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Because she looked so adoringly pathetic? Because she was right and he should have been more careful—for his own health’s sake if nothing else?
Or was it because her shrill claim that he was the wrong man for her had struck at the very heart of his ego and made it more important to him to prove her wrong about that than to stand about in a horrified stupor, wondering how the hell he was going to extricate himself from this potential disaster?
‘What is the timing like?’ he asked, gently extracting the bits of silk from her fingers while she let him because his question had made her pause and take stock of the situation.
‘Good,’ she murmured eventually. ‘Good as in low risk,’ she then extended, which made him grimace because good could only mean that—in this case anyway.
‘Right,’ he acknowledged. ‘Then we have a wait-and-see situation on our hands,’ and he smoothly whipped the towel away from her shoulders.
‘What are you doing?’ she cried, making an attempt to grab it back again.
Too late, for he was already tossing it to one side along with her clothes. ‘Taking you back to bed,’ he said so casually that it even surprised him how calmly he was behaving. He grasped one of her hands. ‘It is three o’clock in the morning and we both need some sleep.’
‘Sleep?’ she repeated.
He turned a grin on her that had her eyes widening. ‘Sleep,’ he repeated. ‘You’ve ravished me enough for one night.’
‘But—’ she was floundering and he liked it ‘—I should be going home and—’
It was the simplest thing in the world to swing her down on the bed then follow her. ‘Home is here now,’ he smoothly decreed. ‘For the next few weeks anyway until we know one way or another.’
‘What are you talking about?’ she protested. ‘I don’t need to live here with you just because we have both behaved recklessly!’
‘Yes, you do,’ he insisted, stripping the towel from his hips and tossing it aside before he reached for the sheet to cover them. ‘I am Sicilian. I take care of my own. And until you prove otherwise, you now belong to me—so don’t even think about taking a morning-after pill. And also,’ he added with husky promise, ‘I want you here. Can you tell me honestly that you do not want to be here too?’
She couldn’t. He knew it. She might claim he was the wrong man for her, but when it came down to it he was the one she wanted.
The only thing she said was, ‘I had no intention of taking a morning-after pill. I don’t agree with them.’
Reaching across her to put out the light, he kissed her delicious mouth as he settled down beside her, then pulled her into his arms.
‘Tomorrow we move your things in,’ he said softly into the darkness.
She didn’t say another word.
He had her. She didn’t know it yet, but he had Natalia Deyton just where he wanted her and, despite the stupid risks it had taken to get her here, he had never felt so good about anything…
To her own surprise, Natalia slept heavily, waking up to find herself alone in the bed as a weak sun began seeping in through the voile-draped windows. She lay there for a while, listening to the warm quietness surrounding her, reluctant to let herself begin thinking of the calamitous events of the night before.
Though not all of them had been calamitous, she admitted, feeling an accompanying warmth filter into those places in her body that had known only pleasure last night. In fact some of those moments had been so intense that it was impossible not to soften and allow them to replay themselves for a little while.
But only a little while, she accepted when a sound from somewhere beyond the bedroom alerted her to the fact that she was not alone here. Giancarlo must be around somewhere, waiting for her to put in an appearance.
A sigh whispered from her, dragging her out of her relaxed stupor and forcing her to get out of bed where she padded off to use the bathroom before going in search of her suit bag, so she could put back on the clothes she had arrived here in yesterday.
They seemed more appropriate somehow, now that daylight was back and with it reality. The slinky blue dress and the sexy underwear belonged to another time and most definitely another person than the one she was seeing in the mirror this morning.
And just who was she seeing? she asked herself as she stood, carefully pleating her hair with the knowledge that she was using the severe style as a piece of armour.
A very foolish woman, she informed herself, who had made a huge mistake that was now clawing at her conscience and grating at worries she should never have put aside in the first place.
Namely—Edward versus Giancarlo Cardinale. Even the name made her feel chill now.
Not the man, though, she admitted as she watched her eyes darken simply by conjuring up his image. The man in his full and physical sense had never been the problem for her. It was his name and his relationship to Edward that caused this impossible conflict she could see no way round whichever way she tried to look at it.
Not that it really mattered now, she supposed, turning to pull on her clothes and make herself presentable. The whole thing had turned sour from the moment she’d realised that neither had thought about contraception.
Oh, he had been good and kind and said all the right things a woman he had just made love to would expect from a real man. But there was no way in the cold light of day that she was going to hold him to any of them. She could only hope that in the cold light of the same day he, too, had thought better about bringing his new lover here to live with him when surely the quick exit and a lot of inner praying was the best way to be dealing with this?
