Holiday With The Mystery Italian. Ellie Darkins

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СКАЧАТЬ she soft underneath? he found himself wondering. Like the silk shirt she’d worn beneath that blazer the first time he’d met her. The one that had gaped slightly between the buttons, that had skimmed gently over her generous breasts, hinting at the shape below just enough to keep him awake last night, concealing him enough to drive him crazy.

      What had happened to make her so...closed? So controlled? Where had these defensive walls around her appeared from?

      At least she had made it clear that she hadn’t expected anything from him this week. It was why he had gone off-script and chosen her, of course. When he had been swimming competitively it had been his time in the pool that had controlled his schedule, his time, his life. Now it was time in the boardroom, trying to steer his sports marketing company from one market-leading success to another. There was no room in that life for a relationship. It simply didn’t fit. If he was going to achieve everything that he wanted in this life—everything that he needed to—then he had to be focussed.

      Since his university friend had driven the car they were travelling in into a tree, leaving him with a spinal injury and a brush with death that had been closer than was comfortable, he’d been determined to do more. To see more. To be more.

      Before the accident, he’d been a naturally talented but under-committed athlete. The thought of leaving this world with just a mediocre list of achievements to his name: a bronze medal in the university swimming championship. Scraping a two-two in his Sports Marketing degree. A girlfriend he had liked a lot, but not loved. Not enough, anyway.

      After the accident? It had all changed. It had to. He wanted to leave a mark on the world. So he’d watched the ParaGames from his hospital bed with an interest that had bordered on obsession. Four years to get himself fit, to be the best in the world. And he’d done it. Six gold medals over two games. And then after a day in the pool or the gym it was packing as many more achievements and successes as was humanly possible: flying lessons, professional development courses, a one-night stand with a beautiful woman. Anything new, anything remarkable, anything to make his life meaningful. To drive him further and further from the mediocrity that had almost been his epitaph.

      And after he retired from swimming, he’d attacked the business world with zeal. The seeds he’d planted when he was competing started to grow, and somehow, ten years later, he had money rolling in from sponsorship deals, which he’d used to set up his own sports marketing business, his half-dozen medals hanging in his Sicilian home, and a passport that had seen almost as much action as his super-king-sized bed.

      This front of Amber’s was meant to keep people at a distance, he guessed. To keep herself apart, private. She must not realise how much he could see. How her hurt radiated from her like an inflamed wound; how her strength and her vulnerabilities were so tangled together he couldn’t seem to see one without seeing the other.

      He had thought that he was picking the least complicated option, when he had chosen Amber. That she was someone who couldn’t be less interested in a relationship with him. And yet now, with this strangely fragile front she was presenting to the world, she suddenly seemed more complicated. More dangerous.

      And now she was off again, without a backward glance at him, elbowing her way through the crowded shop to the till. He followed in her wake, through the path that her elbows had created between the tourists, and caught up with her.

      He gripped his wheels tightly with his fingers. Because despite every well-reasoned argument he made about why he absolutely, definitely could not get involved with her, it was taking all the self-control he possessed to stop himself reaching out and brushing his fingertips over her skin. Pulling her down to sit on his lap so that he could explore today’s silk blouse, tug at the ends of that prissy pussycat bow and satisfy his need to know what it hid beneath. Whether she was peaches and cream or strawberries; firm and toned or soft and yielding.

      Because it didn’t matter how much he wanted to know, the fact remained that trying to find out would be a very bad idea indeed. She was the walking embodiment of complicated, and he didn’t need that in his life.

      He pushed through the crowds after her, wondering how he had found himself chasing again. It wasn’t a situation he found himself in often. He’d got used to a slightly embarrassed deference when he was with other people—he’d heard, ‘Oh, no, after you...’ so many times that it made him wince. He was so different from the youth he had once been in so many ways—the money, the medals, the chair—that he wasn’t sure which of the three it was that had that effect on people. All he knew was that whichever it was it didn’t have an effect on Amber. It seemed there was actually a chance that he might have a normal conversation this week. One with someone who wasn’t an employee, or a fan, or trying to get into his bed or his bank account. How refreshing. How utterly tempting.

      He forced the thought away as they left the shop and the crowds thinned.

      ‘Now we have something to keep us entertained on the flight, what next?’ he asked. ‘More shopping? More champagne?’ Keeping themselves busy seemed like the best defence against his thoughts wandering in inappropriate directions, like sliding down the neckline of her silky blouse.

      She glanced at the screen in the centre of the terminal. ‘They’ve announced the gate number. We get priority boarding, right? Might as well head straight over.’

      ‘Sure, if you want.’ What he wanted was to take her shopping for one of the teeny tiny bikinis he could see in the window of the shop opposite. What, so that he could torture himself by looking at something that he couldn’t have? He’d need his self-restraint locked down before they reached his pool later, with sunshine and Prosecco in abundance.

      He just hoped that she was going to be taking care of her own sunscreen. The thought of smoothing his hands over her shoulder blades, lifting her blonde hair to one side and tracing the nape of her neck with his fingers, rubbing cold lotion into hot skin... He imagined her, muscles relaxing under his touch, leaning her weight back against him as his hands skirted her sides, dipped into the hollows of her waist, found twin indentations at the base of her back. Would she object if his hands drifted lower still, if they dipped into the waistband of that tiny bikini?

      ‘Mother—’ Amber stopped and grabbed her foot, pulling it up to nearly waist level and inspecting the grubby mark across her shoe, which looked suspiciously like a tyre mark. ‘Watch your wheels, Mauro!’

      Damn. He’d caught her toes like a complete novice and all because he’d let his thoughts get carried away, imagining something that he could never allow to happen. She was still standing on one leg, grimacing, and gripping her toes as if she were worried they might fall off.

      ‘I’m sorry, Amber. Here, let me see.’ Before she could protest he’d wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her down onto his lap. Caught off guard and off balance, she fell into him without protest, her bum landing on one thigh, her injured foot propped on the other.

      ‘Mauro! What the hell; let me up.’

      His arm was still wrapped tight around her waist—even as he was doing it he knew what a bad idea it was, but he’d just run her down, and it wasn’t as if he were a waif. Between him and the chair they were well capable of doing some serious damage to a little toe.

      ‘How about we wait until the smart wears off, cara? Don’t tell me it doesn’t hurt—I can see that it does.’

      ‘It doesn’t hurt so bad that I need to be in your lap.’

      ‘It’s nothing,’ he said, wishing that he could believe what he was saying. ‘It doesn’t mean anything. Just think of me as a convenient seat. СКАЧАТЬ