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Until he opened the door and saw her on the other side of it, he hadn’t been sure she’d come back. Her eyes swept past him, as if looking for someone else—Emme?
“She’s gone.”
“I see.” Skye stayed on the other side of the door, her features taut. “Here are the documents you asked for, sir.”
“Leandro,” he corrected.
“No, you’re not Leandro.” She tapped a finger against the side of her mouth. “You’re Leandro Valentino.” She said his name with an exaggerated role of the R, and it made his pulse race.
His scowl deepened. The world tilted. Valentino.
“You should have told me.”
Yeah, right. Like he was going to tell anyone he was a Valentino at the moment. It was the last thing he felt like. But how could he say that to this woman? This woman who was virtually a stranger, regardless of what had happened between them?
“It didn’t come up.”
She rolled her eyes, holding out the documents.
He didn’t take them.
“Would you like to come in?”
Her eyes flared to his. She hesitated. He didn’t back down, his expression carefully blanked of emotion, his gut hollow despite the burger he’d eaten after Emme had left.
“I—why?”
His eyes probed hers. Damn it, she was so beautiful, so distractingly, hauntingly so. She was just what Leandro needed right now: to be distracted. To lose himself in a stunning woman for a quick, no strings attached affair.
But what if that didn’t suit her? What if she wanted more?
He was in New York for ten more days, after that he’d be back in Rome, to his normal office, his normal life. Or at least, to something like it, figuring out what he would do next. Now that he knew the truth.
There were limits to what he could offer, to what he wanted, and there was no way he was going to risk drawing someone else into this vortex of disaster. His life was a mess but hers didn’t have to be.
“Because I want to finish what we started,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “But first, we should talk.”
Her lips pulled to the side, her eyes softening a little.
“And because I wanted to explain about the tip.” He hadn’t been able to forget the hurt in her eyes, the look that showed she thought he’d been paying her for what they’d shared.
“Fine,” she said. “But I can’t stay long.”
It was like stepping over the threshold into another world. Everything looked the same as it had earlier, but it was different. Because she knew who he was now, and what he wanted from her.
And what do you want, Skye?
That was easy.
She wanted the same things she had earlier. She wanted to lose herself in this, in him, and forget all about Jay. She wanted to prove to herself that she was no longer under Jay’s thumb. It felt like an important first step in properly reclaiming her freedom.
But how did that even work? Skye wasn’t the kind of woman to go in for casual affairs. She had no idea how to do that without it seeming tawdry and cheap, and the last thing she wanted was to risk losing her job. So, while she wanted to finish what they’d started as well, she knew she couldn’t.
It was a conversation better had in privacy though, hence she’d stepped back into the penthouse.
The plates had been cleared and stacked neatly on the side of the sink, the wine stain was gone, and the scotch bottle was still full. Catching her eyes on it, he gestured towards the counter. “Would you like a drink?”
She shook her head, moving to the carpet. “You did well.”
