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Yes. I’m yours. I’ll always beyours.
“What does one wear to dinner in Florence?” She kept her tone light. If he’d noticed that she avoided the subject of their relationship, he didn’t sayanything.
“Whatever one wants,” he said. “Better yet wear nothing at all and we’ll stayin.”
She laughed and headed for the hall they’d passed through when they’d first entered the apartment. “You already offered to take me out. What do you think I am —easy?”
His laugh followed her down thehall.
11
Ronan watchedJulia from across the table as she closed her eyes around a bite of chocolate soufflé with salted caramel ice cream. She moaned and he was embarrassed to feel his cock harden in his trousers, the look of bliss on her face all toofamiliar.
“Oh my god,” she moaned. “Sogood.”
She opened her eyes and sat up straighter when she caught him looking ather.
He grinned. “By all means,continue.”
She licked her lips, slowly and with feeling, then smirked. “Want abite?”
He liked the shine in her eyes, the teasing glint. The circumstances surrounding their relationship so far had provided little room forplay.
“I’m going to do more than take a bite if you keep it up,” he saidsoftly.
Her dark eyes flared amber in the candlelight, her chest rising and falling as her breath quickened. “Promise?”
A surge of lust roared through hisbody.
“I think it’s time for thecheck.”
Up until tonight, he would have said she was most beautiful wearing his T-shirt the morning after sleeping in his arms, her hair tousled around her sleepy face, and while that was definitely still in the running, it was a close call to the way she looked sitting across from him at the Panorama restaurant on the rooftop of La Scalatta hotel, the sky inky and starlit overhead, the city lights shining like a carpet of diamondsbelow.
After years of keeping it simple, he’d finally availed himself to MIS’s international payroll, calling on a woman named Joanne Fuller in Florence, an American expat Declan promised would deliver a selection of appropriate clothing to the apartment well before Ronan’s arrival withJulia.
Dec had been right: they’d arrived to find three perfect cocktail dresses hanging in the wardrobe of the apartment’s master bedroom. The selection provided enough variety to allow for Julia’s preference, but while Ronan would have been happy to see her in any of the dresses, it was hard to imagine any of them being more perfect than the curve-hugging ivory dress she’d chosen, the hemline just far enough above the knee to leave something to the imagination, a matching crocheted shawl draped around her shoulders and providing a glimpse at her bareskin.
She’d pulled her hair back into a loose knot at the back of her neck. Tendrils of her hair had been falling from the front throughout dinner, framing her face inwaves.
The waiter brought the bill and Ronan quickly paid, eager to remove the delicate dress from Julia’s body, to run his lips and hands over her porcelainskin.
He felt like some kind of magic had taken hold as they walked home over cobblestone streets, the old city keeping her secrets all around them. Boston was far away, his brothers part of another world. Even the specter of Elise seemed to be otherwise occupied for this onenight.
Now there was just the two of them, Julia’s hand in his, the smell of the Arno layered under the city like a subtleperfume.
She sighed and leaned her head on his arm as they walked, her heels — another item left in the wardrobe by Ms. Fuller — clicking on the old stonestreets.
“That was the best meal I’ve ever had,” she said, her voicesleepy.
“I agree.” He didn’t tell her that it wasn’t the food. It wasn’t the artichoke and tuna salad, perfectly seasoned, or the tender pistachio-crusted lamb. It wasn’t the aged filet with truffle sauce or the perfect wine pairings, each one more sensual on the tongue than the last. It wasn’t even the soufflé, although he agreed with Julia that it wasmagnificent.
It was her, shimmering like the finest jewel amid a city of jewels, the most precious of any artifact in a city overflowing with priceless treasures. Her face had been smoothed of its worry, as if the city had worked its magic on hertoo.
There had been no talk of Manifest, of the party to which they still had to gain entrance or the men who operated behind Manifest’s impenetrable facade. They’d talked instead about their childhood and adolescence, steering clear of the sad stuff as if by unspokenagreement.
Julia had told him about the time she’d cut her own bangs in fifth grade the day before picture day and about the time Elise’s date had dumped her the night before prom, prompting Julia to wear a tux and go as herdate.
Ronan had told her about the time he’d challenged Nick to climb to the top of the tallest tree at the playground in Peter’s Park. Nick fell and broke his arm and their father had blamed Ronan until Nick tried again the same day he got his cast off, proving that, as Thomas Murphy said, “you can only play someone for a fool if they’re a fool in the firstplace.”
