A Thief in Venice by Tara Crescent Page B

wasn’t afraid to use it against me.
    I winced, laughing a little. “Okay, you’ve got me. Four cars is excessive.”
    Our food appeared. Plates of steaming hot pasta, and we dug in. “Delicious.” I raised my glass in appreciation. “Is this actually your favourite restaurant?”
    She nodded.
    “Thank you for bringing me here,” I said. I was holding off on the declarations of love, because Lucia was skittish, and I didn’t want her to bolt. But it mattered that she shared a little of her life with me, and I wasn’t going to pretend it didn’t.
    “Tell me why you aren’t asking me not to play at Casanova?”
    I sighed. “It’s your choice,” I said. “I’m not going to make it for you.”
    She looked at me evenly. “I didn’t say you could. But you could ask.”
    I returned her look. “I’m not going to ask.”
    “Will you tell me why?” Her tone was direct.
    “Of course,” I replied. “I don’t want to ask because you might do it. And because it might haunt you one day.”
    “Would you play there?” she asked me.
    I shook my head. “I can’t. It’ll make people nervous if they see me there. I’m the head of Thieves Guild. It’ll give me too much leverage to know who plays there. That’s why it’s a secret.”
    She nodded. “I don’t want to play there, not when we are dating.” She paused, and then she looked at me. “Thank you for not asking though.”
    “It wasn’t easy, you know. I wanted to growl and thump my chest and claim you as mine.” I smiled at her to let her know I was joking.
    “Yes, thumping your chest would be very sexy indeed,” she said dryly. But her hand curled around mine, and again, my heart warmed.
    ***
    After dinner, we went to her place, and she’d extended her hand out to me, smiled, and taken me to her bed. I felt like the king of the world when I walked back into my house, much, much later that night.
    Tatiana was in my kitchen when I came in. She was sipping a glass of red wine with the bottle next to her, feet bare, dangling from the high counter. I grinned and got my own glass, she filled it up.
    “How was the shoot?” I asked her. She’d been away in Croatia for a few weeks for a movie role.
    “Good,” she said. She sounded a bit despondent.
    “What’s up, Tatiana?” I asked her directly. Tatiana and me. It was a long story. The short version was that we went way back.
    She shrugged. “I hate my work.”
    I looked at her. “What happened?”
    “Another director asked me to suck his cock for a movie role. Same old.” Her voice had a forced calm in it.
    I could offer to step in and protect her, but that wasn’t what she wanted or needed. She just needed me to be a friend and listen as she grumbled. I took a sip of wine and made a sympathetic face. Inside though, I mourned the sweetness she had lost as she was exposed to the seedy underbelly of Italian filmmaking. She’d built a veneer of worldliness and cynicism around her as protection.
    “Still,” she said, taking a sip of her wine. “Maybe this movie will be the one that’ll change things, right?” She changed the topic. “What’s been going on with you?”
    “I met a girl,” I told her.
    She raised an eyebrow. “A girl? You? Tell me more.”  I wasn’t in the habit of talking about the women I was involved with, and she grinned a smile of pure amusement. I looked at her quizzically as she dissolved into laughter.
    My eyes narrowed. “Did Enzo say something?”
    She giggled. “We shed tears of laughter,” she said. “Antonio Moretti. In love.”
    “I didn’t tell Enzo I was in love,” I said. She laughed some more, and I realized I had just walked into her trap. My lips twitched. Tatiana was a lot smarter than people gave her credit for. They saw the big breasts and the blonde hair and they decided she was a bimbo. She was anything but.
    “Nice to know I’m keeping the two of you entertained,” I said dryly.
    “Tell me about her.”
    I smiled. I poured her