Page 114 of Modern Romance December 2025 5-8

Curious, Leo sampled the paté from a knife, belatedly aware that she was staring at his mouth again.

Amy lowered her eyes, admitting in a grudging mumble, ‘I was hungry. I did need food, but it’s hard when you’re cooking to actually eat properly, especially when you finish late at night.’

He watched her lick some butter off her lips and angled his head, lowering his eyelids to hide the predatory gleam he couldn’t prevent. Then he wondered why he was even bothering to hide anything when there was nothing covert about the electricity in the air or the hunger clawing at his gut.

He laid the knife down. ‘It’s good.’

She tipped her head in acknowledgment of the compliment and looked at him through her lashes. ‘I went a bit heavy on the brandy.’

‘Ever the critic.’

‘I’m not into false modesty.’

‘So you usually fall into bed after service.’Alone?he wondered, his eyes sliding of their own volition to the third—yes, he had been counting—button that had popped open at the neck of her blouse.

‘That would be nice,’ she admitted, directing her gaze away from the satiny gleam of the dark olive skin of his throat and at the rack of copper pans hanging on the stone wall instead. ‘But it’s hard to switch off after a busy service. Not that tonight was particularly busy. I’ve never worked in a kitchen sooverstaffed before.’

‘So you like to keep busy?’

His words brought her eyes back to his face and, captured by his ink-black gaze, Amy couldn’t have looked away if her life depended on it.

Why try?asked the unhelpful voice in her head.He is extremely good to look at.

She gave a twisted smile. ‘When I’m not laundering money or entertaining my shady business partners, of course.’

He huffed out an impatient sigh. ‘Don’t be so damned prickly. But now we’re on the subject, you do know that he was using you, that the bastard would have let you take the fall for him.’

Tears stung her eyelids as she nodded.

‘Then why? Why the hell would you let him get away with it? Why let yourself be used that way?’

The muscles of Leo’s face were clenched, pulled taut against his perfect bones. His sensual lips were compressed flat, almost bloodless as his nostrils flared, making her think of a jungle cat about to rip its prey apart.

‘Can’t you see he preys on your weakness?’

‘I’m not weak. Caring about someone isn’t weakness.’ Her empty plate scraped along the gleaming copper surface as she pushed it away before pressing her hands, sweaty palms down, to lever herself off the surface and jump to the floor.

Chapter Six

Her attitude infuriatedhim beyond reason. ‘Care? Your father used you, screwed you over, and you are still putting your life on hold for him.’ He pointed out the basic facts in what was intended to be an expressionless monotone but the anger he struggled to contain seeped like acid into his voice. ‘You think that is a badge of courage?Dio…!It is stupid! And what sort of message does that send out? Here’s my other cheek!’ he snarled, turning his head to one side and poking a finger at his own lean cheek.

Amy was seized with a compulsion to reach out and lay her hand against his brown cheek, feel the stubble under her fingertips. She was unable to take her eyes off his face, all the passion in him drawing her like a moth to a flame.

‘What are you staring at?’

‘You are so Italian here.’

‘It’s not about geography; I am half Italian everywhere.’

‘Well, you have certainly embraced the Latin thing.’

‘Do not change the subject, Amy.’

‘I’m not, I’m… Well, maybe just a little bit,’ she conceded. ‘My father—’ she sighed out, dodging his accusing stare. ‘He is my father; you must understand that, for all his faults. Your own grandfather—’

‘Rejected my mother.’ He enunciated each word slowly, the heat that had been in his voice becoming an icy coldness as he related his past. ‘I barely remember, but she came from here. Imagine what it must have been like to go from this to the life she had. Her own father sent her into a life of penury and back-breaking misery. She was a single mother with nothing and…’ He paused, the muscles in his throat working as he swallowed, visibly gaining control of his emotions as he finished in a voice now devoid of all emotion. ‘Forgiveness does not come as easily to me as it appears to for you.’

‘You have forgiven your grandfather, though.’