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‘I do not recall offering one,’ he said smoothly. ‘However, I am prepared to do the gentlemanly thing and let you have the bed tonight.’
‘Where will you sleep?’
‘I will take the sofa.’
She stared at him, wondering what was going on in that conniving mind. He looked back at her with an openness she found suspicious, certain it was not simple concern dictating his offer.
‘Why would you do that?’
He reached out and stroked a finger under one of her eyes. ‘Believe it or not, daragaya, I am not a complete bastard. You have been working hard and need to rest.’
* * *
Nico felt her quiver, then stiffen beneath his touch, and experienced a frisson of satisfaction.
How easy it would be to kiss those plump, delectable lips. Rosa would certainly explode—although whether it would be an explosion of lust or an explosion of all the unleashed anger she was trying so hard to contain he could not say.
There would be plenty of time on the yacht for seduction. When it happened, he wanted her to be fully committed to it. He wanted Rosa begging for him.
He did not want her looking at him with eyes bruised from lack of sleep...eyes that no longer looked at him with total trust. Whenever she looked at him now it was with suspicion.
When she had looked at her ex, what had been ringing out of those caramel eyes? Had it been adoration?
She’d said sleeping with Stephen had been a disaster. The thought brought him no comfort. She had allowed another man to make love to her. He could not rid himself of the nasty taste that left in his mouth.
As cruel as he knew it was to think such thoughts, he hoped Stephen was an impotent flop.
When he, Nico, made love to Rosa, it would be the most satisfying, fulfilling event of her life.
But now was not the time to make his move. Rosa no longer trusted him. She was right not to. He needed to regain that trust.
But first he needed to check her laptop, and the easiest way to do that would be by letting her sleep in the bedroom with the door closed.
He dropped his hand and ran it through his hair. ‘Go to bed, Rosa,’ he said, ‘Before I change my mind and join you.’
His lips twitched as she pointed her nose in the air and walked off, swinging her sandals.
An hour later, he threw the sheet back and swung his legs off the sofa. Silently he padded to the office of the villa, pausing as he passed the bedroom. A dim glow seeped under the closed door. Rosa was still awake.
He filled his lungs with oxygen, debating whether to climb back into his makeshift bed and get some sleep.
Impossible. Until he knew what she had been doing his brain would not switch off. She had been up to something. That was a given. She had reacted like a startled rabbit and he wanted to know why. He needed to know why.
His antennae were on high alert. If he were a dog he would have an ear cocked. He flipped the lid of her laptop and turned it on. He flinched as the brief start-up tune rang out.
Keeping still, hardly daring to breathe, he waited for movement from the bedroom. Nothing.
The laptop finished loading. Adrenaline firing through his veins, his heart pounding, he clicked the mouse.
It was password-protected.
He muttered an oath under his breath and racked his brains, trying to think of what she would use. As much as it sickened him even to key in the letters, the first word he tried was Stephen. Invalid. A warning came up that he had two further attempts before the laptop shut itself down. At that moment he heard the distant sound of the toilet in the en suite bathroom flushing.
A cold sweat enveloped him.
What the hell was he playing at?
He was trying to hack into his own wife’s laptop. What kind of sick puppy was he?
Clicking on the ‘shutdown’ icon, he closed the lid and moved stealthily back to the sofa.
All was quiet in the villa. All except the thunder that was his heart.
CHAPTER SIX
AFTER A LIGHT breakfast they made their way via golf-buggy to the harbour. Awaiting them, gleaming brightly in the calm ocean, stood the Butterfly King, a majestic yacht eighty feet long and three decks high.
‘Is it to your liking?’ Nico asked, unable to gauge Rosa’s reaction to it because her lips had formed such a tight white line.
‘It is nice and big—so, yes, I would say it is perfect.’
‘Well, that’s good to know,’ he murmured, ‘that you find big things perfect.’ He laughed softly at the filthy look she threw at him. ‘Shall we board?’
He really was going to have to put a stop to all these innuendoes, he thought ruefully a few minutes, later when the ache in his loins still refused to abate.
If he’d known how much fun it would be to flirt with his strait-laced wife he would have tried it months ago. She coloured so beautifully.
