Montedoro is my country.” He poured her more wine. And she didn’t stop him. “It’s one of the eight smallest states in Europe, a principality on the Mediterranean. My mother was born there. My father was American but moved to Montedoro and accepted Montedoran citizenship when they married. His name is Evan Bravo. He was a Texan by birth.”
She really did love listening to him talk. He made every word into a poem. “So … you have relatives in Texas?”
“I have an aunt and uncle and a number of first cousins who live in and around San Antonio. And I have other, more distant cousins in a small town near Abilene. And in your Hill Country, I have a second cousin who married a veterinarian. And there are more Bravos, many more, in California and Wyoming and Nevada. All over the States, as a matter of fact.”
“I take it that Calabretti is your mother’s surname?”
“Yes.”
“Is that what they do in your country, combine the husband’s and wife’s last name when they marry?”
He nodded. “In … certain families, anyway. It’s similar to the way it’s done in Spain. We are much like the Spanish. We want to keep all our last names, on both sides of our families. So we string them together proudly.”
“Bravo-Calabretti sounds familiar, somehow. I keep wondering where I’ve heard it before …”
He waited for her to finish. When she didn’t, he shrugged. “Perhaps it will come to you later.”
“Maybe so.” She lowered her voice to a more confidential level. “And I have to tell you, I keep thinking that you are familiar, that I’ve met you before.”
He shrugged in a way that seemed to her so sophisticated, so very European. “They say everyone has a double. Maybe that’s it. You’ve met my double.”
It wasn’t what she’d meant. But it didn’t really matter. “Maybe.” She let it go and asked, “Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“I do.” He gave her a regal nod. “Three brothers, five sisters. I’m second-born. I have an older brother, Maximilian. And after me, there are the twins, Alexander and Damien. And then my sisters—Bella, Rhiannon, Alice, Genevra and Rory.”
“Big family.” Feeling suddenly wistful, she set down her fork. “I envy you. I was an only child.” Her hand rested on the tabletop.
He covered it with his. The touch warmed her to her toes—and thrilled her, as well. Her whole body seemed, all at once, completely, vividly alive. He leaned into her and studied her face, his gaze as warm as his lean hand over hers. “And you are sad, then? To have no siblings?”
“I am, yes.” She wished he might hold her hand indefinitely. And yet she had to remember that this wasn’t going anywhere and it wouldn’t be right to let him think that it might. She eased her hand free. He took her cue without comment, retreating to his side of the table. She asked, “How old are you, Rule?”
He laughed his slow, smooth laugh. “Somehow, I begin to feel as though I’m being interviewed.”
She turned her wineglass by the stem. “I only wondered. Is your age a sensitive subject for you?”
“In a sense, I suppose it is.” His tone was more serious. “I’m thirty-two. That’s a dangerous age for an unmarried man in my family.”
“How so? Thirty-two isn’t all that old.” Especially not for a man. For a woman, things were a little different—at least, they were if she wanted to have children.
“It’s time that I married.” He said it so somberly, his eyes darker than ever as he regarded her steadily.
“I don’t get it. In your family, they put you on a schedule for marriage?”
Now a smile haunted his handsome mouth. “It sounds absurd when you say it that way.”
“It is absurd.”
“You are a woman of definite opinions.” He said it in an admiring way. Still, defiance rose within her and she tipped her chin high. He added, “And yes, in my family both the men and the women are expected to marry before they reach the age of thirty-three.”
“And if you don’t?”
He lowered his head and looked at her from under his dark brows. “Consequences will be dire.” He said it in a low tone, an intimate tone, a tone that did a number on every one of her nerve endings and sent a fine, heated shiver dancing along the surface of her skin.
“You’re teasing me.”
“Yes, I am. I like you, Sydney. I knew that I would, the moment I first saw you.”
“And when was that?”
“You’ve already forgotten?” He looked gorgeously forlorn. “I see I’m not so memorable, after all. Macy’s? I saw you going in?” The waiter scooped up their empty salad plates and served them rib eye steaks with Serrano lime butter. When he left them, Rule slid her a knowing glance as he picked up his steak knife. “Sydney, I think you’re testing me.”
Why deny it? “I think you’re right.”
“I hope I’m passing this test of yours—and do your parents live here in Dallas?”
She trotted out the old, sad story. “They lived in San Francisco, where I was born. My mother was thrown off a runaway cable car. I was just three months old, in her arms when she fell. She suffered a blow to the head and died instantly, but I was unharmed. They called it a miracle at the time. My father was fatally injured when he jumped off to try and save us. He died the next day in the hospital.”
His dark eyes were so soft. They spoke of real sympathy. Of understanding. “How terrible for you.”
“I don’t even remember it. My grandmother—my father’s mother—came for me and took me back to Austin, where she lived. She raised me on her own. My grandfather had died several years before my parents. She was amazing, my grandmother. She taught me that I can do anything. She taught me that power brings responsibility. That the truth is sacred. That being faithful and trustworthy are rewards in themselves.”
Now his eyes had a teasing light in them. “And yet, you’re an attorney.”
Sydney laughed. “So they have lawyer jokes even in Montedoro?”
“I’m afraid so—and a corporate attorney at that.”
“I’m not responding to that comment on the grounds that it might tend to incriminate me.” She said it lightly.
But he saw right through her. “Have I hit a nerve?”
She totally shocked herself by answering frankly. “My job is high-powered. And high-paying. And it’s been … important to me, to know that I’m on top of a very tough game, that I’ll never have to worry about where the next paycheck is coming from, that I can definitely take care of my own and do it well.”
“And yet?”
She revealed even more. “And yet lately, I often find myself thinking how much more fulfilling it might be to spend my workdays helping people who really need me, rather than protecting the overflowing coffers of multibillion-dollar companies.”
He started to speak. But then her BlackBerry, which she’d set on the table to the right of her water goblet the way she always did at restaurants, vibrated. She checked the display: Magda, her assistant. Probably wondering why she wasn’t back at the office yet.
She glanced at Rule again. He had picked up his knife and fork and was concentrating on his meal, giving her the chance to deal with the call if she needed to.
Well, she didn’t need to.
Sydney scooped up the phone and dropped it in her bag where she wouldn’t even notice if it vibrated again.
With