Page 3 of Expecting His Billion-Dollar Scandal
‘I’m not from around here.’
‘Further inland?’ She nodded thoughtfully. ‘Lots of people descend from London in the summer months and lots of them have second homes in some of the more popular towns. They can’t bear to be too far away from gastropubs and fancy restaurants.’
‘You don’t like that?’
‘I don’t care one way or another,’ she said honestly. ‘Tourism is great when it comes to renting boats, as it happens, but I’m pretty much the only person around here who thinks like that. If you’re close enough, I dare say my dad can drive you back to your wife and kids.’
‘Wife and kids? What makes you think I’m married?’
‘I...’ Her heart fluttered and she could feel the hot burn of colour in her cheeks. ‘I suppose I just assumed...’
‘Areyoumarried?’
‘No.’
‘Strangely enough, I would have assumed that you were.’
‘Why?’ Her skin was tingling all over. Her eyes were drawn to his but once there, she was finding it impossible to look away, and something inside her shied away from the notion that he might sum her up and write her off as a country bumpkin, bowled over by his excessive good looks.
So she glanced right past him to the view outside the window of the bedroom, one of swirling clouds and pale grey skies and a drizzle that hadn’t stopped ever since she’d rescued him from those stormy waters. Summer had gone into temporary retreat and she had no idea when it planned on returning. Just something else about living in this part of the world.
‘You’re young,’ he drawled lightly. ‘You’re attractive. How is it that you haven’t been snapped up by some local eligible bachelor? Maybe you’ve just returned from university? Still finding your feet back in the family home?’
‘Not everyone has had the opportunity to go to university, Mr Baresi.’ Her voice had dropped a few degrees and her violet eyes were cool when they rested on his face.
She’d had plans. She’d had her dreams but life and fate had managed to get in the way of her fulfilling those dreams.
She wondered whether things would have been different if her mother hadn’t died when she’d been a kid. Mown down by a speeding car in London on one of her rare shopping trips. Her father had closed so many doors afterwards. He had become paranoid about her leaving the safety and security of the village. If she ventured into one of the bigger towns, he’d wait by the window for her, even when, at the age of ten, she’d gone in a gang with one of her friends’ parents. School outings had been a nightmare because she’d known that he would be back at the house, trying hard to quell his anxiety. A skiing trip at the age of fourteen had been out of the question. He’d given permission but she’d seen the fear in his eyes and she’d quietly turned down the opportunity. She had learnt to support her father but, in doing so, had continued to carry both their pain on her shoulders. His fear was a constant reminder of their loss.
Even so...even with all that, university had beckoned and she had known that, for both their sakes, it was something she wanted and needed to do.
When she was seventeen, having been accepted at her first choice of university in Exeter, which, she had assured her dad, was only a hop and a skip away, both their lives had been shattered by the death of her twin brother. Alex had been her rock, tuned into her feelings in ways that had been quiet and instinctive. He hadunderstood.He had given her strength as the pattern of their lives, following the loss of their mother, had changed. He had supported her and encouraged her and fortified her because their father’s fears had always seemed to revolve aroundher.The assumption was that Alex could look after himself.
Alex had had no dreams of going to university. He’d always planned on taking over the family business. Fishing was in his blood. It wasn’t to be and when he died, all her dreams had been snuffed out and she had resigned herself to taking up where her brother had left off. There were times when it felt as though loss upon loss had piled up on top of her, a weight she could barely carry, with no one in whom she could confide. The carefree joys of being young had never felt within her grasp.
Not a day passed when Cordelia didn’t think of the future that had turned to dust before it could even begin, but she had hunkered down, had thrown herself into the business and had proved herself an exceptional sailor. The sea became her haven. It brought her peace and out there, in the open ocean, she could let her thoughts drift and wonder what it might be like to see the world. She could swim like a fish and swimming was always a wonderful escape.
What would this swarthy stranger think were she to confide in him? she wondered.
‘Beingsnapped upby some eligible local boy has never been one of my ambitions,’ she retorted quickly.
Luca smiled slowly and that slow smile sent a tingle of awareness racing through her body, igniting everything in its path. Her nerves fluttered and the sudden throb between her legs, a sensual reaction that was immediate and intensely physical, shocked her to the core.
Her eyes wide, the thoughts vanished from her head in a whoosh and she stared at him for a few panicked seconds, completely blindsided by a rush of sensation unlike anything she had ever felt before.
He’d hoisted himself higher up on the bed and she subliminally took in the breadth of his shoulders and the raw physicality of his body, which, maybe, she’d subconsciously noticed before but not like this. Then again, he hadn’t been addressing her before and engaging with her the way he was now.
She edged off the bed and for the first time in for ever was acutely aware of how she looked.
Faded jeans, faded grey jumper, her waist-long blonde hair pulled back into a lopsided ponytail. As always, she was bare of make-up and as tanned as she ever got from the summer sun, which was hot enough to burn when it decided to show its face. She was barefoot, as she always was when she was in the house, and she shoved her hands behind her back. They were practical hands, used to boats and ropes and the sea.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I have stuff to do. Work. I only came in here to check on you and refresh your glass of water.’
‘You mentioned a telephone.’
‘Huh?’ She was backing away towards the door, wondering why she was so nervous when, in actual fact, she never was when it came to the opposite sex.
