Dutifully picking up her wine glass Mia sipped. ‘Nice,’ she said.
‘Is that it?’
‘Is this another lesson in social dining?’ she dared.
‘No.’ He almost let a smile catch hold of his mouth. ‘It is simply a request for you to extend your answer. You are Italian. I cannot believe you don’t have a better opinion about wine than just nice.’
Be interesting, in other words. Well, OK, she could try to do that, Mia decided, relaxing back into her seat. ‘Tia Giulia and I make our own wine from our own grapes,’ she announced. ‘It’s just a hobby really, but our wine tastes easily as good as this very expensive wine…’ she said with a wave of her glass. ‘We pick and tread the grapes in the traditional manner with our skirts held up like so—’ she gestured, unaware how entirely she had captured her audience ‘—and we laugh a lot—it is supposed to be good for the taste. If it is a good year, our neighbours will come to exchange other produce for bottles of our wine. Tia has some really wonderful old oak barrels in the cellar…’
Their first course arrived and Mia kept talking through it, taking a small forkful of sea bass laced with a delicious sauce she had never tasted before.
‘Your life in Tuscany was very different from the one you’re living now,’ Nikos observed when she paused for a breath.
Mia nodded, eyes shadowing as she sat forward to pick up her glass. ‘Do you miss Greece when you are away from it?’
‘Not particularly,’ he said. ‘I fly in and out of Athens too often to miss it.’
‘Family, then,’ she probed.
‘None.’ The way he carefully veiled his eyes made Mia frown because she was almost certain she’d just hit a raw nerve. ‘Tell me why you left it so long to contact Oscar.’ As neatly as that he turned the conversation away from him and back on to her.
‘Because I only discovered I had a father this year—on my twenty-first birthday to be exact…’
She went on to explain about discovering Oscar, in between savouring forkfuls of food. She didn’t notice that Nikos barely touched the food on his plate, or that he rarely removed his dark eyes from her face. She was not aware that he kept filling up her wine glass or that her tongue was loosening the more that she drank. By the time their dessert arrived she was feeling so mellow she even reached across the table to spoon up a sample of his untouched dessert and teased him with her laughing eyes as she placed the stolen morsel in her mouth.
‘I have a sweet tooth.’
‘Among other things,’ he murmured oddly.
About to ask him what he meant by that—
‘Do you want coffee?’ he got in before her.
‘And spoil the taste of the wine? Grazie, no,’ she refused.
‘Then if you’ve finished do you mind if we leave now?’
‘Oh…’ Mia tensed, her slender spine arching up on the sudden realisation that she’d talked his socks off all the way through the meal! It was no wonder he was wearing that blank expression on his face. ‘I had lost track of how long we have been here…’
‘And the restaurant has emptied,’ Nikos pointed out dryly. ‘We’re the last ones here…’
Flickering a surprised glance around the empty tables she noticed the restaurant staff standing around, trying hard not to look impatient for them to leave. ‘Why didn’t you say something sooner?’ she whispered from the depths of a sinking embarrassment.
‘You were enjoying your meal. There was no need to rush.’ With the merest glance in the waiter’s direction he brought him rushing to his side. ‘My companion’s jacket,’ he instructed, handing over a credit card. ‘You have time to finish your wine,’ he indicated smoothly to Mia, as if she would dare to take another sip!
‘No.’ She stood. ‘I think I’ve had enough.’ A flush of hot colour was burning her cheeks.
She wanted to die where she stood—deflate like a balloon and disappear altogether. She almost snatched her jacket from the waiter when he arrived with it, so eager to remove herself from here now that she could barely stop herself from doing it at a run.
The waiter was handing Nikos his credit card. Mia fumbled in her urgency to drag her jacket on and missed slotting her arm in the sleeve.
‘Allow me…’
She froze as Nikos took the garment from her and politely held it open, ready for her to slip it on. Her hair became trapped inside the black satin and she used the need to release it as an excuse to keep her head lowered so no one could see how hot her face had gone.
Outside the cool night air hit her like an icy slap in the face and she shivered. Nikos placed a hand against her lower back to walk her towards his waiting car. A beep sounded as the locks sprang free and his hand guided her into her seat.
The car growled into life. It moved away from the curb with the sleek prowling grace of a hunting panther. As her gaze was drawn downwards to watch as his long fingers moved the car through its gears, she saw something that caught her breath in her throat.