Page 27

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. Everyone makes mistakes.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to admit that.”

“My ego’s robust enough to face the truth.”

She glanced down at her burger, simply because she desperately, urgently needed a moment. Her initial impulse had been that they shouldn’t get to know one another. It had been a self-protective mechanism. But she’d never imagined that getting to know him would feel like this. She’d never imagined that he’d talk and she’d laugh, that he’d say something and she’d volley something back. He zigged, she zagged, and that was perilous.

He was a Santoro. The enemy. The devil.

“Your turn.”

She pressed a fingertip to the edge of the table, and forced herself to glance up. Their eyes met and her insides zipped. She should leave…

“For what?”

“You work with your brothers. You were in Moricosia, so I presume business development falls in your remit, too?”

“Actually, no,” she said with a shake of her head. “Not generally.”

“Oh?”

“Both of my brothers were a little preoccupied,” she said, smiling softly. “Recently married, or engaged, babies, pregnancies, you know. Life.”

“So it fell to you to go and win the tender.”

“We worked together on the proposal, but yes. It was easier for me to travel.”

“And you clearly impressed the King.”

“The proposal impressed him,” she amended.

“Then when you aren’t doing your brothers’ bidding, what do you do?”

She reached across and flicked his hand for the subtle dig at her brothers. “It’s not like that.”

His grin showed that he’d intended it as a joke, to get a reaction from her.

“I actually run our charity.”

He was quiet, giving her the space and time to continue, but she was strangely self conscious suddenly.

“Go on,” he prompted, after a few moments of silence.

She pulled her lips to the side, thinking. “It’s pretty self-explanatory. We have a set amount to donate each year—though I do supplement it, from time to time. And like you, I have friends I can bring along to fundraisers with me, or who are willing to make donations for the right cause. I guess you could say I do what you do, but instead of investing in businesses, I give the money away to worthy causes.”

“Which is why you’re always at those events.”

“I could say the same for you.”

His eyes roamed her face and something twisted in her belly. “Actually, I don’t usually attend those things.”

“What a coincidence then to have seen you at two fundraisers in such a short space of time.”

“Oh, yes, definitely a coincidence,” he said, winking a little so something soared in her chest at the implication—and she was sure she wasn’t imagining it—that he’d started showing up at charity fundraisers specifically hoping to see her. She didn’t want to feel warmth blossoming through her body. She didn’twant to feel lightness and joy at the idea of him wanting to see her badly enough that he’d go to parties on the off chance she might be there, too. But she felt it regardless. The best she could do was tell herself it didn’t mean anything, because there was no way she was going to let this thing—whatever it was—get out of hand.

To underscore that, and to prove to them both that this was not about conversation, emotion, or anything other than the physical, she stood up, eyes hooked to his, as she reached for the bottom of her shirt.