Shereallymust have been drunk. A good-looking man was being kind and decent to her, so she was over-inflating it in her mind. Maybe going back up to his villa wasn’t such a great idea after all. ‘You sure about this? You were pretty worried about rumours last time we were somewhere secluded together – and now you have a girlfriend.’
‘I don’t have a girlfriend,’ he replied immediately. His eyes fastened on hers, but a second later he gave a chagrined sigh and dropped her hand.
‘You don’t?’ Now she didn’t know what to do with her hand. It felt like it had grown three sizes and any movement she made with it would be like waving around a surfboard.
‘No…look, no one’s around; let’s get inside, yeah?’ He moved by her, his shoulders suddenly tense.
She spun on her heel to follow, and her knees buckled. Some garbled noise of surprise escaped her mouth and just before she crumpled to the floor, Rowan lunged for her, his bare arm gripping her tight around the waist, steadying her. She sagged into the sudden, welcome support as she was guided forwards…then realised there were acres of hot, toned flesh separated from her by the thin material of her T-shirt and shorts. Heaven help her.
When they reached the foot of the staircase, she peeled herself away, clinging to the cool rocks instead.
‘Careful, some of them are jagged.’
She made a noise of acknowledgement and lifted her heavy feet, one step at a time, with him right behind her. Time was behaving weirdly, moving fast around her, while her body seemed to be wading through treacle. Her head started pounding by the time they reached the top of the zig-zagging steps, and she only just thought to ask: ‘How is your hand?’
‘Oh.’ He moved beside her, swinging the little green gate tucked into the leafy foliage open. ‘It’s fine. It did need stitches, but it healed up really quick.’
‘Good,’ she murmured, following him through to a small courtyard, where there was a swing seat and a table and chairs on old, worn red bricks. The villa looked like a cross between a barn and a church. One end was tall with a long window, and the rest single storey, with a set of sliding doors near the table and chairs. The roof tiles were a dark brown, and there were bright climbing flowers winding along a trellis and then escaping further away from the supportive wood to find the cracks in the old plaster. It was like finding a fairy-tale cottage, out of the loop of reality. ‘It’s so pretty.’
‘Yeah, it’s lovely.’ He crossed the patio and slipped a key out of the zip-up pocket of his trunks. They were virtually dry already. And she really shouldn’t be staring at the region between his waist and knees.
Inside it was less fairy-tale quaint, but still full of rustic charm. She stumbled on the edge of the rug, and he took her elbow again, guiding her over to the sofa opposite the doors. She sank down onto it and leaned her forehead on the heels of her hands, trying to find some equilibrium again.
‘You really are hot,’ he commented.
You’re one to talk,she thought and snorted to herself. The humour fizzled out and was followed by a hollow sensation, like the eerie quiet in the eye of the storm. A moment of lucidity that was warning her, just like it had come to her at the restaurant earlier, that a situation was unfolding that she was going to struggle to handle when sobriety returned to her.
‘Here.’ The sofa cushion depressed beside her, and she realised he was back but had no idea that he’d even gone somewhere before or for how long. His fingers touched the nape of her neck, lifting her hair. She gasped as he applied a flannel saturated with ice-cold water. ‘I’m worried about your temperature – you don’t want to get heatstroke,’ he said quickly. ‘I’ll get you that glass of water too.’
She exhaled slowly and tried to nod but her head was being squeezed like a lemon in the hands of an overzealous bartender. Goose bumps spread out across her back as a thin stream of water snaked down her spine.
He appeared again, and this time he was right in front of her crouching down again, with all that skin on display. It said a lot about how nauseous she was feeling that she wanted to close her eyes again, despite the view. He extended a glass of water towards her. Her stomach protested and she started to shake her head, before thinking better of it.
‘It’ll help. Just sip it slowly.’
Some corner of her mind knew he was talking sense, so she took the glass from him, her hand so unsteady he felt the need to mould her fingers around it with his own, gently but firmly. The water was icy cold and made her realise how dry her throat was. She took another couple of mouthfuls.
‘Steady,’ he warned her, and she took just one more and handed him the half-empty glass. She risked a glance at his face and saw those golden eyes, shaded by a furrowed brow as he put it down on the coffee table. ‘You can sleep if you want. I promise, you’re safe.’
‘I know,’ she said, without even really thinking it through, and found herself curling up on her side, dragging one of the big creamy cushions over to rest her head on, eyes shutting.
Didshe know? She’d only met this man a handful of times before today and now she was inebriated, and he’d taken her back to his hidden villa. On paper, she’d have said,run girl– or ratherstagger away as quickly as possible. But something that wasn’t governed by her raging anxiety whispered to her that she could trust him.
Of course, that didn’t mean to say that when she woke up, stretched out on his sofa with a mouth like she’d been chewing through telephone directories, the raging anxiety didn’t come racing back out just like she’d expected it too. Her stomach churned again, but this time it wasn’t entirely because of alcohol.
Somehow, she was going to have to deal with the fact that Rowan had seen her get drunk and make a fool of herselftwicenow. She was such an idiot, andhewould think she was such an idiot, and she was going to have to face him every day at work.
‘Hey, are you awake?’
Oh, and now of course.
She was going to have to face him rightnow.
Rowan
As soon as Lila had passed out on the sofa, Rowan had placed a bowl on the floor, level with her face and legged it upstairs for a quick shower. Hanging around in just his swimming trunks had been uncomfortable, if unavoidable initially.
And as for dragging a barely conscious woman back to his villa, the press would have had been doing cartwheels at the mileage they’d get out of that, if they found out. Gerrard would kill him.
