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Double the love. Double the joy. Her hand glided over her stomach as her eyes drifted shut and momentary sadness overwhelmed her. She would’ve given anything for her foster mother to have been alive, to share her happiness.
The letter from her foster mother, written in the last weeks of her life, the one Saffie kept between the pages of her childhood diary but knew every word of, flipped through her mind.
Don’t dwell on the past.
Find your own happiness.
Never settle for loneliness.
I’m almost there, she said softly under her breath. But I think I need more, Mum, her heart defiantly added.
As if he were configured by her imagination, her skin began to tingle with hyperawareness that only came with Joao’s presence.
The shape of that more.
‘Saffie.’ Her name was a warm, deep throb.
Breath snagged in her throat, she opened her eyes to find him a few feet away. His gaze was riveted on the hand on her stomach, a depth of emotion she’d never seen before blazing in his eyes.
Her fingers spread, an instinctive awareness of her womanhood that came out of nowhere. ‘Joao. Did you want something?’
‘Sim, I do.’ His gaze didn’t rise from her belly but he continued to speak. ‘The Brazilian sun isn’t one you want to underestimate. Did you put any sunscreen on when you came out here?’
She swallowed, not because of the question but because in all their time together she’d never seen Joao clad in all white. The effect of the white linen trousers that sat low on his hips and the unbuttoned white linen shirt threw his vibrant olive complexion into stunning relief. When that was topped with his slightly dishevelled hair, whisky-gold eyes and the faint stubble caressing his jaw, Saffie was in danger of being completely overwhelmed by his presence. ‘I was going to swim again before—’
He made an impatient sound under his breath before striding over to grab the sunscreen bottle she’d left on the table between two loungers.
Without care for his clothes, Joao returned and brazenly waded into the pool. One step up from where she sat, he took up position behind her and flipped open the lid of the bottle.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked breathlessly.
‘Helping you avoid sunburn. Lift your hair out of the way, Saffie,’ he ordered, his tone a husky rasp that wrecked havoc with her equilibrium.
Caught under a spell she couldn’t, and secretly didn’t want to, extricate herself from, she sat up straighter, one hand on her belly while the other twisted her hair in a rope and held it up.
Beyond her peripheral vision a bee buzzed, and the earthy, smoky scent of churrascaria fire teased the air. Samba music played faintly in the background. But all Saffie could concentrate on was the powerful frame bracketing hers, the smooth exhalations teasing the wispy hairs at her nape.
The combination of the cool cream and warm fingers made her bite back a gasp, then fight harder to suppress a moan as his hand glided in firm strokes across her shoulders. Between one breath and the next, the atmosphere around them thickened, the only sound their arrhythmic breathing and the gentle susurration of the sparkling pool.
Saffie swallowed when both hands moved over her upper back. Back and forth in a seductive dance that made her thighs clench, made her squeeze her eyes shut as need clamoured dizzyingly through her.
Joao encountered the string at her back and gave an impatient grunt. ‘I’m going to untie this,’ he said in a low, deep voice, his breath brushing her earlobe and sending a fresh shiver through her. ‘The staff are discreet. You won’t be seen. Okay?’
The sound she made under her breath was pathetically weak but he took it for the assent it was and tugged the strings free.
The wicked combination of damp, loosened material and his expert touch instantaneously stiffened her sensitive nipples into hard, needy peaks.
Behind her, Joao exhaled harshly as his hands moved down her waist to the small of her back, then around to brush her hand away before gliding over her midriff and belly.
The doctor had warned her that with twins she would start to show very soon, and over the last few days a definite bump had appeared, and with it the wondrous ability to take her breath away simply by looking down at her belly.
‘Você é tão bonita,’ he whispered under his breath, almost to himself as he caressed the taut skin of her belly.
But she heard. And understood.
You are so beautiful.
She started to turn towards him. ‘Joao...’ The sudden urge to cover his hand with hers blossomed but before she could give into the insanity, his fingers moved up to the lower curve of her heavy breasts.
