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But Rio caught the words and turned. Her dress was saturated all the way to the top. Did she have any idea that she might as well have been standing on the beach completely naked, for all the fabric did to hide her body? Her red hair was trapped in a messy bun on top of her head but he was pretty sure it wanted to be free, to fly down her back as it might have done on Boudica or one of Titian’s models.
He turned back to the cabin, his jaw clenched.
Of course she knew how alluring she looked. Cressida Wyndham had made flirtation an art form. He didn’t really know anything about her, and nor did he read the gossip magazines, but he did know that her name couldn’t be mentioned without the implication that she was an entitled, spoiled tramp with little morality.
And for some reason that angered him now.
He paused at the steps that led to the deck. They were timber, built from one of the trees that covered the island.
‘What’s this?’ she asked, her green eyes, almond in shape, moving across the frame of the hut.
‘Where we’ll be staying.’
Where we’ll be staying? Her heart skidded against her breastbone. Surely he’d meant Where you’ll be staying? Though he spoke English fluently, his voice was accented. It wasn’t inconceivable that he’d made a mistake.
Because this place was definitely not going to accommodate the two of them.
He moved ahead of her and she followed.
‘It was built around fifty years ago,’ he said as he shouldered the door inwards. It groaned a little. It was just wire pressed against an ornate wrought-iron pattern. There was no actual door.
The heat of the day hadn’t managed to penetrate the thick walls. It was cool and dark. A hallway—quite wide, given the size of the building—went all the way to the back of the home, though at the rear, she glimpsed a sofa. There was more light there, too.
‘Your bedroom.’ He nodded towards a room as they swept past. She had only a brief impression of a narrow single bed and a bookshelf. He nodded to another door. ‘My bedroom.’
Her heart thumped harder.
‘Bathroom.’
She peered in as they walked past. It was simple, but clean. It smelled of him. She caught the masculine scent as they walked past and her stomach squeezed.
‘And the kitchen.’
It was also simple, but charmingly so, with a thick timber bench, a window that overlooked the beach, a small fridge and a stove. There was a table with four chairs, and across the room a sofa and an armchair. Another larger window framed a different perspective of the beach.
‘Your...your bedroom is...opposite mine?’ The words were almost a whisper and she shivered.
‘Surely you didn’t think we’d be sharing?’ he prompted, enjoying the blush that spread across her face and the way her nipples stretched visibly against the wet fabric of her skin-tight dress.
‘Of course not,’ Tilly snapped, before remembering that she was Cressida, and Cressida would never have taken offence at such a suggestion. She would have purred right back that he shouldn’t rule anything out... ‘I just didn’t realise we’d be staying in the same house.’
His smile was laced with sardonic amusement. ‘It’s the only house on the island,’ he said. ‘Didn’t your father tell you?’
She shook her head, but questions were floating through her mind...suspicions. Shortly after Cressida had said there’d be servants she’d said that Tilly would be left to her own devices. She’d made it sound like a glamorous beach retreat awaited.
Had she known that Rio Mastrangelo would be literally shacking up with her? Had she wisely decided to keep that titbit to herself, knowing that Matilda would have found it impossible to go along with such an elaborate deception in close quarters with a man like him?
‘He must have,’ Tilly said with a shrug, as though it didn’t matter, but inside she was fuming.
If she hadn’t desperately needed that thirty thousand pounds, how she would have loved to tell Cressida to go to hell!
Only she wouldn’t have. She couldn’t have. For, as much as the heiress drove her absolutely crazy, Tilly felt sorry for her. And the longer Tilly worked for Art and felt the warmth of his affection, the more she saw him disapprove of Cressida and ruminate on her lack of intelligence, skills and focus, and the more guilt Tilly felt—and more pressure too.
This was the first time Cressida had ever asked Tilly for more than an easy favour, though. And certainly the first time she’d outright lied to her! This wasn’t going to a film premiere dressed to the nines, or slipping out of a top-notch restaurant early to divert the paparazzi’s focus. This was a whole week in close quarters with a gorgeous stranger.
‘And you forgot?’ he responded with a droll inflection.
‘There were a lot of instructions.’ She forced herself back to the present, pushing aside the sticky question of just what Cressida had kept to herself to get Tilly on board with this deception. Were there any more surprises in store for her?
