by Lynne Graham
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.
‘Being snapped up by 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.
‘In the absence of my mobile phone, I’ll have to use your landline to make contact with…my father.’
Cordelia blinked. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t find any contact numbers in your wallet,’ she said in a rush. ‘It must feel like an invasion of your privacy, but, like I said, I only wanted to find out who you were and who I might be able to contact to let them know about the boating accident. Your dad must be worried sick.’
‘That’s not entirely how my life works.’
They stared at one another for a few long, silent seconds.
* * *
She was quite stunning, Luca thought absently, and what was almost impossible to credit was the fact that she seemed so unaware of her attributes. She was tall and athletic, her body, from what he could see, sinewy and strong. It should have put him off because he had always been drawn to slight, ultra-feminine women, but it didn’t. Her legs, encased in faded jeans, were long and he could detect the fullness of her rounded breasts beneath the drab jumper. Never had he seen any woman so successfully conceal every single womanly trait she might possess. Was that deliberate, he wondered, or did the fashion police patrol the streets of the village, clamping down on anything that wasn’t functional?
His eyes drifted up to her oval-shaped face. Her lips were full, her nose short and straight and her eyes a shade of violet he had never seen before. But her hair…
Luca thought of the highly groomed, sophisticated women who flitted in and out of his life. The woman in front of him couldn’t have been more different and her hair said it all. She had yanked it back into a ponytail that couldn’t seem to quite make its mind up as to which way it should fall, but, even so, the colours were so vibrant that he couldn’t drag his eyes away. Every shade of blonde was there, from platinum blonde to the rich hues of pale honey and deeper toffee. A life spent outdoors, he assumed, doing whatever it was she did out there on the high seas. Fishing and rescuing idiots who went out in boats without first having a look at the weather forecast.
He closed down wayward thoughts that suddenly shot into his head at speed. Thoughts about how she would look underneath the workman-like clothes, what that body would feel like under his exploring hands.
Such options, for a multitude of reasons, were firmly off the table.
‘I will, naturally, pay you for the cost of the phone call.’
‘Why would you do that?’ Cordelia asked, bewildered. Did he think that they intended to charge him for his stay at the house? That they wanted money from him? That he had to pay his way the second he gained full consciousness, right down to the cost of a phone call? She bristled. ‘We’re not the sort of people who would think of charging you for using the telephone,’ she said coolly. ‘I may have rescued you but I didn’t bring you here so that we could start charging you for your stay.’
‘The phone call will be to Italy,’ Luca said drily.
‘Italy?’ He was Italian. She should have worked that out for herself going by his name alone, but she hadn’t because this wasn’t the sort of Cornish village that was invaded by tourists during the height of the summer season. Outsiders were few and far between and yet here was this striking Italian, lying on a bed in her father’s house. She felt a buzz of excitement as her imagination took flight. Italy! Just the taste of it on her tongue felt good.
* * *
‘It’s where I live.’ He watched her carefully from under his lashes. He watched to see whether she would make any connections. In Italy, his name would be quickly recognised. Even here, in this country, many people would have heard of the Baresi name, if only because of its association with the wine. The House of Baresi was legendary, as was the formidable wealth of its aristocratic family. Luca Baresi had lived his life in the spotlight of his noble ancestry. His social circle was huge but around it was a protective circle, a dividing line that mere mortals were seldom allowed to cross. It wasn’t of his devising. It was the way it was, and if there were moments when he longed to walk out of that circle and never look back, then he was accustomed to quickly closing them down because he knew where his duties lay.
His friends, the members of his extended family—they were all, to varying degrees, as privileged as he was. To the best of his knowledge, the only commoner to have ever broken through those rigid walls had been his mother and that tale had hardly had a happy ending.
This was an avenue of thought he was, likewise, accustomed to shutting down whenever it happened to make an uninvited appearance and he did so now, with ruthless efficiency.
‘Tuscany,’ he offered. ‘Have you been there?’
* * *
‘I don’t often leave Cornwall,’ Cordelia admitted and she grimaced at his expression of incredulity.
She met so few people, she realised. Life was so predictable for her and yet she was still young. Twenty-four years old! She should be enjoying all sorts of new and life-changing experiences. Everyone in the village knew her back story but now, the urge to confide in someone new, someone from a faraway and exotic place that she would probably never visit, at least not in the near future, was overpowering.
‘Why is that?’
He paused to look at her and she stared back at him in silence because suddenly everything, the bits
and pieces and nuts and bolts of her life, seemed so overwhelming. She thought about all the things that had happened to her. All the things locking her into this one place. Keeping her there as securely as if she had been trapped in a cage. How on earth could she unpick all those pieces of her past and put them into a few casual sentences? It was crazy anyway. Forget about silly urges! She barely knew the guy. She wouldn’t know where to begin when it came to answering that simple question he had asked.
He stretched and, in one swift movement, flung aside the covers and swung his legs over the side of the bed. ‘I need to move around,’ he threw over his shoulder, as he headed to the wardrobe and the only place his clothes could be. ‘And change back into my own clothes.’
Cordelia nodded mutely, riveted to him. To start with he had more or less hobbled, hanging onto her father’s arm to make his way to the bathroom, and even when, after day one, his strength had begun to resurface, he had still moved slowly, hesitantly. It was obvious that he was well on the road to rude health because his movements now were assured and graceful and captivating.
She felt that her mouth might be hanging open. Her jaw certainly dropped to the ground when, without warning and with his back still to her, he began stripping off without the slightest hint of inhibition.
She looked away. Her mouth had gone dry and she could feel the hot burn of colour suffusing her face.
‘You can look now.’ There was amusement in his voice a couple of minutes later and she slowly turned round to face him.
Her cheeks were still pink with embarrassment.
* * *
Her body language shrieked her discomfort. Luca had seen nothing like it before. Had there ever been a time in his life when he had been with any woman who had seen his semi-naked body and acted as though the ground would be doing her a favour if it opened and swallowed her up? He couldn’t help the spurt of curiosity about her. So beautiful and yet could she possibly be as innocent as she looked?
And what about never leaving this place? How did that begin to make sense?
‘How old are you?’ he asked suddenly.
‘Twenty-four just. Why?’
Luca shrugged. ‘You say that you seldom leave here?’
‘It’s a beautiful part of the world. You’d be surprised how many people who live by the sea find it impossible to stray far from it.’
Not her, though. No, not her, but something inside her felt compelled to defend herself against his curiosity.
He let that non-answer go and instead looked around him. He had no recollection of being brought into the house and he hadn’t spared a single second to so much as glance outside the bedroom window. He rectified that now and what he saw was a limitless view of grey sea, a ribbon of road, currently empty, and the tangle of greenery at the side of the road, stretching out towards what seemed to be a gentle incline down, he guessed, to the ocean front. Everything was shrouded in a cloud of fine, persistent drizzle. The remnants of the storm that had capsized his boat.
Then he looked around him, taking in his surroundings fully and for the first time.
Luca rarely noticed his surroundings, at least not the mansion in which he lived or any of the other expensive properties he owned. They were lavish. He knew that. But a lifetime of wealth had made him immune to their impact. Nor did he pay much attention to any of the houses in which his friends or relatives lived. They all ran along the same lines. Some were bigger than others, few more opulent. The town houses and apartments in which the various girlfriends he had had over the years lived had all been expensive, courtesy of rich parents. Such was his life.
The room in which he was standing was far from lavish. It was large, with a wooden floor over which a worn Persian rug tried hard to add a bit of luxury. The furniture was all old but gleaming and highly polished and the walls could have done with a top-up on the paint. But the bed had been incredibly comfortable and he had to admit that there was something seductively cosy about the room, despite its lack of expensive furnishings.
‘Show me around?’ he heard himself ask her. ‘I need to stretch my legs. I feel like I’ve been confined in one place for far too long.’
‘What about the phone call?’
‘Ah.’ Green eyes met violet and Luca smiled, because it wasn’t often that he was in the company of a woman who didn’t know his worth. It felt strangely liberating. He could be himself. He was no longer the man who was committed to driving forward the considerable family business he now ran, having hauled it back from the brink thanks to his father. Nor was he the prized aristocrat who couldn’t enter a room without being marked as a target by well-bred women with marriage on their minds. Here, tossed up from the sea into the middle of nowhere, he was a man without a predetermined destiny.
He wasn’t quite sure who he was, shorn of all the trappings that usually surrounded him, but he was willing to have a go at trying the situation out for size.
Especially in the company of a woman who looked the way this one did.
He felt a sudden tightness in his groin and had to stifle a need to groan aloud.
‘Like I said,’ he murmured, ‘no one will have contacted the police to get a search party together just yet.’ He commanded complete freedom of movement. He’d told his PA that he would be taking time out for a few days. He hadn’t specified how many. She would have cancelled all immediate meetings and would have put nothing in place until told to do so. Likewise, his father would have no real idea when to expect him back. They didn’t live in one another’s pockets. As for the rest of the world…?
Who was there? He was an only child and a man who did as he pleased without reference to anyone else. He had never believed in the value of teamwork. The only person he had ever relied on was himself. It had served him well. Only now, he was struck by a certain peculiar uncertainty—a feeling that complete independence might not be quite what it was cracked up to be.
He shook his head impatiently.
‘Walk me through your house,’ he said gruffly, looking forward to immersing himself for a short while in a life that was far removed from his own.
‘Only,’ Cordelia returned, consumed with curiosity about the life he represented, ‘if you tell me about your life in Italy.’
Luca relaxed. There was a lot he could tell her about his homeland. About the rolling splendour of Tuscany, about the beauty of the Alps and the grandeur of the Apennines and the marvel of a climate, caught between the two, that was so perfect for growing the very best grapes, which produced the very best wine in the country. He could tell her about the villages surrounding his estate and the people who lived there, most of whom were employed in some capacity or other by his family and always had been.
Naturally, he would have to tailor all of it because there was even more he had no intention of telling her, starting with the truth of his identity and the position of power he held in the region.
She was leading the way out of the bedroom, onto the broad landing, vaguely pointing out the remaining bedrooms on the floor before heading down the wooden staircase into the body of the house.
Following in her wake, he was half paying attention but mostly looking at her and admiring the spring in her step, the way she half ran down the stairs. He was wondering what her hair would look like unrestrained. She had the longest hair he had ever seen.
They reached the black and white flagstone hall and she spun round to look at him, eyes bright and her expression open and trusting.
Luca blinked to dispel the weird ache that had kick-started inside him.
‘I’ll tell you everything you want to know about my country,’ he said smoothly, ‘on the condition that you tell me why you don’t get out of here, or have I misinterpreted what you said earlier on?’
‘You haven’t and that’s fair enough.’ She smiled hesitantly and pulled the ponytail over one shoulder to distractedly play with it, twi
rling gold strands of hair between her fingers. She had so many questions she wanted to ask him that she didn’t quite know where to begin.
And she could tell him so much about herself and why not? Her father wouldn’t be back for another few hours. He was off fishing. And this man who had catapulted into her small, predictable world was so compelling.
Where was the harm in talking to him? It wasn’t as though he were going to be around for much longer and it had been such a long time since she had talked, really talked, to a guy, to anyone. For ever. Her brother. That was how long it had been. So many years just plodding along, quietly doing what she had to do, without fuss, keeping her loneliness to herself.
Where was the harm in opening up, now, to this stranger…?
CHAPTER TWO
HE DIDN’T PHONE his father or his PA or anyone else for three days and when he did, it was to inform them that he had decided to take a slightly extended holiday. He’d be away for at least another week.
His PA had been a little startled but she was in her sixties, had worked for him for so long that she deserved a medal and had decided a decade ago that sorting out his emails and arranging his meetings was just a small part of her designated role.
‘Take as much time out as you want, Luca,’ she had soothed. ‘You work too hard. You’re thirty-four years old and you need to relax more or you’ll have a heart attack before you know it. Stress. It kills. Those grapes will keep growing and the machinery will keep working until you decide to get back.’
His father had been largely indifferent. He’d handed over the reins of the sprawling family empire to his son a long time ago and had, since then, devoted his life to marrying and divorcing inappropriate women. Four at the last count although thankfully things had been quiet on that front for the past two years. Luca knew better than to expect that to last. He loved his father but he was far too aware of his failings to assume that a brief respite from unsuitable liaisons could herald anything more than the same old, same old.