Page 103 of Pride and Privilege

“Hol…” she prompted.

“Hol…” he tried.

She patted his shoulder encouragingly. “You can do it.”

“Holiday.” Then he pulled a face. “Go on holiday?”

“Why not?”

He frowned up at the sky again, serious this time. “It’s a very good question. Why not?”

“You can do that sort of thing now, Mr Blackton.”

“If you keep calling me Mr Blackton in that voice, there’s only one sort of thing I’m going to do to you, Poppy. And it’s going to be in Italian.”

She smiled. “Or… We could go and do it in Italy?”

He met her eyes, a slow smile spreading over his face. “Now that, Poppy Fields, is an excellent suggestion. But first…” He took her hand and turned her back towards the city. “I’m going to take you home…and drill you really hard…on interview technique. Because we’re not leaving the country until you get that job.”

“Erm, yay?”

But she followed his lead, a stupid smile on her face. And a sneaking suspicion it might be some time before they got to the first interview question.

Epilogue

Roscoe tilted the laptopscreen, squinting against the sun glare that made the words almost impossible to read. He was sitting on a sun lounger by a swimming pool, the laptop on his knee. His swimming trunks, hair, and skin were completely dry, and there was a beautiful girl in a bikini stretching languidly in the water nearby—and quite rightly mocking him.

“Only you, Roscoe, thinks a laptop is appropriate poolside attire.”

He pushed his sunglasses into his hair and looked over at Poppy just as she pushed off from the poolside for another length.

Her bikini was the same ocean green as the sea far below the sloping hills over which their villa looked. White boats clustered around the village harbour, as tiny as speckles from an artist’s brush. The countryside was every shade of turquoise and umber, gauzy now in the dry afternoon haze, and here by the pool, olive trees baked, as content as cats under the heavy heat.

Roscoe put his laptop on the table by his lounger and swung his legs over to sit sideways, the stone hot on his bare feet. “I’m not working,” he protested when Poppy finished her length and came to rest with her elbows on the poolside. When they had arrived, she had admitted she couldn’t actually swim. But three days of extremely hands-on lessons had given her a passable…breaststroke.

“I was emailing Hugo,” he said. “I’m still helping him out with some estate stuff. And there was one from Aubrey. They just officially put him on the tax project. ButthenI saw an email from the solicitor—the sale of the flat just went through. I was checking the conveyancer’s details.”

“It sounds abitlike work.”

“Itsoundslike cause for celebration.”

“That, too,” she conceded with a grin.

“Come here.”

“I’m all wet.”

“Even better.”

She gave him a narrow-eyed look, threatening that he would regret this very much, although they both knew he wouldn’t. Then she climbed out of the pool, water sluicing off her pale skin, her shoulders sun-pink despite his enthusiastic insistence on slathering her with sunscreen at every available opportunity.

He sat back again on the sun lounger, legs stretched out, and patted his lap with a grin. She gave her dripping self a dubious look then shrugged and climbed inelegantly onto his lap, legs astride his hips. Her skin was icy cold against his but blissfully so after the sun’s heat. Her damp bikini bottoms soaked through his swimming trunks, and she lifted her wet ponytail and shook out the drops over his bare chest. “Happy now?”

He grinned. “Extremely.” Then he ran his thumbs over the cups of her bikini bra, tweaking her nipples so they stood evenfirmer, the thin, wet fabric leaving little to the imagination. He made a sound of satisfaction. “Even happier now.”

She shifted on his lap. “So I feel.”

The bikini was a tie one, and he tugged the knots at her shoulders loose, peeling the clinging fabric from her breasts, because leaving even alittleto his imagination was too much. Her skin was wet and glistening, her nipples pink and pert. He cupped her breasts in his hands, lifting them, entranced, because at times like this he was a very simple man and extremely easily pleased. She was so gorgeous, though. Not an inch of her he didn’t love.

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