AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘M’lady,’ he said, and as he put down the cup and saucer on the bedside table she caught the freshly showered scent of him and hated herself for feeling suddenly alive beneath the sheets. ‘Can I do anything else for you?’
‘Actually, yes.’ She threw back his own words. ‘While you’re here can you open the drapes.’
‘Sorry, no.’ He sat on the bed instead. ‘I’ve decided I don’t like being the maid.’
‘Guess what, Dante? Nobody likes been the maid.’
‘I would if we were playing for rewards.’
He squeezed her thigh through the sheet, and his hand was warm and her limbs were too fluid for someone who was trying to be taut with anger. She refused to react, and yet it was like being back in the river, for above the sheets she sat poker-faced, and beneath them she was alive. Aware of the warmth of his body and the weight of him on the bed, his gorgeous back... And then, when he turned to speak, she flamed as she tried not to remember kissing his shoulder, her lips on his chest.
‘What do you want to do today?’ he asked. ‘Shop?’
‘I did that yesterday.’
‘Well, unfortunately we can’t spend the day in bed, because you’ve decided you’re allergic to all that.’ He gave a sad smile, but then brightened. ‘How about we go out on the water?’
‘You have a yacht?’
‘That I do.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t bring anything suitable.’
‘Liar,’ he said. ‘I have the itemised bill, and you have bikinis and sarongs. No shorts, though...’
‘I feel like a deckhand in them.’
‘Yes, you always were a tomboy in a dress.’ He smiled. ‘Come out on the water.’
‘No, you don’t want to miss dinner.’
‘We won’t.’
‘Oh, we very much might,’ Alicia said, her Sicilian temper gaining ascendancy. ‘And tomorrow’s headlines might read “Billionaire Missing at Sea”.’
‘So you’re sulking?’
‘I’m not sulking,’ Alicia said. ‘I just don’t think a full day in your company is wise, if we’re to appear as the happy couple tonight.’
‘You’re a compulsive liar, Alicia,’ Dante pointed out. ‘Yes, you are sulking, and have been since you stormed off last night! What did I say that was so terrible? Was it my dating advice?’
She shot him a look and then angrily pushed away the sheets.
Rather more used to sleeping in knickers and a T-shirt than a nightdress, she gave him a quick glimpse of very dark hair as her legs scissored out of bed.
Both politely pretended he hadn’t seen.
Both knew he had.
Where the hell was her robe? Alicia thought. Because her nipples felt like studs sticking out. She had to get away, so she walked through to the lounge, deciding she would retrieve her robe in a moment.
She wasn’t cut out for this charade, Alicia knew as he came into the lounge behind her.
‘Here.’ He offered her a pastry. ‘Anchovy and...’
She discarded it with a shake of her head. ‘I happen to value my arteries.’
‘Suit yourself,’ Dante said, and put the pastry down, watching as she selected a plump strawberry and then picked up a slice of apple. They perhaps both recalled in that moment that she had tasted of apples the first time they’d kissed.
