She wondered why he had such a grim view of marriage. ‘Not all marriages.’
‘All but those infected with extreme inertia.’
‘So you’re saying that even people who stay married would divorce if they could be bothered to make the effort.’
‘I think there are any number of reasons for a couple to stay together, but love isn’t one of them. In my father’s case, wife number three married him for his money and the novelty wore off.’
‘Does “wife number three” have a name?’
‘Callie.’ His hard tone told her everything she needed to know about his relationship with his last stepmother.
‘You don’t like her?’
‘Are you enjoying your meal?’
She blinked, thrown by the change of subject. ‘It’s delicious, but—’
‘Good. If you’re hoping to sample dessert, you need to talk about something other than my family.’
‘You control everything, even the conversation.’ She wondered why he didn’t want to talk about his family. ‘Is this where you bring all the women you date?’
‘It depends on the woman.’
‘How about that woman you were with earlier—Christina? She definitely wouldn’t have eaten any of this. She had carb-phobia written all over her.’
Those powerful shoulders relaxed slightly. ‘She would have ordered green salad, grilled fish and eaten half of it.’
‘So why didn’t you order green salad and grilled fish for me?’
‘Because you look like someone who enjoys food.’
Lily gave him a look. ‘I’m starting to understand why women cry around you. You basically called me fat. For your information, most women would storm out if you said that to them.’
‘So why didn’t you storm out?’
‘Because eating here is a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I don’t want to miss it. And I don’t think you meant it that way and I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. Tell me what happens next on a date. You bring a woman
to a place like this and then you take her back to your villa for sex in that massive bed?’
‘I never talk about my relationships.’
‘You don’t talk about your family and you don’t talk about your relationships.’ Lily helped herself to rich, plump slices of tomato salad. ‘What do you want to talk about?’
‘You. Tell me about your work.’
‘I work in your company. You know more about what goes on than I do, but one thing I will say is that with all these technology skills at your disposal you need to invent an app that syncs all the details of the women who call you. You have a busy sex life and it’s easy to get it mixed up, especially as they’re all pretty much the same type.’ She put her fork down. ‘Is that the secret to staying emotionally detached? You date women who are clones, no individual characteristics to tell them apart.’
‘I do not date clones, and I don’t want to talk about my work, I want to talk about your work. Your archaeological work.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘And try to include the word “Minoan” at least eight times in each sentence.’
She ignored that. ‘I’m a ceramics expert. I did a masters in archaeology and since then I’ve been working on an internationally funded project replicating Minoan cooking fabrics. Among other things we’ve been looking at the technological shift Minoan potters made when they replaced hand-building methods with the wheel. We can trace patterns of production, but also the context of ceramic consumption. The word ceramic comes from the Greek, keramikos, but you probably already know that.’
He reached for his wine glass. ‘I can’t believe you were cleaning my shower.’
‘Cleaning your shower pays well and I have college debts.’
‘If you didn’t have college debts, what would you be doing?’
She hesitated, unwilling to share her dream with a stranger, especially one who couldn’t possibly understand having to make choices driven by debt. ‘I have no idea. I can’t afford to think like that. I have to be practical.’