AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Not taking her eyes off him, she slowly closed her lips around her straw and sucked.
‘You are playing with fire,’ he warned, grabbing the wrist holding the straw.
‘Really?’ She adopted a surprised look. ‘We’re only talking. If you would prefer I stop talking you only have to say. And then shut up too.’
He shook his head with incredulity before grazing a kiss across her knuckles. ‘Game on.’
She blinked at the unexpected intimacy, but forced her mind to concentrate.
His next move took him eighty-three points clear.
Rosa had no intention of going down without a fight, but it was a lot harder than it should have been. Nico had dropped the verbal flirtation, but whenever it was her turn he would fix those green eyes on her and seduce her with them—at least until the sun got into them and he started squinting.
‘That’ll teach you,’ she sniggered, placing three tiles on the board and clawing back thirty much needed points.
The game progressed slowly. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t quite catch him, only able to shave off a few points here and there. She was twenty-six points behind when she removed the final tiles from the bag.
For an age Nico’s face was scrunched in concentration. He took a sip of his cocktail, his eyes meeting hers with a look that could only be described as triumphant. Slowly, deliberately, he placed six of his tiles on the board.
‘I think you’ll find that comes to sixty-two points which puts me eighty-eight points ahead with only one tile left.’
Ouch!
‘Do you want to admit defeat?’
‘No chance.’ She frowned and stared at her letters, waiting for them to magically form a super-duper...
Ha!
How she kept her face poker straight she would never know, but, after positioning her S at the bottom of Nico’s last-laid word, she placed all her tiles on the board. ‘I think you’ll find that comes to thirty-six points, plus a bonus fifty points for using all my letters.’
The smirk playing on his lips vanished. Quickly he made his own calculations.
‘So it’s down to your last tile,’ she observed. ‘Let’s have a look.’
With obvious reluctance he picked it up and held his palm open. It was a C, worth three points which would be deducted from his total and added to hers.
‘Would it be in really bad taste for me to jump up and down and squeal like a banshee?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Thought so.’ She got to her feet. ‘I can be gracious in victory. Seeing as you lost, you can pack the board away. I’m going for a shower—all this heat is getting to me. See you later, loser.’
Still sniggering, she went straight to the en suite bathroom and locked the door behind her.
* * *
Rosa had to give Nico credit—he’d stopped sulking by the time their evening meal was served. At least she assumed he had been sulking, seeing as he had whiled away the last hours of the afternoon in the saloon.
As the heat of the day had barely been dented, they decided to eat on the sundeck, consuming a bottle of chilled white wine with their meal.
‘Is this what people do on holiday?’ she asked, once she had cleared her coconut mousse with a contented sigh. ‘Laze about doing not very much and consuming lots of alcohol? And not to forget beating their spouse at Scrabble?’
His lips quirked. ‘Tomorrow I will teach you to play chess.’
‘Sounds exciting.’
‘You will need all your concentration.’
‘I’m sure I’ll cope.’
‘Same rules as today?’
She pondered. ‘Best of three—but no flirting or innuendo at all during play. Deal?’
He extended a hand. ‘If we are going to make a deal we must seal it with a handshake.’
I’d much rather seal it with a kiss, she thought, before checking herself. Time to cut back on the alcohol. Her thoughts were becoming extremely wayward, running further away with every look at him. And, really, Nico did look stunningly handsome under the moonlight. More so than normal, which she had not thought possible. Somehow he made a pair of knee-length shorts and a green polo-shirt look sexy.
Surreptitiously wiping her palm on her skirt first, she took his hand, expecting a quick shake and then release.
Nico clasped his fingers over hers, pulling her hand close so he could examine it. ‘Your hands are tiny,’ he said, holding his hand to hers.
‘I am half your size,’ she commented, with a nonchalance that belied the swirls of heat pervading through her. To cover her nervous excitement she downed the rest of her wine.
‘Tell me why you have never taken a holiday before,’ he said, still gazing at her hand.
‘There’s nothing to tell. The opportunity was never there.’ Why had she not snatched her hand away? And why had her heartbeat trebled, with pulses of excitement hopping across her skin?
