?”

He dragged a hand over his jaw, frowning. “Not that I know of.”

“Then maybe you could suggest it?”

He nodded thoughtfully, and Chloe sighed. “Look, I’m not a psychologist, obviously.”

“But you’re good with people,” he interrupted. “I think you might have above average emotional intelligence too,” he quipped, smiling, and beneath the table, he moved forward so his knee could brush hers.

Her pulse thundered so hard and fast she almost forgot what she’d been going to say, but she caught the threads of her thought at the last minute. “You already know I went through a bad breakup earlier this year,” she said, waving a hand in the air as if to brush away the bad juju that came from mentioning Jaxon, albeit obliquely. “It knocked me sideways. I am a die-hard lover of love. I grew up with two parents who were besotted by each other, with siblings who would all have taken a bullet for me. I watched rom coms and read romance books and I always believed I would meet someone and be swept off my feet, and live happily ever after.”