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CHAPTER SEVEN

Amanda

He's going to kiss me.

That's the only thought my brain can manage, looping on repeat like a song I can't skip. Valentino leans in and his eyes drop to my mouth. I'm sure of it. I watch them do that slow slide from my eyes to my lips, and my whole body lights up like a struck match.

I tilt my chin up. His hand moves. This is finally happening.

Then I feel nylon stretch over my hips and hear the soft click of metal.

He buckled my seatbelt.

I freeze with my mouth half-open like an idiot. He pulls back into his own seat and faces forward. Like I didn't just offer myself up on a silver platter.

A seatbelt. He leaned in for a seatbelt.

I press my thighs together hard, because my body has not gotten the memo that nothing happened. My body thinks something very much did.

I'm soaked through, embarrassingly so. I'm going to think about this for the rest of my life.

The wipers drag across the windshield. Thunk. Thunk. I stare at them so I don't have to look at him.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

"Your hotel." He doesn't look at me when he says it. His hands just grip the wheel.

I roll my eyes and sigh. "That’s not what I meant and you know it." I turn to the window. "Just—you took Elio's car. You sent him off in a cab and took his car. For what? So you could drive me back to the hotel he was supposed to take me to?"

He says nothing. Talking to Valentino is like talking to a very attractive wall, except this wall occasionally threatens to kill people.

I cross my arms over my chest, which does absolutely nothing to fix the situation happening lower down. Somewhere on the floor there's a coffee cup rolling around. Elio's, probably, and I almost feel bad for him before I remember the fiancée and the lying.

And he starts driving as if I said nothing at all.

I don't know why I expected him to talk. He's not the kind of man to fill the silence. He just exists inside it, completely at ease. Meanwhile my brain does cartwheels with both of us trapped inside this little box of heat and the tapping of rain on the roof.

I didn't imagine the way his eyes lingered on my mouth. I know what a man looks like when he wants to kiss me. He wanted to. I'd put money on it. I'd put the whole Casa Aurelia campaign on it.

So why didn't he?

Because you don't deserve it, babe, an annoying voice whispers.

Nope. I'm not doing this. It can shut up.

He just… Changed his mind. Maybe has a fiancée too.

God, I'm pathetic.

A car horn blares somewhere behind us. Valentino doesn't flinch. His hands stay steady on the wheel. And because I apparently notice everything about him now, I observe how carefully he drives.

I look away before he can catch me staring at him in the glass.

Valentino

She shifts in the seat next to me, crosses one long leg over the other, making the hem of her skirt slide higher.

I try to keep my eyes on the road because that’s the only safe place for them.