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His gaze drifted down over the flushed, rosy skin of her cheeks, her full, pouty lips that were the kind a man imagined wrapped around a certain part of his anatomy...
Matteo’s body temperature soared. Quinn cleared her throat. The flicker of sexual awareness that replaced the vulnerability in her eyes slammed into him with the force of a hammer. Merda. Where had he ever gotten the impression this woman was cold? Or maybe it was just that she was a perfect combination of fire and ice?
Quinn dropped her gaze to somewhere around his shoulder and waved a hand at him. “Give me five minutes and I’ll be ready.”
He nodded. The click of the door brought back his sanity. Bringing Quinn Davis to her knees in that particular fashion might have been the natural order of things for him—but, regrettably, he needed to use his brain on this one, not his body.
Unfortunate. But not nearly as unfortunate as the consequences of not playing this one by the book.
Quinn emerged in a navy dress that made the most of her voluptuous curves in her usual, conservative fashion. Her ultracomposed, cool demeanor was firmly back in place.
“I hope this is okay?” She smoothed her hands over her hips. “You didn’t specify.”
“Perfetto.” He nodded. “I’m sorry, I should have mentioned it was just the two of us dining in the cellar. Anything goes.”
A wary look crossed her face. His lips curved. “I promise my best behavior, Quinn. We can recite every last statistic on De Campo over dinner. I’ll even tell you what we polish the floors with.”
“Ha, ha,” she murmured, long lashes coming down to veil her expression. “I wasn’t worried.”
Si, you were. He wasn’t the only one having a hard time handling the chemistry between them, but he instinctively knew Quinn Davis had to feel in control of a situation for him to accomplish anything tonight, so he let it go.
Fortunately, he was an expert at the slow, insidious penetration of a woman’s defenses.
He took her on a tour of the west wing, showing her the centuries-old library, the opulent, chandelier-encrusted ballroom and the music room with the grand piano. When she had a suitably glazed-over look at the pure scale of things, he took her through the stone hallways to the east wing where the restaurant was just starting to fill up with locals and tourists. She was unfailingly polite and charming to his chef, making Guerino Pisani smile broadly and insist she come back after dinner to let him know how she liked it. Was it just him, the playboy, she disliked then?
His ego slightly dented, Matteo led Quinn down the dark, winding stone stairwell to the cellar. “You weren’t kidding,” she murmured, craning her neck to take in the two ancient skulls that sat backlit in one of the alcoves. “Do you know who they belonged to?”
“We assume someone unfit for a Christian burial. Spaniards, the French, the forces of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, they were all imprisoned down here. Also the Aldobrandeschi and the Guelphs of Florence—powerful families at war with the Sienese.”
She followed him down the hallway to the cellar. The stone walls on either side of them were thick slabs of rock that would have made escape impossible. Collections of medieval weapons—swords, pikes, helmets and breastplates—were lit on either side of them.
“It all seems so brutal,” Quinn said, giving them a long look.
“It was. It was hand-to-hand combat in its most savage form.”
That feeling of brutality remained in the majestic cellar Matteo’s grandfather Alfonso De Campo had built. The exposed brick walls rose thirty feet, tiny bar-encased windows the only natural light entering the room. The muted lighting hinted at a history of darkness. But it was the feeling that souls had suffered here that got into your bones. Even with all the elegant touches Alfonso had included—the dark walnut shelving that rose fifteen feet high to house De Campo’s most precious vintages and the elegant, hand-turned showpiece of a bar.
“It’s breathtaking,” Quinn murmured, wide-eyed. “Did they execute prisoners down here?”
His mouth tilted. “From what I’ve been told, most died from existing injuries.”
She didn’t look so reassured by the response. He held a chair out for her at the candlelit table for two the serving staff had set in the middle of the room. Then he sat down opposite her and swept his hand toward the bottle of wine breathing in the middle of the table. “You’ll have some?”
She scanned the label. The Brunello he’d chosen was the highest-ranking bottle in De Campo’s one-hundred-year-old history. Apparently, its significance wasn’t lost on Quinn, a wry smile curving her mouth. “Refuse the 1970 De Campo Brunello? I think not.”
He poured the rich dark red, almost brown liquid into their glasses and held his own up. “To a successful partnership.”
She tilted her glass in a mocking salute. “So confident.”
“I don’t intend to lose, Quinn.”
“Then let the best candidate win.” Her green gaze glittered as she lifted her glass and swirled its dark contents around the edge. She closed her eyes and breathed the wine in. He found himself hypnotized by the way she gave herself over to the full sensual experience. Quinn Davis was definitely scorching hot on the inside. The type who would be more than a match for any man. The question was, did she ever drop that rigid exterior and let herself go?
Stretch out like a cat and let a man pleasure her until she screamed?
She opened her eyes. Looked directly into his. He was not nearly quick enough to wipe the curiosity off his face. A rosy hue stole over her golden skin, her gaze dropping away from his.
He could work with this.
“So,” she murmured huskily, after their food had been served, “give me your list.”
He sat back in his chair and balanced the Brunello on his knee. “The wine list in your Park Avenue property is far too big. You’re giving people too much choice. Distracting them. You need to allow your sommelier to do his job and sell the wines.”
She frowned. “People like choice. I like choice. I hate it when I go to a place that tries to tell me what I want to drink.”
“Si, but you have too much choice. The night Riccardo and I were there, a couple at the table beside us were all set to splurge on an expensive bottle, but by the time they got through your monstrosity of a list, they gave up and ordered a midend vintage they were familiar with. Your sommelier,” he drawled, “never made it to their table that night.”
“We’re short-staffed there,” she said defensively.
“It was a Tuesday night at six. There were empty tables.”
She was silent. Pursed her lips. “Go on...”
“You need more beautiful women working the bar.”
She lifted a brow. “So men can go ogle them and spend their money? This is a high-end restaurant I’m running, Matteo, not a strip joint.”
“Precisely. Seventy-five percent of the patrons at the bar that night were men—financial power players having a drink after work. Those types are all about the eye candy. You put a beautiful woman in front of them, they’ll stay longer, drink more and I guarantee, they’ll keep coming back.”
“I suppose I should have them in short skirts, too?”
“Sex sells, Quinn.”
She sighed and leaned back in her chair. “Sometimes I think life would be so much easier if I were a man. You are such simple creatures.”
He smiled at that. “If you mean honest and straightforward about how we feel without a hundred pounds of analysis spread on top of it, then si, it’s true.”
“But in being that way, you miss many of the subtleties of life.”
“Care to give an example?”
“I’d prefer you finish your list.”
* * *
By the time he had and they’d eaten dinner, Quinn had the glaring feeling she’d vastly underestimated how valuable De Campo could be in helping her dig Luxe out of the mess it was in. Matteo was clearly a brilliant businessman and a marketing genius. De Campo was making scads of money at its übertrendy wine bar locations on the East and West Coasts. She’d done the research.
“You make some very good points,” she conceded, pushing her empty plate away. “But there still remains the fact you are competition for us in the restaurant space.”
He shook his head. “It’s not the same clientele. Go sit in one of our wine bars. The customer is ten years younger at least. They do not have the disposable income to eat at Luxe.”
Her gaze sharpened. “How would you guarantee you wouldn’t compete with us in the future? Write it into the contract?”
He flinched, a slight, almost imperceptible movement. “We could talk about that.”
She pressed her lips together. “It’s a problem. I agree that there are synergies there. But I can’t sell this to the board if we’re going to be competing against each other.”
“Who’s to say Silver Kangaroo won’t get into the restaurant business? You can’t know what’s going to happen in the future.”
