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champagne from a passing waiter’s tray.   He handed one flute to Calia with an intimate smile.
    “So, I will propose a toast.”
    Calia held up her glass, returning the smile in spite of her internal admonitions.   “To what?”
    “To… what did you say earlier?   Playing things by ear?”
    Her smile froze.   “What if I’ve decided I don’t feel like making music anymore?”
    “Then I will have to change your mind.   I will have to make it so that you cannot help but move to the rhythm.   So that you begin humming in spite of yourself.”
    She swallowed.   “Is that all this has been about?   Seduction?”
    He inclined his head.   “Two can play at that game, after all.   You drove me mad at dinner.   Now, I am reciprocating.”   He leaned in towards her, so close his lips almost brushed against her ear as he spoke, his tone low and intimate, “I want you, Calia.”
    Calia’s breath caught at the harsh urgency in his voice, his tantalizing nearness.   Resolutions be damned.   She suddenly found herself resenting the thronging crowds around them — she wanted to be alone with him.   Now.  
    She closed her eyes a moment.   When she opened them, it was to find him watching her with his predator’s gaze.   Though he wasn’t touching her, he was close enough to kiss.
    “Let’s get out of here,” she murmured.  
    His eyes flared with fierce triumph, and he inclined his head.   “As my lady commands.”   He took her hand and they began making their way through the crowds towards the exit.
    “Signore Diamanti!”
    Gio paused, but did not turn his head.   Calia glimpsed the frown on his face from what she could see of his profile.   He started walking again.
    “Signore Diamanti!   Wait!”   The speaker had called out in English.   Gio paused once more, then let out an impatient sigh and began looking around the hall, still wearing a dark scowl.
    When the call came a third time, Gio’s gaze settled on someone behind her, his sculpted lips thinning, before he gave a hard smile.   “Right on cue.   My two main adversaries of the week.”
    Calia pushed aside her own incongruously acute disappointment.   “’Adversaries’?   Well, I suppose that’s better than ‘enemies’.”
    He gave her a brief glance, before returning his gaze to them.   “It is just business.   I am sorry, tesoro mio , but I suppose this will not be put off.   I will try to make it short.”
    She nodded.   “Of course.”   She turned so that she stood beside Gio and was able to follow the line of his gaze, finally picking out two men who were making their way through the crowd.   “Are these the men you’ll be negotiating with this week, about that French holding?”
    He nodded, but before he had a chance to say anything, the men were upon them.
    “Ah, signore — I was not certain you had heard me calling.   It can be so difficult to make anything out with all these crowds.”
    “Too true.”   Gio smiled politely at the two businessmen.   Watching him, Calia would never have guessed that this was the same man who, moments before, had pushed her to the edge of her own resistance and beyond.  
    Nor had she figured out how she felt about that.   Physically — sexually — he was the most exciting man she had ever encountered.
    Given that she had left her comfortable job — and her comfortable relationship with Dave — because she had realised she didn’t want to live her life haunted by might-have-beens, she now began to wonder if walking away from this opportunity with Gio would become one of those regrets.   She didn’t want to look back in forty years with the knowledge that she had shortchanged herself because she had been afraid to take a few risks.
    The problem was, she couldn’t figure out what she would regret more:   walking away from the opportunity of a no-strings encounter with a man who drove her wild with desire, or having that potentially mindblowing sex with a man