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Natalia narrowed her gaze, proving to Sam that she could, in fact, get even more attractive. “Too many Diet Cokes at lunch, Professor?”

Sam laughed, tucking the cold wine bottle under her arm to open it. “Maybe I’m still buzzing after the call with Lola and Adriana.” She found the middle of the cork with the sharp point. “I don’t know what I was expecting. They’re so different, but somehow exactly like you.” She chuckled. “Lola, especially, was so intense. She was hellbent on not?—”

Natalia raised her hand to stop her. “You can’t tell me anything until after the ink is dry. I can’t risk influencing you based on what I know from Zoe.”

“But she’s not even part of the contracts. It’s the lawyers from the studio and production company. God, so many lawyers,” she added, thinking about the dozen boxes on their video conference that morning.

“I know.” She grabbed the bottle from Sam’s distracted hands and pulled out the cork herself with a satisfying pop. “But I have to maintain the boundary.”

“Is this forbidden, Ms. Flores?” Sam neared, finding her hips with her hands and kissing her the way she’d been aching to do since she’d left that morning. “That’s so hot.”

Instead of kissing her, Natalia bit Sam’s bottom lip and slithered away to grab wine glasses from the open cupboard.

With a laugh, Sam held her fingers to her lips. “Where did you learn to open a bottle the good old-fashioned way?”

Natalia poured them each a glass of white wine. “During college, I worked at a tapas place?—”

“Tapas was a thing in the 90s?” Sam rested her back against the counter.

Natalia cut her with a glance. “It’s been a thing since the thirteenth century, Professor. Shouldn’t you know that?” She handed her a glass.

“An obvious and unforgivable gap in my knowledge base,” she conceded. “Tell me more about this restaurant. Was there a uniform?”

Leaning an elbow against the counter, Natalia lifted her glass in a silent toast before taking a sip. “Oh, there was a uniform,” she said with a mischievous glint in her eyes.

“Well, don’t hold out on me! What was it?”

Natalia did a terrible job of hiding her tiny smile behind the clear glass and pale-yellow wine. “I don’t know if you can handle that information.”

Sam set her glass down, heart fluttering. “Oh, come on. Poor form. You have to tell me now.”

Natalia quirked a brow. The movement was a minor ripple in the placid sea of her line-free face. “There’s not a single thing I have to do in this life other than die and pay taxes.”

Sam’s laughter bubbled out of her chest and warmed her skin. “God, you’re so intense,” she said in a way she hoped read like a compliment. “Please, Natalia, will you tell me what you wore to open wine bottles in a tiny thirteenth-century restaurant?”

Tipping her head to the side, Natalia still hadn’t erased the curve at the edge of her mouth. The hint of a smile was a shot of adrenaline blasted straight into Sam’s heart.

“It was very sexy,” Natalia said in a way that could only be described as playful. “Pleated black pants. Boxy white dress shirt. And…”

“If you say a tie, I’m going to drop dead.”

“A maroon tie.”

“I can’t take it!” Sam clutched her chest. “I would have had an unbearable crush on you.”

Natalia moistened her lips, but her smile grew anyway. “Oh, I cleaned up. Working behind the bar, I raked in tips.”

“Tell me you have a photo of this?” Sam asked, before wishing she hadn’t. Natalia was alone during that time. Fending for herself. Who the hell was she going to ask to take a picture of her going to work?

“You’re just going to have to use your imagination, Professor.” Natalia picked up her glass and started for the dining room, mercifully unbothered by Sam’s careless question.

Wanting to ask a thousand more questions, to know even more little details about her, Sam held back. She had to go at Natalia’s pace. Not her own.

Over dinner, Sam told Natalia about her first job — and the objectively unsexy polo and khakis she wore at Greg’s Galactic Golf and Arcade. While they talked, she searched for signs that Natalia was uncomfortable. When they never materialized, she decided on giving her the present she’d picked up that afternoon.

The brown paper gift wrap looked better on Instagram than when she tried to do it herself, but it was too late to mess with it anymore. Natalia was wiping down the kitchen in a shockingly sweet display when Sam returned.

“What’s that?” Natalia asked after drying her hands.