That was what his great-grandmother had always claimed.
Nicolo thought it more likely it had come to them through a thief in Caesar’s time, but he’d never contradicted her. He’d loved the old woman as he’d never loved anyone else. He’d always been grateful he’d made his first million and restored the ancient but decrepit Palazzo di Barbieri before she’d died.
Her pleasure had brought joy to his heart.
He’d liked making her happy. In fact, he liked making most women happy.
It was only when their demands became unreasonable, when they began to talk of The Future, of The Importance of Settling Down—and he could almost actually feel the physical weight they put into the phrase when it tumbled from their lips—that Nicolo knew that Making Them Happy wasn’t as important as Not Making a Commitment.
No way. Not him. Not yet.
For an evening? Of course. A week? Yes. Even a month. Two months. Hell, he wasn’t the kind of man to jump from bed to bed….
What would the woman in the black suede coat be like in bed? A honey-maned tigress? Or an ice queen?
Not that he gave a damn. It was simply a matter of intellectual curiosity.
He liked women who enjoyed their femininity. Enjoyed being appreciated by a man.
Nicolo hung his things in his locker.
It didn’t take a psychiatrist to figure out that the tigress was not such a woman. Although, in the bed of the right man, perhaps she could be.
The mane of hair. The delicate oval face. The amazing eyes, that tender mouth. And, yes, he’d felt its tenderness even in that brush of his lips against hers…
Fantastico.
Hell. He was giving himself a hard-on over a woman who’d insulted him, who he would never see again. He didn’t want to think about her or any woman. Not this weekend. No distractions. No sex. Like an athlete, he believed in abstinence before going mano a mano.
He needed to focus on Monday’s meeting.
Nicolo pulled on gray cotton running shorts, a sleeveless, ancient Yale sweatshirt and a pair of Nikes.
A hard, sweaty workout was just what he needed.
The gym was almost empty. Well, it was Saturday night. Only one other guy was in the vast room, pounding around the track with the lonely intensity of the dedicated runner.
Damian.
Nicolo grinned, trotted over and fell in alongside him.
“Any slower,” he said, picking up the pace, “we’d be walking. You getting too old to run fast?”
Damian, who at thirty-one was exactly the same age as Nicolo, shot him a deadpan look.
“I’ll call the paramedics when you collapse.”
“Big talk.”
“A hundred bucks says I can beat you.”
“Twenty times around?”
“Forty,” Nicolo said, and shot away.
Moments later, they finished in a dead heat and turned to each other, breathing hard and grinning from ear to ear.
“How’s Rome?” Damian said.
“How’s Athens?”
The men’s grins widened and they clasped each other in a bear hug.
“Man,” Damian said, “you’re a sweaty bastard.”
“You’re not exactly an ad for GQ.”
“How was your flight?”
Nicolo took a couple of towels from a stand beside the track and tossed one to Damian.
“Fine. Some weather just before we landed, but nothing much. Yours?”
“The same,” Damian said, wiping his face. “I really like this little Learjet I bought.”
“Little,” Nicolo said, laughing.
“Well, it’s still not as big as yours.”
“Mine’s always going to be bigger than yours, Aristedes.”
“You wish.”
It was an old line of banter and made them grin again.
“So,” Nicolo said, “where’s Lucas?”
“We’re meeting him in—” Damian looked at his watch. “In two hours.”
“You guys picked a restaurant?”
“Well, more or less.”
Nicolo raised an eyebrow. “Meaning?”
“Meaning,” Damian said, “our old friend bought himself a club. Downtown. The club of the minute, he says.”
“Meaning, crowded. Noisy. Lots of music, lots of booze, lots of spectacular-looking women out for a good time…”
“Sounds terrible,” Damian said solemnly.
Nicolo smiled as he draped his towel around his shoulders. “Yeah, I know. But I have an important meeting Monday morning.”
“Well, so do I.”
“Very important.”
Damian looked at him. “So?”
“So,” Nicolo said, after a moment, “I’m hoping to finalize a deal. With James Black.”
“Whoa. That is important. So, tonight we celebrate in advance, at Lucas’s place.”
“Well, I want to stay focused. Get to bed at a decent hour tonight and tomorrow night. No liquor. No distractions—”
“Thee Mou! Don’t tell me! No sex?”
Nicolo shrugged. “No sex.”
“Sex is not a distraction. It’s exercise. Good for the heart.”
“It’s bad for the concentration.”
“That’s BS.”
“We believed it when we played soccer, remember? And we won.”
“We won,” Damian said dryly, “because the competition was lousy.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. Giving up sex is against the laws of nature.”
“Idiot,” Nicolo said fondly. The men walked to the free weights area and made their selections. “It’s just a matter of discipline.”
“Unless, of course, there was such an instant attraction you couldn’t walk away.” Damian grunted as he lifted a pair of twenty-pound weights. “And how often is that about to happen?”
“Never,” Nicolo answered—and, unbidden, the image of the blonde with the hot eyes and the cold attitude flashed before his eyes.
He had been reaching for the twenty-pound weights, too. Instead he lifted a pair of heavier ones and worked with them until his mind was a pain-filled blank.
Farther downtown, in a part of Manhattan that was either about to be discovered or still a slum, depending on a buyer’s point of view, Aimee Stafford Coleridge Black slammed her apartment door behind her, tossed her black suede coat at a chair and kicked off her matching boots.
The coat slid off the chair. The boots bounced off the wall. Aimee didn’t give a damn.
Amazing, how a day that began so filled with promise could end so badly.
Aimee marched into the kitchen, filled the kettle with water, put it on to boil and changed her mind. The last thing she