Take Me (Take Me 1)

If a festival of weddings was going on, there were bound to be plenty of single, desperate women dying for an American businessman to show them a good time.

Travis held open the door. “Let’s go.”

Lily ignored his brusque manner and as he followed her down the stairs, he felt like a double-sized schmuck. At the bottom of the stairs, the man behind the counter inquired, “Is the room okay, Signora Lily?”

Lily graced him with a wide smile. “Oh, Giuseppe, it’s absolutely perfect.”

Jealousy bubbled up inside Travis at their easy informality. “Giuseppe?”

Lily shrugged one pretty shoulder. “I called him to ask about restaurants while you were getting dressed.”

“I told the bella signora”—Lily blushed and Travis wanted to punch Giuseppe in the mouth—“that she would find much, how do you say, romance, at Diletto.”

At the mention of romance, Travis grunted and stalked out onto the sidewalk, making a mental note to give Lily a much overdo lecture on the dangers of flirting with strange men, especially strange men named Giuseppe.

Lily’s tinkling laugh spilled onto the narrow street. Holding her arms out wide, she spun in a circle. “I’m in love… whee!”

Her hair flowed around her shoulders, and her delight was more potent than the twilight. Travis hated how he was holding his breath, waiting to find out who she was in love with. If she said Giuseppe, he was going to lock her in the hotel room for the next five days. Or better yet, he’d put her back on the airplane and send her home. Now why hadn’t he thought of that before?

“Who are you in love with?” he grumbled, when she didn’t finish her sentence.

Giving him an impish grin, she moved down the lane. “With Saturnia, of course,” she called out.

Travis admired the sway of her hips, thinking how impossibly right she looked in Italy. But it wasn’t a case of the country making the woman.

Tonight, Lily’s presence made Italy come to life.

He tugged at the front of his jeans, which were suddenly tight and uncomfortable, and ran his fingers through his hair. What was happening to him? If he didn’t know better he’d think Janica had cursed the dress with some sort of lust potion that was messing up the normal lines of communication between his brain and his dick.

He followed after Lily, down the curving streets, down into the valley below. A wide smile lit her face as she turned and pointed to the restaurant. “This is it! Diletto. Giuseppe said it means ‘delight’ in English.

Isn’t that the perfect word to describe this restaurant?”

Travis raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. Obviously, Lily didn’t know that many people thought that the word “dildo” derived its origin from the Italian word. He decided to keep the knowledge to himself. For the time being.

He did have to admit, however, that the interior of the restaurant was a cut above. The walls were stucco, tinted with a golden yellow, the floor tiles looked perfectly ancient, seemingly worn with the soles of millions of Italian feet.

She glided inside and the maître d’ immediately approached her, kissing her hand and touching her far too much for Travis’s liking. None too gently, he shoved the man aside, taking his place at Lily’s side. She was just opening her mouth to say something, but Travis was sure that whatever she said would be misconstrued by this lusty Italian as, “Please come back to my hotel room.”

“We would like a table for two,” he said, placing a possessive hand around Lily’s shoulders. She shot him an irritated glance and tried to shrug his arm off, so Travis held her tighter.

I’m only doing this to protect her from depraved foreigners, he told himself. Not that he minded the feel of her br**sts pressing up against his chest, however.

The maître d’ eyed Travis with laughter in his eyes, and for what seemed like the hundredth time since landing in Italy, Travis had to restrain from decking a guy. What he wouldn’t give to be back in the United States, where no one looked twice at Lily.

Or did they?

Lily’s round warmth was pressing into him, and it felt good. Really good. She was shapely, without being too round. Voluptuous, but not surgically enhanced, like so many of the women he had bedded. And he knew for a fact that the curves of her body fit his better than anyone else’s ever had. No, he thought with some dismay, it wasn’t impossible that men back home would find Lily attractive. After all, he had impossibly high standards, and he couldn’t keep his hands off her.

Confused by his wayward thoughts, Travis let Lily escape his grasp as they were led to a small round table in the center of the room, where the scene was obviously set for romance. He had been hoping for a private table in the corner. Instead, they were center stage.

But instead of being embarrassed by being seen with Lily, Travis was jealous of every man in the room who dared ogle her. Something they all were currently doing.

“This table is perfect,” she said, and in her glee she bestowed a kiss on the maître d’s cheek.

Didn’t she see how the man was leering down the front of her dress? Didn’t she have any sense of personal boundaries?

Travis was furious at Lily for being so free with her sexuality, for kissing another man while she was out with him. Travis vowed that from this point forward, he was going to be so charming that she wasn’t going to look at anyone else.

He pulled out her chair and roughly shoved her into it, ignoring her cry of, “Hey!”

So much for charming, he thought with a grimace. He’d obviously have to try a little harder.

“You wanted to eat, so let’s eat,” he said, picking up a menu and opening it with a thwap on the table.

His incredibly unwitty banter wasn’t going to win him any points either.

Lily glared at Travis across the table, her bountiful br**sts heaving with anger. “I won’t let you do it,” she said, her words stiff and cold as she shoved back the chair to stand up.

The maître d’ hurried over to help her up, but Travis shot him a look that said, “I’ll cut your balls off if you come over here again,” and the man stopped dead halfway across the room.

Travis slammed the menu shut. “You won’t let me do what?” he asked, his voice as sharp-edged as hers, even as he cursed himself for losing grip of every smooth move he had in his arsenal.

“I won’t let you ruin Tuscany,” she replied, dripping ice with every word.

He opened his mouth to protest, but he knew he was going to make the situation even worse if he said another word, so he shut it.