“I need instant obedience,” he said.

He smiled at her and her heart nearly stopped. She found it impossible to breathe. He had the sexiest smile she’d ever seen in her life. He could get just about anything from her with that smile. Staring at him, she nearly stopped moving because she couldn’t remember how to walk. Her brain short-circuited. She concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other and followed him to the very spacious kitchen.

Francesca looked around her. “You live in a hotel. Why do you need a kitchen like this?” She touched the stove with reverent fingers. “This is state-of-the-art. I could do things in this kitchen.”

“You cook?” He let go of her hand and indicated the high-backed leather stool at the bar.

Francesca nodded as she climbed up onto the stool. “I love to cook. Growing up, Cella worked and I took care of the house. I spent a great deal of time watching cooking channels and trying out recipes until I understood the art of cooking—and it is an art if you love it, which I do. Even after I was old enough to work, I did the cooking.”

“I’ve never cooked,” he admitted. “Not anything that wasn’t packaged, and that doesn’t taste so good.”

“Growing up, you didn’t learn? Did you and your brothers think it was woman’s work? Some of the best chefs in the world are men.” She was a little disappointed that he might think that way. It didn’t surprise her, though.

“My brothers and my sister were too busy learning other things that were deemed necessary by the family. We didn’t have much of a childhood, and we certainly weren’t encouraged to learn how to cook. Although, saying that, Taviano is an excellent chef, but he learned in Europe, certainly not from our mother.”

“Other things?” Now she was curious. She couldn’t tell from his strictly neutral tone whether or not he was altogether happy with his childhood.

He poured chocolate from a pan on the stove, added whipped cream from a can and put the steaming mug of chocolate in front of her. “We began training from the time we were toddlers. Languages, arts, martial arts, boxing, wrestling, jujitsu, all sorts of weapons, horseback riding, eventually driving skills and of course we were expected to excel in every subject in the private schools we attended. It was top of the class or in trouble.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. His revelation was unexpected. It didn’t sound like much of a childhood to her, and she had to once again reassess what she thought. He might have all the money in the world, but her childhood had been just that—a childhood.

“You thought we spent all of our time playing polo and racing cars?”

“Chasing women,” she corrected, trying to make a joke.

His gaze jumped to her face. She took a breath. Let it out. She had to ask. Her stomach muscles were tied up in knots and she knew she was a heartbeat away from panic. “Did you call him? Barry Anthon?” Her hands tightened around the warmth of the mug, lifting it, but not taking a drink. “Did you call him and tell him I was here?”

His gaze drifted over her face. “You don’t think much of me, do you?”

She stilled; her heart jerked hard. She put the mug of chocolate down on the bar and forced herself to meet his eyes. “That’s not true.”

“Yes it is. You think I’m like Barry Anthon. That I have too much money and I don’t know what hard work is. You didn’t want to take my coat because of my money. You didn’t want to allow me to help you at all.”

His handsome features were stony, expressionless, his blue eyes glittering at her, but it was his tone that caught at her more than anything else. There was just the slightest hint of hurt there. If they hadn’t been so weirdly connected, she knew she would have missed it, but the awareness of every little nuance was there, because she was so conscious of him.

“You’re nothing at all like Barry Anthon,” she said. “Stefano, if I thought for one moment you were like him, I wouldn’t be here in this apartment with you. I’ll admit to some prejudice when I first met you, but that changed very quickly.”

“You don’t relax around me.”

“Well, that’s because you’re . . .” She trailed off with a little wave of her hand, color creeping into her face.

He tilted his head to one side, a slow smile softening the hard edge of his mouth, giving him that sexy tilt that sent heat scattering through her veins.

“I’m what?”

She pressed her lips together hard to keep from blurting out the truth. That he was gorgeous. Sexy. Dangerous. Hot. All those things. Everything she wasn’t. He was so far out of her league it wasn’t funny. He was nothing like Barry Anthon, but he ran in the same circles.