Page 20 of The Housekeeper's One-Night Baby
‘You thought what?’
‘I thought I’d lost you!’ he raged.
Taken aback by this unexpected blaze of emotion, Lizzie stared at him.
‘Anything could have happened to you!’ he continued. ‘You’re all alone in a strange city!’
‘So are thousands of other people!’
‘But not anyone as gauche and as woefully underdressed as you,’ he gritted out, his gaze raking down over her coat, which was gaping wide open. ‘I mean, come on—what the hell are you wearing, Lizzie?’
At least now she was on familiar ground and his caustic words gave Lizzie the strength to try and push him away and reassert her independence. But her balled fists felt puny against the muscular wall of his chest, and wasn’t the truth that she liked being this close to him? Didn’t she want to sink right into him and absorb all that strength and power?
‘What does it look like? This is my winter coat,’ she mumbled. ‘Why don’t you just go away if you’re ashamed to be seen with me? Just because I c-can’t compete with your f-fancy cashmere coat!’ she said, her teeth beginning to chatter.
‘This isn’t about competition,’ he negated. ‘And it’s nothing to do with me being ashamed of being seen with you.’
‘Then, why...?’ Her words died away as she stared at him. ‘Niccolò! What are you doing?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ he snapped, dislodging her hands and removing his dark overcoat, which he placed over her shoulders before starting to button it up. ‘I’m trying to make you warm.’
She wanted to protest at this unexpected display of chivalry because he was standing there wearing nothing but a lightweight charcoal suit but, oh, the sensation of warmth from the all-enveloping coat felt like heaven and it smelt of him. ‘You must be fr-freezing,’ she breathed, choking a little as a gust of wind whipped a strand of hair straight into her mouth.
‘Shh...’ Niccolò found himself pulling the errant lock away from the cold tremble of her lips and smoothing it back into the thick fall of her hair. ‘Don’t worry about it. My car is waiting over there. Come on. We’re going.’
And wasn’t the craziest thing of all that he wanted to put his lips where her hair had been and pull her into his arms and stand there kissing her, as if they’d been a couple of teenagers at the end of a first date? But he resisted the desire to touch her in any way, other than the protective arm he placed around her shoulder as he began to guide her along the path towards his limousine. He waited until she was ensconced beneath a rug on the back seat and he had turned the heating up, and the flakes of snow had begun to melt on her pale red hair, before giving voice to his concerns, careful to temper the full force of his anger and his fear.
‘You can’t just disappear like that in future, Lizzie,’ he observed flatly. ‘Without telling anyone where you’re going.’
‘I didn’t think. I’m sorry. I certainly didn’t mean to worry anyone.’ She bit her lip but her green eyes were fixed on him. ‘How did you find me?’
‘I sent some of my staff to look for you.’
Her contrition of a few moments ago seemed to be forgotten, her voice rising with indignation as she glared at him.
‘You sent some staff tolookfor me? I mean, whatisit with you, Niccolò?’ she demanded, not bothering to moderate her own anger, he noted wryly.
‘Do you get off on spying on your housemates for no reason?’ she continued furiously.
He leaned back to study the infinitely fascinating definition of her lips as they pursed together in exasperation. ‘Point one, you are the first “housemate” I’ve ever had,’ he drawled. ‘And if this kind of behaviour is anything to go by—you’re likely to be the last.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ She elevated her brows. ‘And point two is...?’
But her spiky challenge had altered the atmosphere and suddenly everything had changed. He felt a new kind of tension creep in and suddenly Niccolò felt close to helpless, because she looked so tiny and so alluring that all he wanted to do was to crawl underneath that rug with her.
She stared back at him, her eyes darkening, her lips parting, and the desire which fizzled through the air was off the scale. She wanted him to kiss her. He would have bet his entire fortune on that. And he wanted that, too. Hell, yes. He could never remember feeling such an overwhelming desire to kiss someone—except maybe in that damned broom cupboard. But even as his groin grew hard, he reminded himself that to act on his feelings would have consequences and he mustn’t allow the needs of his body to tip them into an ill-judged relationship. He would end up hurting her and she, of all people, did not deserve to be hurt.
And neither did he. He thought about how he’d felt as he had run through the icy park to find her, logic deserting him as he’d imagined something bad happening to her. And he couldn’t live with that. Not again.
He fixed her with a challenging look. ‘Point two is that if I hadn’t turned up when I did, you might very well have caught pneumonia.’
‘Isn’t that a little melodramatic?’
‘Maybe. But it doesn’t change the fact that you need new clothes,’ he added. ‘Clothes which are weather-appropriate and which actually fit you.’ He knitted his brows together. ‘So why don’t you stop posturing about some pointless principle and make yourself an appointment at Saks?’
There was silence for a moment while she absorbed this and then she pulled a face. ‘And what if I told you that it wasn’t just somepointless principle?’
He met her gaze. ‘Go on.’
