Slow Tango With a Prince (Royal Scandals) (23 page)

“Any excuse to celebrate?” He gave her naked body an obvious head-to-toe perusal, pausing at her voluptuous breasts.

“Do we need an excuse?”

He laughed as she made her way to the sitting area to retrieve her bag. Perching on the edge of the bed with her phone, she tapped the screen and said, “It’s Maryam. Just a text confirming that she’s spoken with the real estate agent and we’re set for tomorrow’s apartment viewing in Barrio Norte.”

She deposited the phone on his nightstand and burrowed under the coverlet. His stomach rumbled as she tucked against his side.

Her hand flattened against his stomach. “You didn’t get dinner. You must be starving.”

“I seem to have worked up an appetite.” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “This place has a small room service menu. Would you do me the honor of being my date for dinner tonight?”

She answered with a flirtatious kiss that nearly had him bedding her again. An hour later, they sat in the main room of his small suite, enjoying slices of pizza and a bottle of deep red Argentine Malbec while talking about the apartments he’d toured and the other regions of Argentina she’d visited. In between bites, he asked where she might want to film her next season.

“I haven’t given it a lot of thought.” She rolled up the sleeves of the blue button-down shirt she’d borrowed from him—one that looked decidedly different hugging her curves than when he’d worn it a week earlier—then stretched her bare legs the length of the sofa. “Rita and I have tossed around a few ideas, but we don’t want to invest too much time or effort in any one place until we get the word we’re being renewed. Most likely it’ll be in Europe. Somewhere warm and visually enticing like Greece or Turkey would be ideal. We did the mountain villages of the Alps in season one, then went to Japan for season two. We want to keep the variety.”

He polished off the last bite of his pizza before setting his paper plate on the room’s antique coffee table and moving from his chair to take a seat on the sofa near Emily’s feet. “Have you always been a glass half-full type of person?”

“I suppose. You?”

He’d never thought of himself one way or the other. “The glass is what it is. Both half-empty and half-full.”

“A man who puts practical concerns first.” She angled a look at him. “I’m not surprised.”

“For the most part it’s an attitude that’s served me well.” He turned sideways on the sofa and stretched his legs beside Emily’s. Her hand went to his calf, and though the movement seemed as habitual as if they were a long-married couple, it sent a sizzle of awareness through him that was anything but ordinary.
 

While she took a long sip of her wine, he said, “I admire you for your optimism. Even when you’re under tight deadlines and enormous stress, you’re confident you’ll land on her feet. You make everyone around you believe things will work out for the best, too.”

“I try. Doesn’t mean it’s easy.”

Thinking back to their conversation over croissants, he acknowledged, “I know it’s not. But your approach and your resiliency are why I agreed to do your show.” Perhaps he was saying too much, but he felt compelled to add, “It’s also why I’m so damned attracted to you.”

She tsked, but her eyes betrayed her delight at his words. “And here I thought it was because you liked my legs. Don’t think I didn’t notice you looking when I approached you in the café.”

He reached for her calf and gave it a deliberate squeeze. “Your legs certainly don’t hurt.”

“What’s funny is that my biggest failure came because I was too optimistic, too sure I could make everything work in a situation where it couldn’t.” She shrugged. “A fiasco like that can knock you for a loop.”

He understood the truth of that statement more than she knew. “Yet here you are, with a show about to enter its fourth season.”

She smiled at that, even as she reached to knock on the top of the wooden coffee table for luck. “I had a choice to make. I had to believe I could survive any failure and even thrive. The alternative was to curl up in a ball and quit. If I’d done that, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing right now.”

He pulled one of her feet into his lap, making note of the bright red polish tipping her toes as he put his thumbs to her arch and pressed. She groaned in pleasure. After a day dancing in heels, he suspected she could use the massage.

“So tell me about this big, bad, terrible failure of yours.”

“Oh, you’re devious…asking me personal questions while you’re doing that to my foot.”

“I’m merely paying you back for joining me for the tango lesson.” He kneaded her arch, working his way to the ball of her foot. “Judging from the way you danced today, you’ve done it before, which means you know how much better your feet will feel tomorrow if I do this tonight.”

“You’re evil.” A long sigh escaped her. “If you must know, my big mistake was the dancer.”

“The…dancer?”

“Ex-boyfriend. He loved ballroom dancing. We went all the time.” She turned her ankle, allowing him to situate her foot more comfortably in his lap. “Obviously, the relationship didn’t work out. We met in college and things were great, but once I started working…well, I didn’t see what I should’ve seen all along.”

“You’re saying were a bad judge of character? You?” He grinned, hoping to ease what was obviously a painful episode in her past by bringing up the very words she’d used against him when he’d all but accused her of stalking him.

“Yep, me. Which is how I recognized it in you.” Though her tone remained good-humored, her eyes reflected a hurt that hadn’t completely healed. “He’d given me all the signs, but I was too optimistic to read them. I put everything on the line for the relationship and ended up unceremoniously dumped.”

And shattered, though he doubted she’d admit it. “Were your friends and family supportive?”

“In a way. They were all as blindsided as I was. They thought Paul was Mr. Perfect, that I was making all the right choices.” An ironic smile lifted one side of her mouth. “Everyone but Rita, wouldn’t you know. She never did like him. Told me more than once during the last few months I was with him that she was worried about me. I told her she didn’t know Paul like I did.”

“What did she say to that?” He couldn’t imagine Rita keeping her lip zipped if she disagreed.
 

“She told me she didn’t need to know Paul like I did. She knew me. And she thought I was being naive about the price I was paying to keep him happy.”
 

Vittorio’s hands stilled on her feet and he shot her a questioning look.
 

“I’d left my job for him,” she explained. “A job I really loved and that I’d fought hard to get. But my hours and travel schedule were crazy, and eventually he gave me an ultimatum: the job or the relationship. I gave my two-week notice the next day and started looking for a position with fewer hours that’d keep me closer to home.” One side of her mouth lifted in a self-deprecating smile. “What Rita was trying to get through my head was that I wouldn’t be happy without a career that challenged me and that Paul should’ve known me well enough to understand that, too. I suspect she also believed that quitting like I did created an unspoken black mark against me in the industry.”

Emily’s work was such a part of her identity he couldn’t imagine her without it. He gave her arch one final deep massage with his thumbs before reaching for her other foot. “Is that what ended the relationship? You missed your job?”

“It should’ve, but no.” A shadow passed over her face, one that spoke to lingering emotional scars. “He ended it. He wanted more than I could give him.”

“More than leaving your job for him?” Selfish ass. What man could possibly want more than Emily had to offer? Now he understood why she chafed against traditional male and female roles. When she’d followed that tradition in her own relationship, she’d been burned personally and professionally.

“It’s complicated, but yes. I don’t blame him, though.”

Incredulity roughened his voice. “How could you not?”
 

“At the end of the day, for a relationship to work, you have to know yourself and know what you want. There were things I couldn’t give him. Things I knew, deep down, that he needed to be happy.” She polished off her wine and shrugged, her attitude a sharp contrast to the resentment Vittorio felt on her behalf. “It was a tough lesson, but that experience taught me that I needed to go after what
I
wanted, too. And I wanted a career. More than that, I wanted my own show. It wasn’t easy, especially since I’d left a great position and it made me appear less than professional, but I put together a pitch for
At Home Abroad
and pursued it. Rita was at a transitional point in her own career and took the chance of going in on it with me. And here I am.”

She reached for the open wine bottle he’d left on the coffee table and held it up, offering to top off his glass, but he shook his head.

“Anyway…lesson learned. Happiness found.”

Given how easily Emily seemed to have forgiven her ex, Vittorio suspected there was more she wasn’t saying—there always was when a woman used the phrase
it’s complicated
—but he let it go.

She returned the wine bottle to the table, a pensive look on her face. “It’s getting very late. I know you said you wanted me to stay, but if you prefer—”

“I would
not
prefer.” His hand tightened around her foot. He’d never had a woman speak to him so candidly, and he valued it more than she could ever know. The thought of sleeping without her by his side tonight didn’t appeal in the least.
 

She extricated her foot before scooting forward and straddling him. She untied his robe and flicked it open before sliding her hands over his chest, then up into his hair, framing his face between her delicate fingers. The excess fabric of the shirt she’d borrowed dipped low, giving him a prime view down the front.

“You make my clothes look very, very good,” he murmured, gripping her rear and pulling her higher, so the warm vee of her thighs rested directly over his cock, leaving only her thin panties and his boxers separating them.

“And you…you seem like a man in desperate need of kissing.”
 

“Astute observation.” Especially since she was making him hard. Again. “I’m even optimistic about the chances you’ll indulge me.”

Her full lips parted as she leaned down to kiss him. A furrow appeared between her brows when she’d only covered half the distance and she drew back. “Before me, you hadn’t kissed anyone in quite a while, either, had you?”

Chapter Sixteen

“You’re torturing me,” he accused.

She pressed a decadent kiss to his lips before drawing back. Her crotch remained firmly pressed to his, hot with evidence of the desire she felt, but her voice softened with a mix of concern and curiosity. “How long has it been?”

He shrugged, mentally counting back. He’d ended things with Carmella just before Sarcaccia’s Independence Day festivities, when he’d discovered their entire relationship was based on a lie. It had been a week or two before that, since she’d been traveling to promote a film. “August, I suppose. Not that long.”

“Seven months.” She eased forward, keeping her hands buried in his hair. “For a man who looks as good as you do, and given your obvious” —she ground her hips against his— “virility, that’s a long time.”

“Kiss me again and I’ll make up for it tonight.”

She closed the distance between them and feathered the barest kiss against his cheek before grinning against his whiskers. Without waiting for permission, he scooped her up, pressed his hands to her thighs to encourage her to wrap her legs around his waist, then carried her back to the bedroom.
 

Laughter cascaded from her as he deposited her on the bed, then sprawled on top of her. “Really? Again?”

“You did comment on my obvious virility.”

“Still, a third time seems” —mischief lifted her brows— “optimistic.”

“Remember, I am neither optimistic nor pessimistic.” He pressed against her, allowing her to feel his burgeoning erection. “It is what it is.”

This time, they made love deliberately, taking their time divesting each other of what little clothing they wore, then exploring one another with their hands and mouths. He savored the weight of her breasts, the smoothness of her skin, the elegant curve of her waist and perfectly rounded lift of her rear. The tight heat of her as he plunged inside her, then withdrew, keeping their pace tortuously unhurried until she shook with need and begged him to bring her to ecstasy. Later, when they’d recovered, he rolled her to her stomach and kissed his way down her back, settling his mouth at the base of her spine. The sigh that escaped her was the most deeply satisfied sound he’d ever heard.

“Now aren’t you glad I learned the hard way to go after what I want?” she said, her voice provocative. “Not only did it result in our meeting, it makes me all the more appreciative of your talents.”

“As I,” he whispered against her, “am deeply appreciative of yours. You are one of a kind.” In and out of bed.

He sensed the change in her immediately and knew his worshipful tone—and the tightening of his hands on her waist as he spoke—gave away too much of his inner thoughts. Feigning ignorance, he traced a path back up her spine with his tongue, sweeping her hair aside so he could place a kiss at the back of her neck before collapsing against his pillow.