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‘I could ask you the same question.’ He flicked on the light and saw her flinch away from the beam and wrap her arms around herself.
‘Switch that off!’
She was in her pyjamas. A soft shade of pink and covered in … frogs?
She looked impossibly young—far too young to have produced such a rich, perfect sound. If he hadn’t heard it himself, he wouldn’t have believed it.
For a moment they both stared at each other.
He noticed that even without the make-up her lashes were long and thick, providing a startling contrast to those spectacular blue eyes. She had a sweet face, he thought. Pretty, rather than beautiful.
‘Stop staring!’ Visibly self-conscious, she gave him a furious look and hunched her shoulders.
The air was thick with sexual tension and it exasperated him because right now he didn’t want to think about the intensity of the chemistry. He didn’t want to feel that because although he’d been wrong to call her talentless he hadn’t been wrong to call her an opportunist.
‘You often play the piano in your pyjamas?’
‘Obviously I wasn’t expecting you to be stalking me.’ Tense as a bow, she pushed her hair out of her eyes in an entirely feminine gesture that told him she would rather have walked on needles than let him see her without her make-up.
He could have told her that the make-up made no difference to the attraction. If anything, his struggle was all the greater for seeing her because he now had a disturbingly clear idea of how she’d look first thing in the morning emerging from sex-induced sleep.
Her cheeks pink, she stood abruptly, but he noticed that she carefully closed the lid of the piano, protecting the keys. ‘Go ahead, yell at me. I know I shouldn’t have come in here but I honestly wasn’t doing any harm and I didn’t think you’d even catch me. Are you having me followed or something?’
‘I was working. I saw the light go on.’
‘You were working at two in the morning?’ Without looking at him, she gathered up a stack of papers she’d piled on the piano stool next to her. ‘You need a different job. From where I’m sitting, yours sucks.’
‘It has its moments. Like five minutes ago when I heard that song. Who wrote it?’
Her spine was a rigid line. ‘Why do you care?’
‘Because it’s incredible. Because I haven’t heard it before. Because I want whoever wrote it to write something for me.’ Fascinated by the feminine curves outlined by the flimsy pyjamas, Matteo struggled valiantly to keep his mind on the music. ‘Do you have a contact number for him?’
‘You’re so sexist.’
‘Her then.’ Impatient for an answer and desperate to remove himself from this sexually charged atmosphere, Matteo retrieved his phone. ‘Name? Number?’
‘This songwriter doesn’t write songs for other people.’
‘They wrote that for you?’
‘You think I stole it?’ Her voice had a brittle edge to it. ‘Thanks.’
It was a physical effort not to haul her against him and kiss her again as he had on that first night. For some reason her nude lips were every bit as appealing as the glossy, strawberry-red version. He knew they’d be soft because he’d already kissed her. He knew she’d taste sweet, because he’d already tasted her.
And although part of him wanted to tell her that he thought her voice was sensational, he knew that offering up that degree of praise would shift the nature of their relationship. Experience told him that the only thing keeping them apart was the thin layer of animosity they’d managed to construct. A layer that was now torn and full of holes.
Matteo struggled to draw together the flimsy, ragged edges of the protection he’d spun. ‘I didn’t know you played the piano.’
‘Yes, well, I think we’ve already established that there are a lot of things you don’t know, including when to relax and have fun.’ She stuffed the papers into an oversize bag and dragged it onto her shoulder. As usual her feet were bare and this time she didn’t seem to have bothered even to carry her shoes.
Matteo breathed deeply, trying to find the balance between antagonising her further and crossing the barriers he’d erected. ‘I’ll overlook the fact that you broke into my recording studio if you give me the phone number of the songwriter.’
‘I didn’t break in. I walked in. You left the door unlocked.’ Chin in the air, she marched past him but he caught her arm, spinning her around to face him.
‘Maledizione, Izzy, who wrote the song?’
Finally she looked at him. Straight at him.
