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She could understand that. While he had defended his father, and in her mind it was evident his father had loved him, there was no escaping the fact that Nico’s childhood had been harsh. Sometimes the past was too painful to talk about.
Some confidences were a confidence too far.
‘If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll go to bed.’ She got to her feet and flashed a grin she knew looked every bit as fake as his. ‘I’m all Scrabbled out.’
Nico’s answering smile relieved some of the oppressive tension that had enveloped them, allowing her to breathe a little easier. ‘Is this the part where you get some barbed wire and roll it down the centre of the bed?’
‘Gosh, not only are you supremely intelligent and a whizz at making money, but you can read minds. Are there no limits to your talents?’
‘None that I have discovered.’
‘And so incredibly modest. Goodnight.’
‘I’ll be joining you soon.’
‘Don’t rush on my account. Go and find the crew. Watch the sun come up with them.’
His low chuckles followed her all the way into the suite.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IN THE EN SUITE bathroom, Rosa stripped down to her knickers, splashed water onto her face and cleaned her teeth. The skin that had been exposed to the sun had pinkened, and she wrinkled her slightly burned nose. Why couldn’t her skin turn a lovely golden hue?
Nico had beautiful golden skin.
She blew out a puff of air. She really did not want to be reminded of his fantastic physique—not when she would shortly be sharing a bed with him. It had been bad enough spending the day with his gorgeous chest parked in her eyeline. There had been more than one occasion when she had wanted to yell at him to put a T-shirt on. But she had known perfectly well how he would react to that and had wisely kept her mouth shut.
A shiver ran through her. Would he keep to his side of their earlier wager?
Nico was a man of his word, she reminded herself. The chances of him reneging on it and starting a whole load of sex talk as she fell into slumber were extremely remote.
The thought made her feel surprisingly flat. Could that really be disappointment?
Lord knew how she would react if he did renege. Hopefully she would have the presence of mind to put a sock in his mouth. If her reaction from earlier was any indication, though, she would be a puddling wreck within seconds.
It was too unfair. Why did he have to possess a voice that was more molten than lava? Why could he not have some dreadful nasally whine, whereby dirty talk sounded ridiculous?
But then, Nico didn’t even have to speak. Just thinking about him was becoming enough to turn her into a puddling wreck.
She felt as if she had learned more about him in a day than she had in the whole time she had worked for him and been married to him. His refusal to blame his father for such a harsh childhood, his attempts to mitigate it, humanised him, stripped back the layers to reveal the man beneath the towering powerhouse shell.
She forced herself to look at her reflection. Was she really so different from his usual lovers?
The answer was a resounding yes. Unless she was strapped to a stretching machine for a year and had a bucket of bleach tipped over her head she could never look like those lithe beauties. She’d probably need a nose-job too.
How could she trust that he really did want her for herself and not out of revenge? If he had an inkling of why she had slept with Stephen...
And how could she trust her own feelings around him? He had confided a part of his past to her and it had felt as if a stack of knives were ripping into her heart.
She had wanted to climb onto his lap and wrap her arms around him.
In all the years she had been with Stephen she had never felt that urge towards him—not even when his grandmother had died. She had hated herself for her coldness but she had not been able to cross that breach.
The last time she recalled giving physical comfort, she had been in her early teens. A young girl, newly orphaned, had been brought into the care home whilst foster care was arranged for her. She had been placed in Rosa’s dormitory for the night. Rosa had heard the devastated child whimpering in her sleep and had crawled into her bed. She had held the child in her arms, stroked her hair and soothed her until she had finally fallen asleep, clinging onto Rosa like a limpet.
The next morning the girl had left. Rosa had never seen her again. Over the years she had often thought of her, had often prayed the child had found a new family who loved and cherished her.
Hearing the patio doors to the decking area close, she blinked the past away and hurriedly donned the only suitable clothing she had found that could be used as nightwear.
She breezed past Nico and turned over the sheets on the bed. ‘Is there a preference for which side you like to sleep?’ she asked politely.
