Sonia M. Rompoti, MSc, Bsc

The hotel key worked perfectly — that was the problem. If it hadn’t, Mia would never have opened the door, never have walked into the steam-thick bathroom expecting an empty room, and never have come face to face with the most gorgeous man she had ever seen in her life, wrapped in nothing but a towel and an expression of absolute shock.

“I—” she started.

“Who—” he said at the same time.

They stared at each other.

He was tall. Annoyingly tall, with that kind of easy, natural build that suggested he didn’t think about it at all. Dark hair still dripping. Eyes so green she wondered briefly if they were real.

“This is room 412,” she said, because she needed something factual to hold onto.

“It is,” he agreed. “And I checked in two hours ago.”

“The front desk gave me this key.”

“Then the front desk made a mistake.”

“Clearly,” she said, and found she had not moved.

He had not moved either.

The towel sat very low on his hips. She was a grown adult woman with a perfectly functional sense of propriety, and she was absolutely clocking every detail of his collarbones with zero remorse.

“I’m Luca,” he said.

“Mia.”

“Do you want me to call the desk?”

“I think one of us should.”

He smiled — slow, like he’d decided something. “What if neither of us does?”

“That would be deeply irresponsible.”

“I’m famously irresponsible.”

“I’m famously not.”

He tilted his head. “And yet you’re still in my room.”

That was fair. That was completely fair.

She should have left. She knew it the way she knew all sensible things — logically, from a distance, with full acknowledgment that she was about to ignore herself completely.

She put her bag down.

“I have a very early flight,” she said.

“So do I.”

“This is a terrible idea.”

“Probably.”

She crossed the room. He was warm from the shower, smelling of the hotel’s cedar soap, and when he kissed her it was the kind of kiss that rearranged something in her chest — not rough, not tentative, but certain. Like he’d been thinking about it since the moment she walked in.

Maybe he had.

They ordered room service at midnight and ate it in bed, and she found out he was a structural engineer who was afraid of pigeons and had once cried at a dog food commercial.

“You’re telling me this why?” she asked, pulling apart a bread roll.

“So you know I’m a real person,” he said. “Not just a man in a towel.”

“You were a very good man in a towel.”

He laughed, and she felt the bed shake with it, and she thought: this is how it happens, then. Not the moment in the bathroom. Not the kiss. This — the bread roll, the pigeon confession, the way his laugh lived in his whole body.

She did catch her early flight.

He was on it.

Different airline, same gate. He saw her first and just stood there, grinning like he’d won something.

She walked over, pulled his boarding pass from his hand, and checked the destination.

Same city.

“Irresponsible,” she said.

“Famously,” he agreed, and took her hand.

So you made it to the end… which probably means you’re the kind of person who enjoys a little romance with their coffee. If you’re in the mood for more stories about messy feelings, stubborn attraction, and women who absolutely refuse to settle for boring love, you can find all my books here.

Fair warning though. One story tends to lead to another. I’ve seen it happen. Repeatedly.