Italian Knights by Sharon DeVita

talked about? And what difference does it make? Sal, if you’re going to start acting like a deranged father ag—”
    “Annie, please.” Sighing, Sal dragged a hand through his hair. He needed this information, but he didn’t want to alarm her. “Could you please just indulge me?”
    “But why?” She’d never seen Sal so intense, so serious. This wasn’t just some macho inquisition, this was something else altogether.
    “Annie, please?”
    Sal never asked her for anything. If he wanted a blow-by-blow account of her boring conversation with David, she would give it to him. “Last night,” she began carefully, “David was giving me a lecture about his stocks, his bonds, his Remingtons—”
    “His what?” Sal frowned.
    “Remingtons,” she repeated with a heavy sigh. “They’re paintings. When he took me to his apartment, I was admiring his—”
    Sal’s jaw tightened. “He took you to his apartment!”
    “No,” she snapped, growing annoyed at his interrogation. “He changed his clothes in the back seat of the car! Of course he took me to his apartment. And stop scowling like that, Sal.”
    “All right, all right. Go on. Then what?”
    “We drove to the restaurant, and we talked about—” She stopped, not wanting to tell Sal that they’d talked about him . She had a feeling David’s rather caustic comments about Sal wouldn’t further endear David to him. “We talked about the neighborhood,” she hedged. “He said he was concerned about my welfare. You know, the poor widow woman living alone.” She tried to make light of it, but apparently Sal’s sense of humor was out of joint this morning.
    “Is that all?”
    “Well,” she fumed, “I’m sure there would have been more if we hadn’t been so rudely interrupted!”
    He grinned. “Are you implying that I was rude?”
    Annie glared at him. “What would you call muscling in on my date, and getting us thrown out of a restaurant?”
    “A smart move,” he quipped, his grin widening. He glanced at his watch. He was waiting for a call that would answer some questions about Dancing David.
    “Sal, why all this interest in David and our date? I know you don’t like him, but—”
    “Do you?” he asked abruptly. His eyes held hers until her knees felt weak. “Do you like him, Annie?” he asked again, tipping her chin up until her gaze met his. Annie took a deep breath as his clean male scent washed over her.
    Utterly disgusted at the sudden flare of hope in her heart, Annie made a heroic effort to control her feelings. Sal was just asking because he didn’t like David and he was concerned for her welfare. Not for any other reason, she assured herself. And she’d better not start thinking any differently.
    But last night after she’d crawled into bed, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Sal, or his kisses. She kept reliving it over and over in her mind. She realized that Sal was everything a woman could ever want—patient, kind, loving, giving. But just because the man had kissed her was no reason for her to start entertaining thoughts she had no business entertaining.
    They’d been through so much together the past two years, it was only natural that he felt an emotional attachment to her, and she to him.
    But that was all it was, nothing more. It was common for people who’d gone through something tragic together to form an emotional attachment. Grief had a way of binding people together, but, she reminded herself, she couldn’t read anything more into it.
    Sal ran his thumb over her chin, gently touching the racing pulse point in her throat. Annie swallowed hard. All her defenses seemed to crumble when he was near.
    “Do you?” he repeated, gently teasing the tender skin of her throat, and Annie’s mind shifted into panic.
    “He’s…nice,” she hedged, trying to ignore the fact that Sal had slipped his arms around her waist.
    “Are you going out with him again?” he asked, drawing her close. Despite her