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He might have made the occasional flirty remark, but she had seen the sort of women he was attracted to. He had handed over his computer files to her and within them were photos of him with various busty, curvaceous, five-foot-two blonde bombshells. They all looked like clones of Marilyn Monroe.
But he wasn’t here now, and it was still so hot and muggy, even at this hour of the evening.
When she looked at herself in the mirror, she was startled at how much it changed her appearance. However, she had seen herself in her navy-blue bikini sufficient times to be reassured that she was the same lanky Lesley she had always been.
Without bothering to glance at her reflection, she grabbed a towel from the bathroom and headed downstairs for the pool.
She should have felt wary venturing out with no one around, and just acres upon acres of fields and open land stretching away into the distance, but she didn’t. In fact, she felt far more cautious in London, where she was constantly surrounded by people and where there was no such thing as complete darkness even in the dead of night in the middle of winter.
She dived cleanly into the water, gasping at the temperature, but then her body acclimatised as she began swimming.
She was a good swimmer. After being cooped up in front of a computer for several hours, it felt good to be exercising, and she swam without stopping, cutting through the water length after length after length.
She wasn’t sure exactly how long she swam; maybe forty-five minutes. She could feel the beginning of that pleasant burn in her body that indicated that her muscles were being stretched to their limit.
At this point, she pulled herself up out of the pool, water sluicing down her body, her short, dark hair plastered down...and it was only then that she noticed Alessio standing to one side, half-concealed in the shadow of one of the trees fringing the side of the veranda.
It took a few seconds for her brain to register his presence there at all because she hadn’t been expecting him.
And it took a few seconds more for her to realise that, not only was he standing there, but she wasn’t even sure how long he had been standing there looking at her.
With an outraged yelp she walked quickly over to where she had dumped her towel on one of the chairs by the pool and, by the time she had secured it around her, he had walked lazily to where she was standing.
‘I hope I didn’t interrupt your workout,’ he murmured without a hint of an apology in his voice.
‘You’re not supposed to be here!’
‘There was a slight change of plan.’
‘You should have warned me that you were going to be coming back!’
‘I didn’t think I needed to inform you that I would be returning to my own home.’
‘How long have you been standing there?’ She couldn’t bring herself to meet those amused dark eyes. She was horribly conscious of what she must look like, with her wet hair like a cap on her head and her face completely bare of make-up—not that she ever wore much, but still.
‘Long enough to realise that it’s been a while since I used that pool. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I stepped foot in it.’ Water droplets were like tiny diamonds on her eyelashes and he wished she would look at him so that he could read the expression in her eyes. Was she genuinely annoyed that he had disturbed her, shown up unexpectedly? Or was she all of a dither because she had been caught off-guard, because he was seeing her for the first time without her armour of jeans, flats and faded tee-shirts? Clothes that neutralised her femininity.
He wondered what she would say if he told her just how delicious she looked, standing there dripping wet with only a towel that barely covered her.
He also wondered what she would say if he told her that he had been standing there for the better part of fifteen minutes, mesmerised as he’d watched her swimming, as at home in the water as a seal. He had been so wrapped up in the sight that he had completely forgotten why he had been obliged to drive back from London.
‘Wait right here,’ he urged suddenly. ‘I’m going to join you. Give me ten minutes. It’ll do me good to get rid of the London grime.’
‘Join me?’ Lesley was frankly horrified.
‘You don’t have a problem with that, do you?’
‘No...err...’
‘Good. I’ll be back before you can get back in the water.’
Lesley was frozen to the spot as she watched him disappear back through the sprawling triple-fronted French doors that led into the conservatory.
Then, galvanised into action—because diving in while he watched was just out of the question—she hurried back into the water. What choice did she have? To have told him that she was fed up swimming and wanted to go inside, just as he was about to join her in the pool, would have been tantamount to confessing just how awkward he made her feel. The last thing she wanted was for him to know the effect he had on her. He might have some idea that she wasn’t as impartial to his presence as she liked to pretend but her feelings were more confused than that and ran a lot deeper.
That was something she was desperate to keep to herself. She could just about cope if he thought that she fancied him; half the female population in the country between the ages of eighteen and eighty would have fancied the man, so it would be no big deal were he to include her in that category.
But it was more than that. Not only was she not the type to randomly fancy guys because of the way they looked, but her reactions to him pointed to something a lot more complex than a simple case of lust which could easily be cured by putting some distance between them.
She had just reached the shallow end of the pool when Alessio emerged back out in the mellow evening sunshine.
Lesley thought that she might faint. Only now did she fully comprehend how much time she had spent daydreaming about him, about what he might look like under those expensive, casual designer clothes he was fond of wearing.
What would his body look like?
Now she knew: lean, bronzed and utterly beautiful. His shoulders were broad and muscled and his torso tapered to a narrow waist and hips.
He was at home with his body, that much was evident from the way he moved with an easy, casual grace.
Lesley sat on one of the steps at the shallow end of the pool, so that she was levered into a half-sitting position on her elbows while her long legs and most of her body remained under the surface of the water. She felt safer that way.
He dived into the water, as straight as an arrow, and swam steadily and powerfully towards her. It took every ounce of will power not to flinch back as he reared up out of the water and joined her on the step.
‘Nice,’ he said appreciatively, wiping his face with the palm of his hand, then leaning back just as she did.
‘You haven’t explained what you’re doing here.’ Lesley eyed the proximity of his body nervously.
‘And I shall do that as soon as we’re inside. For the moment, I just want to enjoy being out here. I don’t get much by way of time out. I don’t want to spoil it by launching into the unexpected little problem that’s cropped up.’ He glanced across to her. ‘You’re a good swimmer.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Been swimming a long time?’
‘Since I was four.’ She paused and then continued, because talking seemed a bit less stressful than remaining silent and concentrating all her energies on what he was doing to her. ‘My father had always been a good swimmer. All my brothers were as well. After my mother died, he got it into his head that he would channel all his energy into getting me into competitive swimming. The boys were all a bit older and had their own hobbies, but he’s fond of telling me that I was fertile ground for him to work on.’ Lesley laughed and relaxed a little. ‘So he made sure to take me down to the local swimming baths at least twice a week. I was out of arm bands and swimming by the time I was five.’
‘But you didn’t end up becoming a professional swimmer.’
‘I didn’t,’ Lesley admitted. ‘Although I entered lots of competitions right up until I went to secondary school, then once I was in secondary school I began to play lots of different types of sport and the swimming was put on the back burner.’
‘What sport did you play?’ Alessio thought of his last girlfriend, whose only stab at anything energetic had involved the ski slope. He had once made the mistake of trying to get her to play a game of squash with him and had been irritated when she had shrieked with horror at the thought of getting too sweaty. Her hair, apparently, would not have been able to cope. He wondered whether she would have submerged herself in the pool the way Lesley had or whether she would have spent her time lying on a sun lounger and only dipping her feet in when the heat became unbearable.
Any wonder he had broken up with her after a couple of months?
‘Squash, tennis, hockey, and of course in between I had my self-defence classes.’
‘Energetic.’
‘Very.’
‘And in between all of that vigorous exercise you still had time for studying.’
Hence no time at all for what every other teenage girl would have been doing. Lesley read behind that mild observation. ‘How else would I have ever been able to have a career?’ Lesley responded tartly. ‘Playing sport is all well and good but it doesn’t get you jobs at the end of the day.’ She stood up. ‘I’ve been out here for long enough. I should really get back inside, have a shower. Please don’t let me keep you from enjoying the pool. It’s a shame to have this and not make use of it, especially when you think that it’s so rare for the weather to be as good as it has been recently.’ She didn’t give him time to answer. Instead, she headed for her towel and breathed a sigh of relief when she had wrapped it around her.
