“Then we’ll throw out what you don’t want when we get back to the hotel.” Keeping an eye out for the night manager, she began to put the discarded mushrooms back in the box. “Buy two boxes if you need them.”

“It’s a waste. You’d waste your money?”

“The publisher’s money,” she said quickly, as she put the broken box into the basket. “He’s glad to waste it. Thrilled.”

He paused for a moment, then shook his head. “No, no, I can’t do it.” But when he started to reach into the basket, Juliet moved and blocked his way.

“Carlo, if you break open another package, we’re going to be arrested.”

“Better to go to jail than to buy mushrooms that will do me no good in the morning.”

She grinned at him and stood firm. “No, it’s not.”

He ran a fingertip over her lips before she could react. “For you then, but against my better judgment.”

“Grazie. Do you have everything now?”

His gaze followed the path his finger had traced just as slowly. “No.”

“Well, what next?”

He stepped closer and because she hadn’t expected it, she found herself trapped between him and the grocery cart. “Tonight is for first lessons,” he murmured then ran his hands along either side of her face.

She should laugh. Juliet told herself it was ludicrous that he’d make a pass at her under the bright lights of the vegetable section of an all-night market. Carlo Franconi, a man who’d made seduction as much an art as his cooking wouldn’t choose such a foolish setting.

But she saw what was in his eyes, and she didn’t laugh.

Some women, he thought as he felt her skin soft and warm under his hands, were made to be taught slowly. Very slowly. Some women were born knowing; others were born wondering.

With Juliet, he would take time and care because he understood. Or thought he did.

She didn’t resist, but her lips had parted in surprise. He touched his to hers gently, not in question, but with patience. Her eyes had already given him the answer.

He didn’t hurry. It didn’t matter to him where they were, that the lights were bright and the music manufactured. It only mattered that he explore the tastes that waited for him. So he tasted again, without pressure. And again.

She found she was bracing herself against the cart with her fingers wrapped around the metal. Why didn’t she walk away? Why didn’t she just brush him aside and stalk out of the store? He wasn’t holding her there. On her face his hands were light, clever but not insistent. She could move. She could go. She should.

She didn’t.