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“Spaghetti. I know, cliché, but I could easily recognize all the ingredients without having to speak Italian.”
“And how about dessert?”
The moment the words left his mouth, he could’ve kicked himself for not keeping the question to himself. In the close confines of the boat, with her recently showered fresh scent lingering in the air like it had in the car, his mind immediately flashed back to the scorching kiss at the Villa Melzi that morning. The one at Simone’s had been nice, too, but it’d ended badly—how could it not with a gun involved?—and, that one certainly didn’t make him crave a long, slow, hot dessert like the one in the garden did. His mouth actually watered as he fiddled with the camera in his hands.
“Sponge cake with fresh fruit and cream.”
He made a noncommittal noise, still vying for control over his over-imaginative mind.
“You want something else?”
She was bent over, digging pots and pans and a cutting board from his small cupboards. He eyed her tempting curves and said, “Nothing you’d go for.”
A sauté pan banged onto one of the two stove burners. She put a hand on her hip and turned to give him a challenging look. “You don’t think I can handle your dessert?”
Now was the time to lay on the playboy charm and let her know they were talking about two entirely different things. See where it led. It’s what his character would do to help pass the time until tomorrow. Ease the stress. Get their minds off things.
He snorted softly. Yeah, right.
“You might be surprised,” she said.
Oh, there’d be surprise all right. He flipped open the viewfinder of the camera and powered it on. “I don’t think we’ve got the right ingredients.” Oil and water didn’t mix anyway, right? No matter how hot the fire burned.
“Just tell me what you want. I’m very good at improvising.”
Irritation had crept into her tone.
He paused with his finger above the play button. “Forget I asked. I don’t need dessert.”
“For a million dollars cash, dessert is the least I can do.”
Fine. Trent slowly and deliberately slid his gaze up the length of her body until their eyes locked, leaving no question as to his definition of dessert. Color flooded her cheeks and she quickly turned toward the stove.
To grab a knife.
He smiled, wondering if he should take the move as a pointed warning. After her suspicion at Simone’s and cool attitude since, he’d be stupid not to, even though she applied the razor sharp steel to the onion and garlic, not him.
When both ingredients were sizzling in a pan with a liberal splash of olive oil, she turned her slicing skills to the tomatoes and he started digging.
“So when was money ever more trouble than it was worth to you?”
The blade cut through a tomato and hit the cutting board beneath with a thud. “When isn’t it?”
“Uh, uh. One million’s got to buy me more than that.”
The look she gave him clearly said it didn’t. He dropped his hands and the camera to rest in his lap and played dirty. “You read, in intimate detail, how I feel about certain things.” In particular, his father. No one had known how much the man got to him except Sean.
The journal reminder stilled her hands. They restarted in sharp, choppy jerks. “I didn’t have what you’d call the typical all-American childhood.”
“No apple pie, a big ol’ dog, and family game nights playing Monopoly?”
This time she gave a soft snort. “I wish.”
“I hear Monopoly isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
He received a small smile, but it didn’t last, and he still didn’t know what made her think money wasn’t worth the trouble. If she’d grown up without it, he’d assume the hard work involved in reaching financial security would be more than worth it. It had been for him after he struck out on his own.
Or…was it more that he could shove his success in his father’s face through the tabloids?
