Then I meet his gaze, and it’s not the tight press of bodies that suddenly makes it hard to breathe. His eyes are the deepest, richest cognac. So deep a hue that they appear almost brown. They pin me in place as effectively as his shoe on my velvet train, and the hair on my nape rises like I’ve been confronted with a predator. Candlelight illuminates the flecks of gold in his irises as his stare drops boldly to where I still grip my neckline.

One inch.

Just one more inch and he, along with every other guest, will see a lot more of me than anyone has in years. Temptation licks through my veins like the sweetest poison. When was the last time I allowed myself to experience even the slightest bit of attraction to a man? When was the last time I walked away from my computer long enough to feel anything at all? I hate that the answer is buried in my heart like a brand.

Eighteen months, one week, and three days.

Guglielmo Donna might be rotting away behind bars but I’m the one chained down and gasping for life.

Self-preservation demands that I retreat to the familiar, the way that I’ve done since Dad’s sentencing three months ago. But something about this man compels me to hold my ground . . . as if we’ve been here before. The challenge glittering in his rich gaze promises the sort of battle that ends with us both claiming victory, naked and sweaty and tangled in sheets that smell like sex.

I tilt my head. “Can’t bear the thought of me leaving?”

Those cognac eyes flicker down the length of me in a lightning-quick glance that alights goose bumps to my flesh. Though his mouth doesn’t so much as twitch with appreciation, the tic of a muscle in his jaw tells an entirely different story. Silently, I watch him brush his suit jacket aside and burrow his fingers in the front pocket of his slacks.

In a voice like gravel, he murmurs, “Come here, Miss Donna.”

For eighteen months, one week, and three days, I’ve spent more hours hunched over my laptop than I have at home in my bed. It became an obsession, the need to prove my father’s innocence. With my younger sister plastered to my side, our fingers tangled together in shared misery, we’d watched heartbreak crease his face just before Reid Paxton—FBI asshole and resident pit bull—settled a hand on Dad’s shoulder to shove him up the metal stairs to the plane that would return him to Louisiana for his arraignment. That sort of pain couldn’t be fabricated.

It was real.

Until it became clear that it was all very much a lie.