“But you’ve done all of that and so much more!” she declared passionately, wiggling around until she was straddling his lap. She took his face between her palms and stared resolutely into his eyes. “The first time you kissed me, Ian, that evening in your office - I finally knew what it felt like to be alive. I think until then I’d only been merely existing. Since then you’ve given me everything - and I’m not talking about all of the material things.” She placed a soft, sweet kiss on his lips. “What you’ve given me is priceless - love, security, confidence, self-esteem. Before you and I were together, I felt worthless, unimportant, insignificant. And now, well, I feel like - yours.“

“Christ.” He shook his head, at a rare loss for words as he eased her head back onto his shoulder and held her close. “And I feel like the luckiest man in the entire world every single minute of every single day. When you first told me about Peter, about the abuse he’d suffered and the impact it had on your marriage, I felt deep sorrow for him. As well as tremendous gratitude for how he’d helped you. But I was also a selfish enough bastard to feel overjoyed at knowing I’d be the one to awaken you sexually. To transform you from a shy girl into a passionate woman. So why am I acting like a spoiled adolescent now just because you had a friendly lunch with your ex-husband?”

Tessa laughed, and gave his tie a playful little tug. “Well, if the shoe had been on the other foot, and I’d found out you’d had lunch with Davina, my face would be bright green with jealousy by now. So I would say it’s perfectly normal for us to be jealous of other people who were in our lives at some point in the past. But the important thing to remember is that it was in the past. Peter and I are just friends, and that’s all we’ll ever be again. Besides, he knows how happy I am with you, and knows he could never give me any of the things that you do.”

Ian gave her a wry smile. “You mean like diamonds and luxury cars and exotic vacations?”

She shook her head as she gave his earlobe a sharp nip. “No, you silly man,” she whispered naughtily. “I mean like lots and lots of really spectacular sex. In fact,” she added in a very suggestive tone, “it would be a real pity to waste your getting home from work so early. Unless, of course, you really need to look over all of those boring reports before dinner.”

He stood, lifting her high up into his arms in one fluid motion. “What reports?” he murmured as he began to carry her out of the room.

Ian very seldom questioned any of the decisions he’d made thus far in his life, usually because he was the sort of man who always thought things out carefully. He was rarely if ever impulsive, and never allowed himself to get badgered or pressured into doing things he didn’t deem prudent.

But as he and Tessa walked inside of the cozy Mediterranean café, he wondered what the hell he’d been thinking of when he had agreed to go to dinner with her and her ex-husband.

He grimaced as he acknowledged that he hadn’t precisely been thinking at the time she’d rather excitedly suggested the idea. Or at least he hadn’t been thinking with his brain. Tessa had brought up the idea after their third - or had it been their fourth - round of lovemaking, and at a time when he’d barely been able to remember his own name.

She had put together a tray of bread, cheese, fruit, and a bottle of wine, and carried it up to the bedroom. Ian had protested that he didn’t want her waiting on him, but she had only laughed and given him a kiss, insisting that taking care of him was one of her greatest pleasures. And because he had already known that to be the truth, had been witness to the many little things she did every day to spoil him and give him pleasure, he hadn’t been suspicious of her motives in pouring him a glass of perfectly chilled Chardonnay, or popping grapes into his mouth teasingly. Otherwise, if Tessa didn’t normally pamper him in such a manner, he might have thought that she was trying to reassure him of her love and devotion, to convince him that her lunch with Peter earlier in the day had simply been to catch up with an old and dear friend.

But one of the many things he’d learned about his fiancée over the past year was that she didn’t have a devious or manipulative bone in her body. There was no pretense with Tessa, no game playing or dishonesty, and she would never dream of using sex in exchange for a favor or something else she wanted. Ian honestly didn’t know if she was even capable of that sort of cunning behavior, and especially not with him.

She had, however, caught him completely off guard when she’d suggested that he join her and Peter when they met up for dinner later that week.

“I think it would be nice for the two of you to get to know each other a little,” she’d pointed out. “And this way you could see for yourself that you have nothing to worry about. Peter and I - well, you already know how complicated our relationship was, how nothing about it was really normal. And now that we’re divorced, now that I’m with you and he knows how happy I am, he and I can truly just be friends. Like we were when we first met.”

“I trust you implicitly, Tessa,” he’d told her quietly. “The way you love me, how passionate you are, I know that you could never be that way with anyone else. I don’t need to be a third wheel at your dinner with a friend just to ease my ridiculous insecurities.”

She’d given him a look of amusement. “You? Insecure? Ian, my darling, I don’t think that word is even in your vocabulary. I can’t imagine anyone being more secure and sure of himself than you are.”

He had plucked a strawberry dipped in white chocolate - a dessert she’d prepared earlier that day - and popped it in her mouth. “Until I met you, I would have been in complete agreement. Not only was I a very confident man, probably too confident and cocky for my own good at times, but I’d never been denied anything I wanted. Things had always gone my way practically from the time I could walk and talk. And not because I kicked up a fuss or bullied or threatened people. It was simply because I had always taken the time to figure out the best way to go about things to achieve the result I desired.”

He had paused briefly to refill their wine glasses and take a long drink from his before continuing. “You were the one thing I wanted that I couldn’t have, couldn’t figure out a way to make you mine. Not when you already belonged to someone else. I thought more than once about trying to seduce you away from Peter, but knew that you’d never allow that to happen, no matter how much you might have been attracted to me. And when push came to shove, I knew I’d never be able to go through with the idea. It was especially hard for me to accept the fact that you were out of my reach, because I had never wanted anything as much as I wanted you.”