Rafe recognized the double entendre and grinned. “Thanks. I’ve tried very hard not to be my father.”
The ambassador sighed. “At times I envy you your youth. Not often though.” His diplomatic smile appeared. “I find the drama enervating.”
“Come now. I’ve heard all the stories.” Emilio always reminded Rafe of an eighteenth-century courtier. Worldly, rational to a fault, morally ambivalent.
Emilio shrugged. “Shokov will put her in a better mood. He’s young and aggressive.”
“And is thinking of running an oil pipeline under the Adriatic to Italy.”
“Exactly. It’s the only reason I eat his very bad food. Did you know his chef was a chemist first?”
Rafe groaned.
“You see my dilemma.” Emilio raised his hand slightly in adieu, and a moment later followed his third wife from the room.
As the door closed on the ambassador, Nicole raised her brows slightly. “He seems to like you, and you like him. I’m confused. Is she your girlfriend?”
“You can’t be serious,” Rafe said.
“Ah.”
He didn’t respond to her insinuation, nor to her arched look. Instead, he slid down in his chair, lifted his gin and tonic to his mouth, and surveyed her over the rim of his glass for a moment before he drained the drink. Fishing an ice cube out of the glass, he held it up. “See this?” When she didn’t answer he said, “The length of time it takes for this to melt is about the extent of my interest in a woman.”
She grinned. “Your numerous charities aside, you really can be an unmitigated shit.”
“Somehow, I’m finding you the exception to my rule,” he drawled, dropping the ice cube back in the glass. “If I believed in the idea that a mysterious stranger could enter my life and change it in a split second I’d say it was when you walked in the door.” His mouth twitched slightly in amusement. “Since I don’t, I’m going with instant lust.”
“Fine with me.” A novel concept in her life, unique to this man; although she liked the equally mysterious notion of second chances. “I’ve met you before, you know.”
He quickly sat up. “Fuck if you did.” He set his glass down. “I would have remembered.”
“You were with a woman.”
He didn’t want to say that was too common to jog his memory. “Tell me where?”
“San Francisco. Two years ago. You spoke on the targeted chemotherapy Contini Pharmaceuticals was developing.”
“And I met you?” He smiled. “Were you in disguise?”
“I was with my chem class; our professor introduced us as a group.” She didn’t say that the beautiful blond doctor on his arm had been whispering in his ear at the time, which may have distracted him. Nor that, afterward, she and a classmate had discussed the probable size of his dick, his scorching good looks, and the fact that if he’d even crooked a finger in their direction, they would have jumped into bed with him, alone or together.
“Forgive me for not remembering you.” He suddenly grinned. “But there, you see, it’s an example of awesome fate and opportunistic probability that we met again.”
“Somehow I don’t see you as a spiritual guru.”
He shrugged. “Whatever. But I’m glad I met you again.” He didn’t care if it was the work of pixies or the hand of God; he wanted her. “Where are you staying?”
“At my uncle’s apartment.”
“Come to my place.” He folded his hands on the table, leaned forward a little, his gaze focused, her appeal powerful as a riptide, ignoring the fact that what he was about to say was messing with his head. “I’ll kick out everyone else.”
“Everyone else? Meaning?” She didn’t lack confidence, and he was notorious for his casual sexual encounters.
For some reason he didn’t mind her impertinence. “Only male friends. I never allow women to stay with me.” He smiled. “Until now. So how about it?”
“Sure, I’d like that.” And suddenly the summer takes an interesting turn. So far the boys of summer had been only mildly interesting. “But not for long.” She wrinkled her nose. “I have to go back to school in a couple of weeks.”
Rafe suddenly went still; her little nose twitch reminded him of a child. “Just for the record,” he murmured, “how old are you?” People graduated college at any age; he had at nineteen.
“Worried?” Nicole flashed him a grin. “How much does it matter?”
He scowled. “It matters.”
“Or?”
“Or you’re gone.”