AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘I’m treating them to a well-deserved rest in a destination of their choosing, which as it turns out happens to be France, where their eldest is a dentist. I tried to persuade them into somewhere a little further afield but they weren’t having it. Mauritius, apparently, is no competition for two hyper grandchildren.’
Chase’s heart fluttered. This was how he had managed to get under her skin. This was why she never wanted to have him learn the truth about her. This was why the thought of what he could do to balance the scales of justice should he want to avenge past wrongs was no longer the only consideration. Underneath his ruthlessly cold exterior were these flashes of genuine thoughtfulness that kept reminding her of why she had risked so much just talking to him eight years ago; that ambushed all her good intentions to keep her distance. Whenever he made her laugh, her defences slipped just a little bit more.
This was a dangerous game because she would end up being hurt. She would end up losing her hard-won self-control. She would end up with someone else having power over her, someone who didn’t care about her, who wanted her for all the wrong reasons. Maybe she had already ended up there.
She had walked into this with her eyes wide open but now she felt as though she had walked straight into a trap, having stupidly failed to take account of its power for destruction.
The whole sex thing... Yes, she had wanted it, had craved it, but she had been scared because of past experience and he had respected her when she had turned into a block of ice in his arms. That consideration he had shown her, as it turned out, was just something else that had nibbled away at the edges of her defences so that what had once been a fortress, protecting her from the slings and arrows of emotional involvement with the human race, was beginning to resemble a broken down old castle open to all the elements.
She felt exposed in a way she never had in her life before. She felt as she had eight years ago: like a woman falling in love.
‘You’ve stopped using rapturous superlatives to describe my house.’
Chase blinked and realised that he was several metres ahead of her because she had stopped dead in her tracks. Her brain had been so wrapped up contemplating the horror of falling for this guy again that it hadn’t had any room left to give messages to her legs to keep moving.
‘I think I may have run out of them.’ She blinked and took in the raw sexuality of the man lounging in front of her with that killer half-smile on his lips.
‘Where is this famous pool you’ve been bragging about?’ Her voice was normal but her brain was malfunctioning.
‘I never brag.’ Again that smile that hurled her back in time. He took her hand to lead her through the house, out to the kitchen and towards the sea-facing side of the house, which took her breath away. ‘Except in this one instance.’
He gestured to the open view as though he owned it and then relaxed back to look at her response. He had never given a damn what women thought of his opulent lifestyle and was indifferent to their gasps of awe whenever they stepped foot into his house in London. Yet he rather enjoyed the way her mouth fell open as she stepped out to stand next to him.
The house looked down to the sea that was turquoise and as still as a lake. The garden on this side was just a strip of green, broken by distinctive Italian palm trees and bordered by thick shrubbery. To one side a gate announced the winding stone steps, which Chase imagined led to the cove he had told her about.
This was her dream come true. She had somehow been catapulted into the prints she had hung on her walls. The romance which had not been part of the plan clung to her in a miasma, giving her all sorts of stupid illusions that somehow what they had might be the beginning of something real. It was time to start unravelling that piece of fiction.
‘Are you sure it’s completely deserted here?’ She squinted against the sun to look up at him, shielding her eyes with one hand.
Alessandro looked down at her. She was in a flimsy sleeveless dress which was far too baggy for his liking but which, on the upside, provided terrific fodder for his imagination. ‘As a ghost town. Why?’
‘Because I think we should explore that pool area you were bragging to me about... Oh yes, I forgot: you never brag...’ Her hand fluttered provocatively to the small top button of the dress. ‘It’s so warm. I think I might need to strip off, have a dip in that pool of yours, the one—’
‘I keep bragging to you about even though I never brag?’ He laughed under his breath and felt the bulge in his pants as that part of his body which had been in charge of his brain ever since she had reappeared to smash into his ordered existence rose to immediate attention.
