Page 182 of Modern Romance January 2025 5-8

‘He’s asking if you would like a tour while we talk, or to relax on the couches?’

‘Oh.’ She looked at the huge roaring fire and as she took off her scarf she opted for the couches. ‘The couches sound lovely.’

‘We shouldn’t be too...’ Dante started, but as she slipped off her coat he found out what it meant to be lost for words.

He’d only seen her in her waitressing dress, or naked in his bed, or wrapped in a sheet, and he was momentarily stunned. Her dress was the colour of the sky in spring, and it was somehow demure and sexy as hell all at once.

Or was it sexy because he knew what lay beneath?

Everyone else seemed unperturbed. Christos’s wife was taking her coat, Christos himself was guiding her to the couches. So Dante, refusing to react like some awkward teenager at a party, went over to the bar, turned his back on her and chatted to the bar manager.

He would really rather have joined Susie on the couches, but instead he walked through the cellars with Christos. Then he met with the vigneron and listened to all he had to say. Then Christos suggested they walk through the vines.

Being shown through a place where he had once played hide and seek, where he had run, where he’d once had a happy family, was hell.

He liked Christos—he just did not want to be playing owner today.

Especially when he had the intriguing Susie waiting.

Oh, she was so far from predictable...

She was sitting on a huge leather sofa, gazing out at the view that he saw only in nightmares, with a vague smile on her face.

‘Susie?’ He interrupted her wherever her daydreams had taken her. ‘Do you want to eat?’

‘Yes!’ She didn’t stand, though. ‘I was talking to the chef, and he said we could do a tasting here. They’ll bring all the foods and wine over.’

‘A tasting?’ he checked. ‘They’ll explain all the wines, all the food...’

‘Yes.’

‘Why don’t we just get a table and eat? A tasting is very...’

‘Sociable?’ She laughed.

‘Yes,’ he said, sitting down beside her with a sigh. ‘Okay we’ll do a tasting.’

He signalled to a waiter and told him to go ahead, but when they were alone again he turned to her.

‘Before they start, I’m going to tell you something.’

‘Okay...’

‘No one else knows this...’ He cupped his hand and whispered in her ear. ‘I don’t actually like wine.’

‘Seriously?’

He pulled his head back and nodded. ‘Why do you think I went to study law?’

‘Are you telling the truth?’

‘I can drink it. And at family events and functions here, or events that we sponsor, I do. But...’ He rolled his eyes. ‘I might as well be drinking cheap De Santis wine; it all tastes the same to me.’

‘Does it?’

‘Almost.’ He gave her a smile. ‘De Santis is exceptionally bad. Still, I don’t really get it. It is all Gio talks about—and Christos. Sev knows his stuff too. So do you...’

‘I don’t.’