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‘Hi yourself.’
Her mouth curved, the dimple provoking him, daring him, tempting him and, with a groan, he succumbed, dipping his tongue into the small hollow, her answering shiver pushing the last restraints away. With a smothered growl he swung her up in his arms, capturing her mouth with his, inhaling, demanding, needing, taking as he carried her over to the chaise, discreet in the corner of the room. Her kiss was equally fierce, her hands twisted in his hair as he lowered her onto the green brocade. Sophie lay, hair fanned out around her, eyes half closed, chest heaving. Marco stared down at her, trying to regain some vestiges of control. She extended a hand, her eyes wicked in the lamplight. ‘Come on, then, signor, show me just how a Santoro conducts an illicit liaison.’
CHAPTER SIX
‘GOOD MORNING, SLEEPYHEAD.’ Marco looked up as Sophie entered the ridiculously huge breakfast room. He looked completely at home—not surprising, she reminded herself. This was his home. He sat back in a comfortable-looking chair, newspaper spread open before him on the polished table, coffee in one hand. It was all quite normal—or at least it would be if the table weren’t large enough to seat thirty, every chair an antique and the view out of the line of shuttered windows not one she had seen in a hundred iconic photos.
‘It’s only eight a.m.—and considering I’m still on London time and got lost three times finding the breakfast room...’ Was this whole room seriously just to eat breakfast in? It was plausible. The palazzo was big enough to have a brunch room, afternoon-tea room, supper room and midnight-snack room if the owners wished. ‘I think I’m pretty bright and early.’
Especially as the man lounging opposite with a wicked grin in his eyes had kept her up half the night, leaving her room sometime in the early hours. It was better to be discreet, he’d said; his mother would be calling the banns if she found him in there—but Sophie hadn’t minded. Sex was one thing, it was just intense chemistry, but sleeping together? That was real intimacy.
Marco smiled, the slow, sexy grin that made the breath leave her lungs and her knees weaken. ‘I thought we’d get breakfast out, the Venetian way. Are you ready to go or do you need more time?’
‘Ready? I’ve been ready since you mentioned this trip, ready since I got a passport, since I first saw Indiana Jones. I mean, we have canals in Manchester, but it’s not quite the same. And the sun’s shining. In January! What else could I possibly need?’ Sophie had dressed with care for a day’s sightseeing in a grey wool dress she had bought from a Chelsea charity shop and then redesigned, taking it in, shortening it and adding pink and purple flower buttons in two vertical rows to the flared skirt. A pair of black-and-grey-striped tights, her comfiest black patent brogues, her thick black jacket and a bright pink hat and gloves completed her outfit. She bounced on her toes. ‘Let’s go.’
Marco took a last, deliberate swig of his coffee before pushing his chair back and languidly getting to his feet. ‘In that case, signorina, I’m at your service. I thought we’d start the day on foot and head onto the water later. Does that sound agreeable?’
‘On foot. By boat, or even on a donkey. I’m happy any way you choose.’
Sophie had been too anxious the day before to really take Venice in. She had clear flashes of the city like snapshots of memory: the first glimpse of the Grand Canal, the flaking pastel paint on the canal-side palazzos, a gondola, boats crammed with people pulling in at a stop as nonchalantly as a red London bus stopping outside her flat. The greengrocer boat bartering and trading just like a market stall at the Portobello Market and yet strange and exotic. But the whole had escaped her and she was at fever pitch as Marco guided her along the gallery and down the stately staircase back into the vast hallway. It was almost an anticlimax when Marco ushered her out of the palazzo’s grand double doors, at the other end of the hallway from the water door she had entered by, to find herself on a street, no water to be seen.
Okay, it was as far from her busy, traffic-filled, bustling London home as a street could be. Narrow and flagstoned, almost an alley, with aged buildings rising on either side. Doors lined up on both sides, some preceded by a step, others opening directly onto the street, and shuttered windows punctuated the plaster and stone of the graceful buildings. Voices floated from open windows, the Italian fast and incomprehensible. The air throbbed with vibrancy and life.
She hadn’t expected this somehow. Venice was a fairy-tale setting, a film backdrop, a picture; she had forgotten it was a home too. How could Marco bear to live away from this unique beauty?
