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‘You shouldn’t hide from it, Charlie.’ She stopped swimming as he said the very same words her father often said. Treading water, she turned to face him and swam back to the side of the pool, wishing she was wearing something so she could get out—of the pool and the conversation.
‘Hide from what, Sandro?’
‘Love.’
She blinked in shock, not quite able to believe a man who freely admitted to not wanting commitment would even use that word. ‘I’m not hiding from it. I just haven’t found it yet.’
‘And when you do?’
She couldn’t understand where the questions were coming from. She’d made it clear she didn’t do for ever, so why channel the conversation this way? ‘My mother left us as teenagers, Sandro. She left my father, turning her back on us. I haven’t believed in happy ever after since.’
‘And the man you were engaged to? Did you love him and dream of living happily ever after?’ His scrutiny was intense and she hated the feeling of being trapped in the pool, forced to answer his questions.
‘Maybe I wasn’t ready to love after that.’ That statement stunned her and she blinked against the admission, realising the truth of it.
‘And if you were to fall in love?’ His dark eyes fixed hers and she clutched harder to the side of the pool.
‘If I was sure I’d found a man to love, one who would love me, then I might just think about for ever.’
‘So you’d get married?’ His voice rose in question and disbelief.
‘Marriage isn’t the only way to have love, Sandro.’ He furrowed his brows speculatively at her and she turned the heat on him, deflecting it from herself. ‘What about you—would you marry again?’
* * *
Alessandro looked down at Charlie, her wet hair slicked back from her face, highlighting the beauty of her eyes. She was stunning, but she was also talking of things he’d begun to question as he’d held her sleeping body against him this morning.
He’d been adamant he was done with love, done with marriage, but such thoughts had begun to filter from the back of his mind. Images of him and Charlie, sharing love and happiness, lingered on the edge, hazy images that hadn’t yet become sharp and focused. Images that shouldn’t even be there.
Just as he had done as she’d curled against him and slept, he wondered what it would be like to wake every morning, take her in his arms and kiss her awake. In just a few days she’d weaved a spell so potent he didn’t want to let her go. Because she still blamed him for Seb’s accident, he couldn’t ask for more—not until he cleared himself of blame in her eyes. And he couldn’t do that without telling her everything. And that would break his promise to Seb.
‘Your silence says it all.’ Charlie’s voice hurtled him back to the present.
‘With the right woman,’ he said truthfully. He had thought the right woman didn’t exist for him. His first marriage had been testament to that. Now the woman he wished could be the right woman had made it perfectly clear she didn’t want anything more than this weekend.
‘I hope you meet her then.’
He watched as she pushed away from the side of the pool, once again swimming on her back, exposing her pert breasts to him. The water sparkled under the sun but it couldn’t detract from the beauty of her naked body as she swam. He was beginning to think he had.
‘Are you ever going to come out of that pool?’ Desperate to change the subject, he stood and picked up a towel. ‘You’ll be a mermaid before long.’
She laughed and swam to the steps at the far end of the pool, her slim figure clearly visible in the water, unleashing coils of lust within him. Lust. That was all this was—all it could be. He had to keep that at the forefront of his mind when dreams he’d long since hidden away threatened to reappear.
‘I’m not mermaid material.’ Slowly, as if aware of his eyes on her, aware of the hot lust she evoked within him, she climbed up the steps. Water rushed off her skin as she stood at the edge of the pool, pulling her hands down her hair, scrunching it into a ponytail to wring the water from it.
He couldn’t move, couldn’t take his eyes off her. Rivulets of water rushed over her breasts, down her stomach, and he fought hard against the urge to carry her back to his bed. She was so beautiful as she stood like a nymph with the morning sun glistening on her wet skin. It was like watching a film play out in slow motion as she walked towards him. Her angelic beauty stunned him into silence.
