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“Wouldn’t it be bad to eat chocolate before dinner?”

“Would it be bad? Or living the way you want?” he says slowly.

I think I’m going to need a cardiac unit on standby with the way this night is going so far. Because Mason is killing me right now.

“Get in,” he urges.

I slide into the seat, putting the chocolate in my lap, and Mason lowers the door. Then he comes around the driver’s side and slips behind the wheel. I pull the ribbon off the bar and tear open the wrapper.

Mason backs out of the spot, and then that slow, sexy smile forms on that sensual mouth, and I feel heat begin to spread across my body. “I see you’re living the way you want tonight,” he says.

I snap off a square. “Yes. Do you want one?”

Mason nods. “Yeah.”

He stops the car, and I hold the square of chocolate out to him in my palm. His warm fingertips brush against my skin, and a shiver shoots through me from that slight contact. He pops it into his mouth, and I break off another square and do the same.

For a moment, I forget about Mason and focus on the chocolate. The centre is a truffle coffee, and then I’m hit with white chocolate.

“Oh my God,” I mumble. “This is so good.”

“I know. Why do you think I bought them out of the gift shop?”

He exits the car park, and soon we are winding down the hilly streets of Monaco. The sun is setting now over the mountains, bathing the buildings stacked in the hills with a warm light and casting a golden glow in the sky over the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean Sea.

“You know, I still don’t know where we’re going,” I muse, folding over the wrapper on the chocolate and safely tucking it inside my bag.

“You must trust me,” Mason says, shifting gears on the car as we go down a hill.

“This is your celebration dinner,” I remind him. “I assume you’d want it to be good.”

“What if my idea of good is a pizza?” he asks, lifting a brow.

“Then I’m incredibly overdressed, but I’m willing to bet they’ll serve me pizza all the same.”

“So you wouldn’t be mad if I took you out for pizza?”

I turn and study his profile. His expression is thoughtful.

“Erm, no, I like pizza. It’s your celebration dinner. Even if I hated pizza, I wouldn’t care. I’d order a salad or something. Or just eat my Aero.”

He suddenly gives me a dazzling smile. “I like your answers.”

I get hit with a wave of heart palpitations. WHERE IS MY STANDBY CARDIOLOGIST? If I’m going to spend time with Mason like this—both tonight and Tuesday—I need one, STAT.

He brings us down the hill to the Port of Fontvieille and eases his car in front of a chic restaurant situated on the marina. People are already pulling out their phones because they can see it’s Mason Clark.

The glare of the spotlight is something I’m used to. From escorting Caleb everywhere, for one, but the experience came to me much earlier in my life. I remember when my mum’s affair came out, and the paparazzi tried to get at me whenever I left boarding school. I found it was easier to hide behind those protected gates than be thrust into that nightmare. It’s hard enough to navigate as an adult, but as a teenager humiliated by a family scandal that was splashed all over social media and the tabloids?

I swallow hard as the memories come back.

It was horrific.

A valet approaches my door, and I’m grateful for something else to focus on so I can put the past back into the lock box where I keep it. The door opens, and whilst people are still recording—and trying to make a beeline to Mason so they can get selfies—I exit the car and wait for him. So far, nobody has even noticed me. But if they did? Even if any of these did end up on social media, it’s a working dinner. Easy enough to clarify if needed.

Soon we’re ushered inside the restaurant. It’s dark and sexy. Floor-to-ceiling windows that offer breathtaking views of the cliffs and the sea. The tables are black and white marble, the seats plush grey velvet, a soft contrast to the cool, hard edges of the marble and the dark charcoal walls.

Then I feel it.