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His eyes met mine and he handed me a glass. ‘Not for long.’
My pulse was racing and I lifted my glass. ‘Merry Christmas.’
‘Buon Natale! Salute!’
Oh, God, Italian was a hot language.
We drank and the champagne fizzed in my mouth and spread through my veins. Or maybe it was the chemistry that was fizzing, but whatever it was I could feel it all the way through me. ‘The only Italian I know is Pizza Margherita. And you’re the first Italian man I’ve met.’
The corners of his mouth flickered. ‘I’m Sicilian.’
‘Like Al Pacino.’
‘Al Pacino was born in New York.’
Shut up, Hayley. ‘I’ll stop talking.’
‘Don’t,’ he breathed and he turned to put his champagne glass down on the low glass table. ‘Don’t stop talking. I like it.’
‘You like it when I talk crap?’
‘You’re not talking crap. You’re just nervous.’ He removed my glass from my hand and I should have objected, not just because I was enjoying the champagne but because after Charlie I didn’t want any man telling me when I could or couldn’t drink.
‘Actually—’
‘I like it when you don’t censor what you say and do.’
Just when I was ready to punch him, he said something like that.
‘You didn’t look as if you liked it when my dress gave way.’
‘I didn’t want all those wedding guests having heart attacks. I didn’t think the hospital could cope with a major incident that close to Christmas.’
I was laughing and blushing at the same time because it was impossible to remember it without also remembering the moments we’d shared. ‘I still don’t know what happened.’
‘The inevitable happened.’
‘Not true. I’m not saying it hadn’t crossed my mind but not in a million years did I really think it would happen.’
He paused. ‘I wasn’t talking about the dress.’
‘Neither was I.’ I was eye level with his throat and I could see the dark stubble shadowing his jaw. I’d seen the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls, but I decided there weren’t many better views than this one. ‘I just didn’t ever see us together. I didn’t think you liked who I was.’
‘I didn’t like who you were when you were with Charlie, because that wasn’t the real you. You were constantly trying to rein yourself in.’ He stroked his finger over my jaw, studying me and I gulped, wondering how he knew so much.
‘Maybe you’re not going to like the real me.’
‘Hayley, I saw who you were the first time I met you. I spotted you across the room and you were so full of energy, so excited about your topic that I moved closer because I had to hear what you were saying.’
‘Probably something boring.’ The truth was I’d noticed him, too. ‘It was at Charlie’s party. Two years ago.’
‘Twenty months, two weeks, two days.’
I choked on the champagne. ‘Is that a lawyer thing? Remembering the tiny details?’
He looked at me steadily. ‘Some things stay in my head.’
‘You didn’t talk to me that night.’
