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‘It would have been the worst kind of cliché, wouldn’t it?’
Darcy’s heart twisted painfully. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘but it would have been lovely.’
And then she ducked her head and feigned falling asleep, because she was terrified to admit to herself just how completely Max had seduced her.
CHAPTER NINE
THE FOLLOWING MORNING Darcy woke to an insistent prodding that was becoming more and more intimate as a hand smoothed down over her bare backside and squeezed firmly. She smiled and wriggled, hoping to entice the hand into further exploration, but instead it delivered a short, sharp thwack.
She raised her head from the pillow, blinking in the daylight. Max. Looking thoroughly gorgeous and disreputable with a growth of stubble. And he was dressed.
‘What was that for?’
His hand smoothed where he’d slapped her so playfully. ‘That was to get you up and out of bed... I want to take you out on the lake.’
At the word lake Darcy went very still. That big body of water that she’d avoided looking at—probably the only person on the planet who didn’t enjoy the splendour of Lake Como.
She flipped over and held the sheet to her breasts. Max was already leaning back, tugging it out of her hand, but she held on with a death grip and tried to say, as breezily as possible, ‘I’m quite tired, actually... Why don’t you go? You can tell me how it was when you get back.’
Max stopped and his gaze narrowed on her. Damn.
‘Why don’t you want to go on the lake, Darcy? I’ve noticed that you barely look at it.’
She avoided his eye and sat up, feeling at a disadvantage lying down, and plucked at the sheet. ‘I have issues with water. I can’t swim.’
Carefully, Max said, ‘You know, some fishermen can’t swim—because they believe that if the sea claims them it’s meant to be. It doesn’t stop them going out on the water.’
Sensing that Max had no intention of going anywhere until she explained herself, she sighed deeply and said, ‘I nearly drowned as a child. We had a pool at our house and my father was teaching me how to swim. My mother appeared and they started having a row. He got out to argue with her, forgetting about me... I don’t know what happened... One minute I was okay and the next I couldn’t feel the bottom any more and I’d started to drop like a stone. I must have drifted from the shallow end. They were so busy arguing, and I couldn’t get their attention. All I could see was their arms gesticulating and then everything went black, there was a pain in my chest—’
Darcy hadn’t even realised that she was bordering on hyperventilation until Max put a hand over hers, his fingers twining around hers to make her loosen her grip on the sheet.
‘Darcy, it’s okay—just breathe...’
She took a deep breath and looked at Max. ‘That’s why I don’t want to go on the lake.’
He looked as if he was considering something, and then he said, ‘Do you trust me?’
‘Of course not,’ she said facetiously.
Max rolled his eyes. ‘I mean, would you trust me not to let any harm come to you?’
Physically...yes. Emotionally...no.
Damn. Darcy realised it as the heavy weight of inevitability hit her. She was falling for him. She was a disgrace to womankind. One hot air balloon ride and even hotter sex and she was—
‘Okay?’
She blinked at Max, not having heard a word he’d said over the revelation banging around in her head like a warning klaxon going off after the fire had started and the horse had bolted.
‘What?’
He said, with extreme patience, ‘I want to take you somewhere and I promise you won’t have to do anything you don’t want to—okay?’
Right now even a lake was preferable to sitting alone with this new knowledge. ‘Okay...’
And that was how she found herself, a few hours later, in a swimsuit, shivering with fear by the side of a kiddies’ pool at a local adventure centre that Max said was owned by Dante D’Aquanni. A child ran past her and cannonballed into the pool.
Max was standing waist-deep in the water and saying, ‘Look, I promise you’ll be able to touch the bottom. Come on.’
