He was behind her and she froze for a few seconds, then turned around, her smile in place, the lectures she had given herself during the course of the day echoing in her ears.
The modest black swimsuit she wore suddenly felt like a thong bikini as she rose fluidly from the padded deckchair, swiftly wrapping her sarong around her waist while Niccolo was distracted by his daughter.
‘Had a good day?’ He glanced at her for a few seconds from the kneeling position he had adopted to look at his daughter’s sketchpad, and then stood up to move to one of the chairs next to where Sophie had been sitting moments earlier.
Suddenly roused from her natural tiredness after having spent most of the day outside in the sun, Annalise was now bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and desperate to commandeer her father’s attention.
Still in her swimsuit, she proceeded, for the next ten minutes, to proudly demonstrate her swimming prowess until, laughing, Niccolo stood up and started unbuttoning his loose white linen shirt.
Sitting ramrod-straight on the deckchair and hiding behind sunglasses, Sophie watched in fascinated horror at what looked like the beginnings of a striptease.
Off came the linen shirt and her mouth went dry at the sight of a body not even her wildest flights of imagination could have done justice to. Broad shoulders rippled with muscle. His nipples, flat and brown, were small discs accentuating his pecs. His stomach was flat, the perfect six-pack tapering to a narrow waist. He had just the right amount of body hair to advertise in no uncertain terms that he was all male...all glorious, unashamedly and outrageously sexy alpha male.
The shorts were now coming off. Sophie held her breath. Underneath, he was wearing swimming trunks, loose and silky and riding low. Made sense. He was on his yacht surrounded by the ocean. No better place to be prepared for getting wet.
She realised that she was still holding her breath and still gaping as he stepped into the pool. It wasn’t big enough for fancy diving, but she suspected that if it had been he would have executed something pretty impressive.
He was beautiful. He moved with the grace of a panther and was compelling to look at. Thank goodness he was too busy swimming with Annalise, allowing her to clamber onto his shoulders so that she could splash with spluttering laughter into the water, to notice that he had become prime spectator fodder for Sophie.
She tore her avid gaze away with difficulty and was busily staring at a jumble of words in her book, pretending to read, when she became aware of his shadow looming over her.
‘You didn’t want to join us?’
Sophie looked up at him through her dark sunglasses and plastered a rictus smile on her face. Once in that forced position, her jaw began to ache, but she couldn’t seem to assume a normal expression because she was too aware of him right there in front of her greedy gaze, all wet and lean and sinfully, sinfully sexy.
Annalise, wrapped in one of the oversized beach towels that had been brought for them, had plonked herself on the deckchair and was lying down, eyes closed, a little smile on her face.
‘Sophie’s been teaching me how to do handstands in the pool,’ she said, without opening her eyes.
‘Maybe she could teach me,’ Niccolo said, his dark eyes not leaving Sophie’s face for a single second. ‘It’s been a dream of mine...’
‘Has it really?’ Sophie said drily. She drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, and then stared out to sea.
The yacht had moved during the course of the day, although the sailing had been so smooth that she had barely noticed, and land was now a distant slither, a dark strip far off into the blue horizon. All around them, the ocean was still and dark, gently lapping the steep sides of the yacht.
‘Where are all your...er...guests?’
‘Busying themselves relaxing and then getting ready for a three-course meal,’ Niccolo said as he sat on the chair next to her and laid back, mimicking his daughter, arms folded and legs lightly crossed at the ankles.
Sophie felt a little telltale tic at the side of her mouth, a giveaway sign of the strain of keeping her eyes averted when her whole body was reminding her of how vitally aware she was of his presence inches away from her.
He was a burnished, healthy bronze, and alongside him she felt translucently pale.
‘I’ve asked the lovely guy who’s been taking care of us all day to bring us an early supper in the room.’
Niccolo opened his eyes to slits and slid them across to Sophie.
She’d been in his head off and on throughout the day. He’d found himself actively resisting the temptation to seek her out on the pretext of making sure she and Annalise were okay even though he knew they would be. He had given appropriate instructions to the head of staff to know that their every need would have been met.
He had held out because surely the magnitude of this deal overrode any inexplicable desire to see what his nanny and Annalise were up to?
But now...
He had taken one look at her in that swimsuit over which she had hastily flung a sarong and the libido he had sternly reprimanded the evening before had promptly decided to break free and run wild.
The sun was already beginning to turn her skin a pale gold and bleach her hair to an even more impossible shade of white-blonde, and those dark-lashed violet eyes, resting briefly on him as he’d made his appearance, had detonated a series of explosive images that had forcibly reminded him just how easy it was for her to wreak havoc with his prized self-control.
She’d hidden away behind some oversized sunglasses and that had been frustrating because he’d been desperate to read the expression on her face.
