My first lunch date with Luca turned into more dates, spaced out to fit the insane hours he worked back then, grinding his way to the partnership. It was in the best traditions of his ancient profession. However, never once did he show up so tired as to lose the thread of our conversation. Never once I felt that his attention wandered from me.

I've been raised among the street-smart men who acted on instinct until it failed them. I lived with the ruthless men who played the never-ending game of chess in their heads. At school, I rubbed shoulders with the nerds.

But Luca impressed me. I'd never met a man with intelligence that spread its network so wide and so deep in efforts to study every aspect of other human beings. He wanted to absorb their histories, their poetry, their motivations, their nature. And with women, his love of the hunt only sharpened. Luca never asked direct questions about something he wanted to know. He believed in the old adage that to understand a woman, one must look at her, rather than listen to her. Or maybe not, because he listened, just maybe not to the things you thought he was listening to?

He read, and he observed, and he memorized and cataloged in his own way.

Perhaps, if it wasn't for his family name, he could have risen as a politician.

When this powerhouse turned to me, his attention flattered me out of my mind. I was walking on clouds, while he tirelessly filed everything in the great warren of his mind to be pulled out at the right moment. Then he dazzled me with a treat or a word designed to please me and only me. I thought—this is a man in love.

The first time Luca kissed me was in a winery in the Napa Valley.

We sat on the terrace of the idyllic restaurant, with fruity red wine filling the glasses in front of us like magic gems. My gaze swept from the verdant rows of the vines on the hill slope to the empty plate. The plain white of it had a smear of sauce they'd dripped around the veal and blue stars of borage flowers that I had refused to eat. They were too pretty for eating. And, being used to plainer yet heartier fare, I was still hungry.

Luca leaned over the table to take my hands into his and said the three most beautiful words.

"The desert's coming."

Of course. I laughed, stroking his thumbs. "Lovely. I hope it's rich."

"Rich and creamy," he promised. "And they have an exquisite coffee roast this year."

Our hands were still linked, making me too dizzy to talk sense, but Luca would have been disappointed with silence. "Coffee is the gift from the gods."

"When it's this good, it could only mean one thing. Prometheus smuggled it from Elysium along with the fire." He smiled before inventing the rest of the tale for me. "With all the excitement over the eagle pecking out his liver, stolen grains were forgotten and lay hidden until now..."

"Then it must have sprouted in a beautiful and troubled place." Beautiful and troubled, like Luca himself.

"Fortunately, he gave humans fire to roast it over." He squeezed my fingers.

This weekend his power suit gave way to a loose burgundy shirt, opened at the collar, teasing me with a curl of dark hair. The stubble shadowed his cheeks, inciting my tactile curiosity... I turned away, ostensibly to study landscape. What I actually wanted was to run my tongue discreetly over my lips. Even the best lipstick struggled to keep them moist in his company.

"A penny for your thoughts, beautiful lady?"

"I can imagine you as an owner of this place." I squinted at the rolling hills to help my fantasies. "Yes, yes, I could just see you surrounded with the sunshine dapples, ruby wine and neon-green leaves."

"You mean I'll look good in brighter colors?" He hid an amused smile. "Like a clown?"

I slapped his hand in playful denial but didn't bother with more compliments. Who knows how many times per day he received casual comments on his fortunate good looks? I didn't want to be one of the crowds.

The first glass of wine—young but excellent—and the golden glow of the early afternoon sun warmed the hue of his eyes. This was my private Luca, taken in isolation from our busy L.A. lives. I wanted more of that. More of everything, really. Certainly, more than what I was getting. Our dates were frequent, pleasant—and sterile.

"They have a rose garden on the property," Luca said. "We should sneak out to see it before the desserts arrive."

Something in the tone of his voice roused a flock of butterflies in my stomach.

"Let's go see the roses." I re-folded the napkin in my lap and put it back on the table.

The rose garden was as formal as they come, with the flowering shrubs planted on a grid, bearing a metal plaque with its name, and boxed into the protective maze of the lesser shrubbery. Defying these geometric restrictions, tea roses opened their infinite petals to the sun in a complete riot of glowing colors. Warm air smelled divine.

Luca plucked a pink bloom to present it to me.

"You're making me an accessory in defacing the Garden of Eden," I quipped and twirled the flower. It was larger than the palm of my hand. What was I supposed to do with it? Stick it in my cleavage?

"You have plausible deniability," he parried.

"Elysium, Garden of Eden... we keep circling back to it today."

He made a gesture taking in the blue skies and the green valley. "Can you blame us?"

It was as blissful a setting as Californian sun and tireless hands could wrought. But to me, the scenery lacked a good old snake. I plucked two petals to drop on the crunching gravel. "He loves me, he loves me n—"

Before I could say not, Luca took me by the shoulders, gazing deep into my eyes. "He loves you. How can he not?"

The flower slipped out of my fingers. I reached and cupped his cheeks, enjoying the prickle of his barely-there beard, the sound of his breath and the closeness of his lips.

When he kissed me, I almost cried out, because I didn't expect him to finally do it.

He was holding back so long I grew paranoid about the friend zone. Luca didn't look like a man who'd have female friends, but the way he caught my every word, he could have made an exception for me. After all, we shared a common background as the scions of the underworld royalty. The difference was that he tried to keep himself apart from the streets, while I'd been eager to immerse myself into the nitty-gritty. So, we had a lot to talk about, and candidly. Just being friends made sense.

Yet his kiss cured all my doubts. I was loved with intensity that couldn't be dismissed. It filled me with bubbly anticipation.

Luca retrieved the rose, plucked a petal and closed my hand around it. "Don't lose it, and he'll always love you."

"Stop referring to yourself in the third person." My voice quivered from the kiss and from the basking in the light of his eyes. "Or are you a coward?"

"Am not."

I crumpled the petals in my hand until I could hide it in the purse I'd left at our table. Fortunately, the divine scent of warm chocolate called us back to it rather quickly.

Settling into the chair, I inhaled the sorcerous fumes wafting from the dessert. Sure, my appetite turned to other things, but this was chocolate! "Lovely."

Luca dug a silver spoon with a spiral handle into the chocolate sponge to mine out the melted chocolate from the middle of the lava cake and offered it to me. I suckled it off the spoon, careful not to burn my lips. His hand reached for my face, cupping my cheek, then the finger dabbed the corner of my mouth. I watched, mesmerized, as he licked the speck of chocolate off.

There was an affinity between him and chocolate... between him and kissing... between him and me.

When he was dropping me off that night, I'd grabbed his shirt to hold him to my lips for as long as possible. I wasn't ready to let go of the taste of wine, chocolate and sunshine. I didn't care if he had to get to the office before dawn. "Do you want to come up?"

He kissed me again and said cryptically, "I don't want you to forget our first time together. Give me a bit of time, my love."

His smile promised something out of this world, so I slowly released him. So powerful, his promises, for in the moment ago, I wanted nothing more than a down-to-Earth experience.

"Don't pick the green apples, or you'll never have the ripe ones?" I tittered, rubbing the goosebumps from my forearms.

"Something like that," he whispered.

When I stepped inside my condo and looked out, he was still standing by his car. Were he a smoker, I would have imagined him chain-smoking and watching my windows. In a high-rise apartment tower, with the multitude of glass squares, it must have been a tedious task. And he wasn't a smoker. He was too perfect for that.

I need a break from the shadows of my past, so I rub my cheek against Ryan's chest. "What of you, Ryan? Any skeletons you wish to drag from the closet?"

"Most things in my closet are yours, Naz."

I laugh and it eases my craned neck. "Be serious!"

His shoulders lift in a shrug after which I have to reposition my head for maximum comfort.

"I dated a nice girl called Hannah. When things heated up at work, I warned her we must be careful if we don't call it quits."

My head pops up from his chest like it's on a spring. "And she dumped you?!" What's wrong with women in his life? Like, he didn't pick his sister, but that Hannah was a wuss.

"Amicably, Naz. She dumped me amicably. She had that kind of a soft, warm personality." What's soft is the chortle that escapes his lips. I lay my head back. I might be developing an addiction to his chest.

He carefully folds his free arm under his head to avoid disturbing me. "You know, I haven't thought of it in a while."

I sink fingers into his hair, thread through it. "Lucky you."

What do I care if Ryan dated this quitter Hannah years ago? Was happy with her... Probably likes all his women soft and warm... But apparently, it eats at me.

Oblivious to the strain in my voice, Ryan goes on, while his thumb makes absentminded circles around my nipple. It hardens to his touch because bodies emancipate from the brain once in a while.

"She even told me to get in touch when things simmered down. I don't think she even grasped what I was up against, but she was spooked anyway. Probably for the best."

He's thinking of Liz, of course. Damn, I should have thought of it. I'm so selfish... something tugs at me. I-can-do-better something. "I think it's for the best that you've lost her number. It could have been..." Bad. Very bad.

"Yes." Despite his nod, I hear yearning in that short word.

Why do the nice girls always finish first, and the nice guys don't? I press tighter to his chest, blending our sweat together, as if it makes him more mine than hers. "You cared for her."

"Not enough to dwell on."

Ostriches hide their heads in the sand, but I'm some fucking bird. If I feel relieved to hear that confession, so what? Wanting him is pure greed, I accept that. There, I'm greedy. Selfish and greedy. A horrible human, but not a flightless bird.

I stretch out my neck and lift my face to suck his lips into a kiss. They pop open under the pressure of my tongue, letting me in. A moan he lets out makes my heart skip a beat. It skips another beat when he whispers under my lips, "After Hannah, all I had was short and sweet, with women used to taking risks."

"Like me?"

"No, Naz, you're one of a kind."

A joke? I shift my ear to the ground, a.k.a. his rocking chest. I have to be sure that his heart races the way I want it to race. Fuck Hannah and the good girls of the world who let men down gently! Ahem. What I mean, let her fuck some other guy, some really nice guy, marry him and pop out three babies, I don't care. I just don't need her in my life or in Ryan's memories.

"You mean women don't continuously ambush you in the street with marriage proposals?" I ask innocently.

"Nope."

Gotta give it to Ryan: he can keep the excitement out of his voice when his pulse is going through the roof. That's some quality training.

"Not a single woman I've met before wanted to spend our fake honeymoon discrediting their former fiancé in the eyes of the mafia. Imagine that!"

I bite my lip. He didn't bother to put too fine a point on his barb. Oh, how he knows me! I'm not the one to be subtle about important things in life. The soap bubbles of my daydreams drift away and winks out of existence with soft pops.

Time to return to business. "Speaking of our honeymoon, Ryan. Plan C is your responsibility."

He salutes in a crisp military style. "Yes, dearest. After you tell me the rest of your romantic saga."

I didn't exactly promise to bare my soul to him, but the sting of rejection I felt when he smiled dreamily about Hannah still prickles me. I want to get even. He may feign indifference all he wants but hearing about Luca bugs him.

So, I tell him about Morocco.