She glanced over at Giovanni, in the seat next to her, and gave him a weak smile. She willed her body not to lean against his, or even brush up next to him. She pressed her legs together so tightly that she thought she might break a thighbone.

Giovanni. Here, in Napa, in this competition.

She couldn’t have been doing something grown up and interesting when he found her out in the hallway. No, instead she had her breasts jutted out like a cheerleader.

Now he sat back in his seat, his ankle crossed easily over his knee, and regarded her. So perfectly Italian.

She could feel the sweat bead on her forehead. She’d slept with him. She was sitting in this room full of professional people she needed to impress, and she was sitting next to a man she’d had sex with. Heat crept over her face, and she cleared her throat as if to clear away the thoughts before he could see them. Her heart pounded against her ribcage; she wondered if he could see it pulse in her throat.

And somewhere else in this room was another man she’d slept with. She was becoming that woman.

What woman? she asked her racing brain. A divorced woman. So what? There were plenty of those here. Half the room had had sex with the other half, probably. And she’d slept with a beautiful Italian man she met in a bar. There was nothing to be embarrassed about. She was not ashamed of the number of penises in her life.

Penii. Penisi?

She coughed to cover her giggle. The keynote speaker droned on about the future of wine, and she was sitting here trying to think of the plural word for penis. Giovanni’s right leg drifted toward her knee. She yanked her leg away from him and tried to smile without looking weird. Did she look weird? Did she smell weird? The receptionist had offered her deodorant—was that a suggestion? She turned to the right and bent down to reach into her purse, tucking her nose toward her armpit as she did so and taking a surreptitious sniff. It wasn’t great, but she’d smelled worse.

She sat up and smiled at Giovanni again. Stop fidgeting. She clasped her hands in her lap, white-knuckling them to hold them still.

His first international competition, he’d said in the hall. His winery. He had a winery.

Did he think she would be judging his winery?

Was that why he’d slept with her?

Her breath came in short gasps, and she swallowed hard to contain the sound. She was a fool. A classic divorced-lady fool. Like a rom-com. Worse, because she’d seen every rom-com ever made and she knew better than to sleep with Italian men. That never ended well for awkward heroines.

He’d known who she was when she walked into that bar in Treviso. She had been in Italy as a representative for Old World New School importers. If he owned a winery, it was entirely possible he read Wine Life Magazine. Maybe he saw the profile Mark had written about her and knew she was going to SommFest. He put his winery in the competition thinking she would give him a win because of their history.

Oh, God, she’d have to recuse herself. She’d have to tell the entire judging panel that she couldn’t compete because she’d fucked another one of the contestants.

Maybe he’d be disqualified. Maybe she’d be disqualified, and the entire competition would be forfeit, and the scandal would rock the entire organization. She’d go down in history as the woman who burned down the SommFest.

Over a penis.

But oh my heavens, what a penis. Every inch of her body throbbed now, a toxic combination of erotic thrill and mortification. Her stomach churned. An image of her legs, wrapped around him, how perfectly his taut waist fit between her thighs, and she could lock her ankles behind his back to pull him in closer. His bronzed skin against hers, his lips on her neck.

Her blood rushed to her head. What if her thoughts were being projected on to the screen behind the speaker’s dais? Everyone in the room would know what she was thinking—filthy, untamed thoughts about the man next to her, the man she would now help to destroy the wine world forever. Everyone here probably thought she was a pathetic, lonely divorcée who fell for the first man who showed her kindness after her husband cheated on her.

She leaped from her chair, nearly knocking it over as she stood.

“Excuse me. Excuse me. I’m sorry, excuse me. So sorry. Pardon me,” she whispered, and tried to smile as she stepped over the legs of each person in her row. This was just great. She’d shown up late and had to climb over all of them just to get to her seat; now she was climbing back over them once again. She thought if she didn’t get out of that room she might throw up. All over Giovanni. That would be an even less sexy end to their catastrophically humiliating story.

When she finally bolted out the door, she hardly made it across the hallway before she collapsed into the plush chairs. She leaned down and put her head between her knees.

“Tabitha?”

She opened her eyes and saw his shoes in front of her. Polished brown leather. Obviously. Could he not wear ratty sneakers?

Breathing deeply, she sat up and faced him.

“Did you sleep with me to try to win this competition?”

Emotions washed over his face in the space of just a few seconds. Surprise. Anger. Then he smiled.

“Is that what you believe?”

“What else am I supposed to think? You just randomly slept with a woman at a bar, and then it turns out she might be a judge at a competition that could make or break your winery?”

“That would be incredibly skillful of me, yes.”

“So, it’s true? That’s what you did?”

“That is not what happened.”

“What happened, then?”

“We met. We were attracted to one another. We made love.”

“Made love? Are you kidding me?”

“Do you not remember?”

She tried to lower her voice.

“Was it because you thought I was a judge in this? Were you trying to sway the competition? It won’t work. I’m not judging the wineries this year; I’m only in the Sommelier Medal program. Even if I were judging wineries, this is a blind competition. I wouldn’t even know which wine was yours. Your stupid little plan would never work. The joke’s on you; sleeping with a judge got you nowhere.”

“I made love with every one of the judges. Not just you.”

Her mouth dropped open, and a smirk crept onto his handsome face.

“That’s not possible.”

“But it would make more sense, no?”

Tabitha dropped her head into her hands.

“Please tell me what is happening here.”

He glanced around the room before settling into the chair next to her. “One night, Francesco was helping an American in our family enoteca, because I did not want to talk to another international wine buyer who wanted only brand names and who refused to learn about what we do. I was not going to speak to this wine buyer. But, as it happened, the wine buyer was a woman. A very beautiful woman. I tried to ignore her, but her eyes, they haunted me. So, I decided to talk to her. Only talk. I had no intention of making love to her. Or anyone. But from the moment I greeted her, I could think only of putting my hands on her waist and pulling her to me.”

“But what about the SommFest?”

“I did not know I was going to be at the competition. When we met, I had not yet sent the application. Were you ever planning to be a judge?”

“No.”

“So. It seems you are accusing me of having psychic powers in addition to seducing you for my professional gain.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything. Not anymore. I’m sorry, I panicked.”

Giovanni nodded once and then remained still next to her, seemingly in no hurry to get back into the giant ballroom.

“My ex-husband is in there somewhere.” Tabitha nodded toward the door, and Giovanni glanced toward the door as if he would see Royal standing at the entrance to the room, then turned his eyes back to Tabitha. “I’m going to have to see him. To compete against him.”

“You are no longer friends?”

“We were never friends. Now we are hardly civil. He’s a terrible person. Which is fine, you know? The world is full of terrible people. But I act like a terrible person when I’m around him.”

Giovanni pursed his lips and nodded. Tabitha tried to stare at him from the corner of her eye. Now that they were not crammed in the tiny seats of the ballroom, she could relax her body, pay attention to him again. His hair had grown a bit longer. It curled over his ears and to his shirt collar. He wore a trim linen blazer, fitted to his slim waist, over an open-collared shirt. He looked professional, but not too professional. She wanted to stare at him forever. She must have been drunk in Italy to spend the night with someone who looked like this. Men this beautiful were nothing but trouble; she’d already learned that the hard way.

But that was yet another lie she told herself. Tabitha Lawson never got drunk.

She’d been driven by her anger, her determination, her need for revenge, still consumed by that balance sheet in her head. Fueled by the insanity that Royal fostered inside of her heart. And then she showed up in a beautiful country with wonderful food and delicious wine. And then he found her in that bar and—well. Then they had that night.

Good Lord, she would never forget that night.

“Are you feeling better now?” he asked.

“Yes. I’m sorry I freaked out.”

“Should we go inside?”

Tabitha sighed. “I guess we have to?”

He shrugged. That beautiful, maddening Italian gesture that had confounded and seduced non-Italians since the dawn of time: the shoulder coming up, the hand making an arc in the air, his lips going down. It could mean anything and everything and nothing.

Stop thinking, American. Fuhgeddaboutit.

“We will stand in the back. We can leave whenever you wish.”

Power corrupts, and PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.

Tabitha thought her head would explode as the keynote speaker droned on. Her ex-husband was among the sea of heads in front of her. She couldn’t pick him out in the dark. He would not be one who bobbed his head in agreement about every point the speaker made. He would remain still, focused, only an occasional nod in acknowledgment. The future of wine. What a great world we live in. The internet and wine. Millennials and wine. The speakers congratulated themselves and everyone in the room for their excellent taste in careers and general superiority to the rest of the planet. Winemaking and wine drinkers would save the world.

She and Giovanni stood in the back of the room, unwilling to climb over their row a third time. The room was dark, as the current speaker droned through a video about how terroir was changing around the world thanks to global warming. Tabitha kept her eyes forward, trying to focus on the presentation, but it was all a blur. The photos changed—rotting grapevines, withering vineyards, shifting maps, blue icebergs.

She was only aware of his pulsing body heat. He remained still, but the inch of space between their arms crackled with anticipation and expectation. She thought she might explode. She pressed her palms against the wall behind her, leaning against them to keep herself from fidgeting. She could just see him out of the corner of her eye, the light from the speaker’s screen casting a pale glow over his handsome features. His prominent brow slightly furrowed in concentration, a dark shadow over his deep-set eyes. He wasn’t having any trouble focusing. Giovanni was here to work; she was the one who couldn’t keep her mind out of her panties.

He shifted, only an inch, and their upper arms pressed against each other. She pulled her hips away from the wall and dropped her hands so they rested against her body, right next to his. The back of his hand moved against hers. The first time could have been an accident. The second, a coincidence. But he did it a third time and a jolt of electricity shot through Tabitha. He continued stroking her hand, his pinky finger coming up against her wrist in a tiny downward exclamation. Her heart pounded against her ribcage and she suspected the fire inside her was visible for the entire room to see. She kept her eyes on the front of the room, though they’d gone glassy and unfocused in her desire. She was only aware of him next to her. The speaker droned in the background, but all she heard was the even rhythm of Giovanni’s breath; all she sensed was his perfectly still body. Except for his hand, which continued to graze against hers. He drew a line, with his finger, from her palm, up her wrist and inner arm, tickling it gently to the tenderness of her inner elbow before dragging his finger back down to her wrist again. Their palms pressed against each other.

She had been lonely for physical contact, and now her loneliness kindled into a fire that spread through her belly and into her hips, and warm, breathless anticipation. So this is happening, then. Excellent! her body seemed to be saying to her. I didn’t expect an Italian, but … cool.

The speaker was winding down his speech and people started to shift, stretch their bodies, search for the nearest exit route. Soon, Tabitha knew, the lights would come on and everyone would make their way to the doors, decide on a dinner restaurant, grab a drink in the lobby bar, try to act comfortable and friendly while sussing out their competition.

“Just so you know,” she whispered, “that was a one-night thing in Italy. I am not looking for a relationship or any complications. That was once. One time.”

“I agree with you,” he murmured back.

“Don’t think it’s happening again. It’s not. That’s not my style.”

“Nor is it mine. Shall we leave?” Giovanni whispered into her ear. He had not even finished his question before she took his hand and turned to go.