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with the plastic wrap covering the plate of cookies she’d made as a peace offering. Okay, “cookies” was generous. They were Rice Krispie treats, which was about all she could manage. She wasn’t a good cook, nor did she particularly like to cook. She fiddled with the plastic wrap again. She wished she had something better to offer him.
    “Oh, for heaven’s sake, just go up there,” she muttered to herself. The worst thing that could happen would be that he’d act as he had the previous night.
    And she had gotten easily and uncharacteristically irritated by his rudeness. Which hadn’t been fair, on her part. He’d been injured, and annoyed. Justifiably so, really.
    At the very least she owed him another apology. He was Maggie’s brother-in-law, and Maggie was one of her best friends. So she’d kill two birds with one stone. Smooth things over, and just see if maybe he was attracted to her—when he wasn’t bleeding profusely from the head.
    Her reasoning was sound, but still her feet remained planted on the worn wooden floor, the plate gripped in her cold fingers. What was making this so darned hard?
    She pulled in a deep breath.
    Okay, here was the truth of it, and she needed to be truthful with herself—if no one else. She was insanely attracted to him. An instant, undeniable attraction, a shock wave rippling through her like a hit on the Richter scale measuring beyond anything previously recorded.
    That reaction made it a lot more difficult to face potentially encountering the same cool disdain she’d gotten last night. Dislike was something she never dealt well with—especially from a man whose mere presence sent her blood pressure rocketing out of the atmosphere.
    But she had to. She knew she did. She had to know if Philippe was somehow miraculously right about this, and last night had just been Vittorio’s pain making him seem so totally uninterested. And at the very least, she wanted to show him she was normally a polite, even-tempered person.
    Staring at the staircase a moment longer, which was getting more daunting as shadows from the setting sun darkened the corners and cast strange shapes on the walls, she gripped the banister and took a step. Then another.
    The hallway outside of Vittorio’s apartment was murky, the waning light through dirty windows giving the whole corridor an unsettling air.
    She fought the urge to glance over her shoulder, hairs rising on the back of her neck. Instead she focused on the door, rapping on the solid oak twice. She waited. No noise sounded from inside. No footfalls, no “just a minute,” not even a shuffle.
    Great. She went through that whole pep talk, and he wasn’t even there? Crap. She’d have to get her nerve up again—and she didn’t know if she could do that.
    Okay, just one more knock. She couldn’t do this again. He had to be there.
    Just as she raised her hand to knock again, the door jerked open, her fisted hand coming close to bopping him in the nose. In the dim light, Vittorio grimaced at her through sleep-heavy eyes. His long hair was tangled and shoved haphazardly back from his face. Bare, muscled chest and flat stomach appeared over sweatpants slung low on his narrow hips.
    “I’m sorry,” Erika immediately said, even as her heart skipped wildly. An image of him lying in bed filled her mind, quickly morphing to a picture of her in bed with him. “I—I didn’t think you’d be sleeping,” she managed to mumble.
    He frowned, blinking, then peered over her shoulder at the evening sky, which now nearly left them in darkness.
    “I keep weird hours.” His tone was flat, yet his voice still lent the words a beauty with its deep baritone timbre.
    Erika stared at him, unable to keep from studying the shadows emphasizing the muscles of his chest and stomach. Chiseled and perfect. She immediately wanted to capture that perfection with her art.
    But she managed to stop gaping and move her gaze up to his face, which was also a study in shadows