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“You’re already thinking about kissing me, aren’t you?”
“No!”
He gave her a wicked half grin. “You’re wondering what it would be like, how it would feel, if I pulled you into my arms and stroked your skin.” He leaned forward. “If I slowly kissed up and down the length of your body. Your breasts. Your thighs. If I tasted you with my tongue.”
Heat roared through her, and she couldn’t breathe. “I …”
With a low laugh, he turned away. “Perhaps I can’t kiss you, bella,” he said, “but I can dream of you tonight. All night long.” His voice was almost a purr as he walked away from her. “Ah, querida, the things you let me do to you in my dreams …”
“I wouldn’t do any of that!” she cried after him. But he’d already left, closing the door behind him.
Annabelle stared at the closed door sulkily.
The things you let me do to you in my dreams …
Lying in bed, with her ankle still propped up and wrapped in ice, she stared out through the open French doors of her veranda. Even from here, she could see the green forest where he’d kissed her. Her lips still tingled from the memory of his mouth on hers. She could still feel how he’d held her against his hard, naked chest as his lips had seized hers, pushing her mouth wide, taking her as his right—
Stop!
She would work. Yes. Work. Booting up her laptop, she opened up her email and scanned new messages. There were invitations to various lavish parties in London and work-related notes from Geography World magazine about her upcoming trip to Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. Annabelle blinked when she saw an email from Mollie Parker, the daughter of their former gardener at Wolfe Manor. Mollie was a kindhearted soul, one of the few friends that Annabelle still remained in contact with from her old village. She opened the message.
Just got back from Italy, and I’m feeling like a new woman. Except I’d barely decided to change my gardening business to landscape design when your brother Jacob insisted I make Wolfe Manor my first project. I’ll spare you the gory details, but he left me no choice.
After so many years, it’s strange and a bit overwhelming to see him every day now. But he has thrown himself into renovating the house like a man possessed.
Wolfe Manor had fallen into disrepair after Annabelle had left to study photography in London, but it was now being renovated. Jacob was back in England after all these years.
Annabelle hardly knew which surprised her more.
Jacob. Annabelle closed her eyes. If he hadn’t saved her from their father almost twenty years ago, she would have died at fourteen. She had no doubt of that. Someday, she would have to thank him. But after all these years, she was afraid to even speak of those terrible days. The last time she’d tried to talk to Jacob about it, he’d left Wolfe Manor the next morning, and disappeared into two decades of exile.
She’d driven him away with her heartbroken tears that night. She drove everyone away, somehow.
With a deep breath, Annabelle looked back at her laptop screen.
It’s strange and a bit overwhelming to see him every day now, Mollie had said.
Annabelle remembered the helpless schoolgirl crush the gardener’s daughter had once had on Jacob. Her eldest brother, the Wolfe heir, had barely noticed her.
Annabelle wondered morosely if any woman ever knew how to love a man in a way that was good for her.
Staring through the window at the blue Spanish sky and distant green forest, she touched her lips. After thirty-three years, she’d finally been kissed. And her first kiss had been
from a master.
For the second time in her life, there would always be a mark. Another before. Another after. All because Stefano Cortez had kissed her.
Work, she ordered herself. She turned resolutely back to the screen. She typed a reply to Mollie, then, plugging her camera into her laptop, she transferred the newest images to her computer. She looked through one shot after another of wide golden fields, cragged green mountains, horses galloping through the slowrising mist of dawn.
Annabelle paused, her fingers stilled over one image.
The single picture she’d taken of Stefano in the stables that morning shone with vividness and energy. She’d caught him unaware, while he was shoveling straw. The slant of dawn’s golden light from the windows illuminated the sheen of his tanned skin. Dark hair laced the muscles of his bare, muscled chest. His masculine beauty made her catch her breath.
She paused. She closed her eyes.
And she deleted the picture.
She nearly cried doing it. Her photographer’s soul screamed not to destroy the beautiful image. But it was her only hope of survival—to erase Stefano from her heart.
