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‘I can’t leave him. Dominic will kill him.’
Marcelo pointed at the dangling rope. ‘We can’t escape on that with a dog.’
Utterly unperturbed, Clara looked down at her cleavage. ‘Rip this. Quickly.’
‘What?’
There was a loud crash against the door.
‘Quickly,’ she said with the first hint of impatience. ‘Rip it. Just a few inches.’
Realising what she intended, Marcelo put his hand on the top of the dress and tore it apart so it opened to reveal ample breasts hidden behind an ugly plain white bra.
Seeing he’d noticed, Clara smiled wickedly. ‘You should see my knickers.’ Then she carefully put the puppy down her dress in the space he’d just made.
‘Lucky puppy,’ he drawled. ‘Can we go now?’
‘Go on then.’
There was yet another loud smash against the door as he jumped onto the windowsill. Marcelo grabbed the rope. Clara seemed not to need instruction, nimbly climbing up beside him and wrapping her arms around his neck.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said, gazing up at his face with a grin.
He couldn’t help grinning back as he wound the rope securely around them. ‘Hold tight.’
‘No, you hold tight.’
Laughing, he hooked an arm around her waist, stuck a thumb up at the helicopter, then held her tightly as they were lifted into the air.
Clara’s stomach dipped and then she was weightless, flying, warm air rushing through and around her. She kept her fear locked tightly away, as tightly as she held to her old school friend’s macho brother, and kept her stare firmly fixed on his face, feeding off the supreme confidence written on it that said they would be lifted to safety. She would not allow herself to think that, should his knot-making skills be sub-par, they were both liable to plummet to certain death... Oh, dear. She’d just thought it.
Think of poor Bob nestled between her breasts, she told herself. Judging by the way his sharp little claws were digging into her skin, the poor mite was terrified.
A jolt on the rope made her stomach dip again, and she squeezed her eyes shut and leaned her forehead into Marcelo’s hard chest and prayed their pressed bodies was barrier enough to stop Bob scrambling out and, conversely, not too smothering that they suffocated him.
Before guilt that she’d done the wrong thing in bringing the puppy with them could set too deeply, hands grabbed hold of her and she was being roughly manhandled onto the helicopter.
Relief surged through her like a frothing tsunami, and she would have rolled onto her back from the sheer force of it if she wasn’t bound to the hunk who’d taken it on himself to rescue her.
They’d made it! She was free.
The noise of the rotors wasn’t loud enough to drown the thrash of her heartbeats ringing in her ears. She tried to catch a breath before opening her eyes. She had to blink a number of times before her vision cleared and she could attempt to get her bearings. The helicopter itself was huge and looked more military than civilian. Two men dressed in military fatigues were knelt beside them working to untie the knots binding her to Marcelo.
It came to Clara in a rush that she was trussed up on the floor of a helicopter with the Prince of Ceres and with a puppy scrambling frantically for release from the confines of her cleavage. The relief and absurdity of it all became too much and, unable to control it, Clara burst into peals of laughter. She was still laughing when the rope slackened, still laughing when she managed to sit up, still laughing as she carefully pulled Bob out of her cleavage. But then Bob licked her cheek and her laughter merged into tears that she couldn’t control either. Through the sobbing laughter was an awareness that three macho men were warily studying her, no doubt alarmed at this display of female hysteria, a notion that only made her laugh and cry harder.
Her eighteen days on Monte Cleure, sixteen spent as a captive, had put her through the emotional wringer but she’d refused to succumb to distress, focusing everything on the anger she’d need as fuel to escape even when escape had seemed hopeless, and she sobbed and laughed until everything she’d suppressed was purged.
It took so long for her to regain control of herself that they’d probably left Monte Cleure airspace before she’d wiped the last tear away. Needing a tissue, she looked at the ragged remnants of her wedding dress and ripped off another piece of silk to blow her nose.
Then she looked at Marcelo. He was sat on the cold metal helicopter floor beside her, an air of amusement mingling with the concern on his face. During her bout of hysteria, Bob had plonked himself onto his lap, and a hand that was practically the same size as the puppy gently stroked his head.
Scrunching the makeshift hankie into a ball, Clara stuffed it into her bra. ‘That has to be the world’s most expensive handkerchief,’ she said.
Thick black eyebrows drew in together.
‘This dress cost Dominic a hundred thousand euros,’ she explained before another short burst of laughter flew from her lips. Her purge of emotions had been cathartic. Now she felt as emotionally high as she was physically in this military grade helicopter. ‘I might send it to him as a keepsake of our time together.’
Marcelo had seen feminine tears many times in his life. His sister, Alessia, could turn them on like taps. Most girlfriends had proven themselves excellent at summoning tears to get their own way—one lover, Gianna, had thrown herself at his feet weeping and wailing when he’d ended their relationship, something he always reflected on with bemusement considering they were only together a couple of months. Bemusement was his default emotion with female tears along with a certain amount of bracing himself for the sad eyes and woebegone expression that always followed. There was none of that with Clara Sinclair.
