The tigerlike fierceness he’d come to know so well sparked in her eyes. “It’s not that,” she growled, taking the glass from him. “He never fully trusts me with anything. He says he does, then he undercuts me. He has to put his stamp on everything. Point out where I’m lacking...”
Matteo shrugged. “It sounded to me like he was offering help.”
Her mouth twisted. “He only offers it when he thinks you’re about to screw up.”
“Maybe you’re looking at it the wrong way,” he suggested. “The most successful people in the world don’t do it on their own. They surround themselves with good people.”
She lifted her chin as if she hadn’t even heard him. “Once, just once, I’d like to do it on my own. Prove that I am not successful just because I am Warren’s daughter, but because of my damned impressive abilities.”
“I don’t think anyone’s doubting that.”
“Yes, they do. All the time the other vice presidents take shots at me. I’ve heard them behind my back.”
He took a sip of his wine. “So you’re going to spend the rest of your career worrying about what everyone else thinks?”
She pointed her glass at him, antagonism darkening her eyes. “Do you know that after I made the top thirty under thirty list, Warren did not say a word of congratulations to me? Not a word. He said, and I quote, ‘It’s too bad you weren’t the first woman on it.’”
Matteo blinked. “Perhaps it’s not his thing to give compliments then, but I’m sure he was proud of you. He had to have been. That list is brutally hard to get on to.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Quinn came back bitterly. “Warren’s standards are so high you can’t be human. You have to be a machine.”
“How’s that going for you?” he asked softly. “You seem to be doing a pretty good impersonation of one and it’s still not making you or him happy.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “I just need to do better.”
“No, you don’t.” He took a step closer. “Dammit, Quinn, you need to believe in yourself. You are working miracles here but you need help.”
“I just need to get through the next few weeks and I’ll be fine.”
He sighed. “There are too many issues with too many properties.”
“I will manage.”
“You will self-destruct.”
She looked him dead in the eye. “I didn’t ask for your commentary.”
He hissed in a breath. She could be a cold bitch sometimes. He’d been busting his butt for a week trying to help her and this was what he got? But even as he thought it, he knew better. Knew the puzzle that was Quinn had grown a hard shell to protect herself from getting hurt.
Let it go, Matteo. The voice of sanity echoed in his head. Drop it now before you get more emotionally involved with a woman who is mortally off-limits to you.
They ate at the candlelit table for two that overlooked the ocean, protected by a canopy as a crackling thunderstorm descended. It lit up the night with outrageously beautiful white light that arced across the sky and stole their breath. The small talk made him crazy. The need to hold her made his hands curl at his sides. He gritted his teeth and went through the key points to review with the sommelier in the morning. Forced the salmon down his throat. Did not acknowledge how she bit her lip against the electricity that raged between them every time their gazes collided, just as strong as the storm around them.
One more taste of her, he knew, and he was a dead man.
Matteo did not do relationships with women. Didn’t even know if he was capable of one with his checkered past. With his parents’ business merger as his prime example of what one could encompass. Quinn needed someone she could believe in. Someone who could restore her faith in men. Not him.
She offered him a liqueur after dinner. Coffee. He turned them both down flat. Watched the disappointment slacken her lower lip. “I have work to do,” he murmured, getting to his feet and throwing his napkin on the table. “Thank you for dinner.”
Then he escaped to his room.
Quinn poured herself another glass of wine and paced. She was out of control with her stress, no doubt about it. Matteo did not deserve her ire, not when he’d just spent the entire week bailing her behind out of an impossible situation they might actually pull off if they were very, very lucky.
It’s just that he was so damn perfect sometimes. So calm and in control and able to see the big picture. Her fingers curled around her wineglass, absorbing its icy chill. That was, when he wasn’t falling apart over a death he wouldn’t talk about....