She'd been running on simmer since Massimo picked her up this evening. The ambience of the restaurant he'd chosen would have been perfect if not for the butterflies that accompanied her main course. As Shanice enjoyed a traditional donburi pot, her stomach danced all over the place. And she almost lost a chopstick when Massimo grinned up at her while he poured her another glass of wine. The man has dressed in a classy and elegant pair of navy blue trousers with a black long-sleeved summer knit sweater. His dark hair was freshly cut and Shanice found herself wishing he'd left a bit more on the sides for her to run her fingers through. After all, she'd already agreed that they were in the "getting to know you" stage and Massimo would kiss her later.
She wondered aloud at the golden hue of his skin. He answered without hesitation.
"My family is Italian and French on my father's side. My mother's family is from Italy. So we've all got the dark features. Hair, eyes, skin, the works."
And Shanice thought he was damn fine. She still couldn't believe she was sitting here with a man like Massimo when she really should be at home working. Then the thought morphed into another one – working for what? Sure, she enjoyed her job, but it wasn't like she got brownie points for working herself to the bone. Hell, most folks didn't even know she spent most of her weekends pouring over numbers and putting together deals and proposals.
The truth of it? She was tired of dating men who thought it was normal to fuck her with their dress socks on—too stuffy to lay it on her the way she liked it. So full of themselves yet threatened by her, though she was a caring and giving person who could care less what they did for a living. They had no ambition, no drive. Were simply satisfied with the mediocre, yet tired of her quickly when they learned she'd risen higher in the ranks and made more money than they did. Or when they came over to dinner and acted like they couldn't touch anything because she lived in a better neighbourhood than they did. Shanice was tired of landing idiots who felt they had to compete with her in order to love her. Or jackasses who felt they had to leave her for someone younger, women who were still making their way. So her solution had been to stop being bothered with them at all.
But Massimo knew all these things about her and still wanted her? And speaking of age, their latest movie trivia question hit it dead on. The question—name the sixty-five-year-old actor who just had a child with his thirty-five-year-old wife. It made her teeth grate.
"Movie stars seem to do it all the time. I could name five actors off the top of my head that are dating or married to women twenty years their junior, or more," Shanice said as she looked up from her donburi pot. Her gaze went immediately to the working of Massimo's throat as he took a sip of golden plum wine. She wasn't sure what was more potent, the drink or the man.
"You have something against younger lovers? I sense a story there," Massimo said with a lazy, coaxing smile.
"Hmm, let me see," she snorted, one finger tapping her chin while her gaze rolled up to the ceiling. The perfect sarcastic pose. "My ex left me for a little pixie-faced, barely blonde, loud-mouthed chicklet almost fifteen years younger than me because I wasn't gullible and easily controlled. Well, he can have it. As for me, I don't date kids."
"Well, what do you consider a kid?"
Shanice suddenly felt like she was being backed into a corner, but for the life of her, she couldn't stop her mouth from running.
"I think a man who goes for a woman fifteen years his junior is a damn lecher," she swore resolutely.
"Well, I'm in luck." At her tilted expression of confusion, Massimo chuckled and said, "I'm only eight years younger than you, so that takes me firmly out of the kid category, and removes you from the lecher group."
