Harlequin Presents: Once Upon A Temptation June 2020--Box Set 2 of 2

by Lynne Graham

  And since then…

  He looked at his watch. Then at the view spread out in front of him. From where he was sitting, waiting for her at the café on the waterfront, he had a splendid view of the harbour and just at the moment, with the sun shining, it was a picturesque sight. Blue water, the boats bobbing on the surface and people criss-crossing the road in front of him, taking their time getting out of the way should a beaten up car decide to drive past. It was a very far cry from the trendy seaside village where his house resided in a prestigious position on a hill overlooking a marina, which was dotted with expensive yachts and pleasure boats owned by the expensive people who flocked to the Michelin-starred restaurants and chic pubs and quaint tea rooms. The house was the last link to his mother, an expensive youthful present from way back when, when his father had slipped the engagement ring on her finger and led her to a house in the very place where she had grown up, so that she could maintain easy links with her friends and what little family she had left. His old man, even then, had done things in style.

  That house summed up, for Luca, the way love and loss were so entwined, and, with everything going on in his life when he had decided to clear his desk and take time out, he had escaped back to it for just such a timely reminder. There was no such thing as love without loss.

  He killed pointless musings dead.

  As Cordelia had told him when she had shown him round the village two days previously, this was a working fishing village. There were occasional tourists in summer, in search of a more authentic Cornish experience, but largely the place was inhabited by locals, most of whom were involved in the fishing business in one way or the other.

  As for Cordelia, Luca had discovered that she was a woman of many talents. Most of her time was spent helping her father run his small business. She did his books and, in summer, oversaw the rental of two of his boats further along the coast at one of the more popular seaside towns. She made sure that everything ticked along.

  ‘Dad depends on me,’ she had told him. ‘I may not go out there on the trawler with him but I pretty much do everything else. Of course, if needs be, I’m more than capable of helping him at sea if one of the guys is off, but I’m better off staying here and working behind the scenes. He’s hopeless when it comes to anything to do with filling in forms or paperwork and forget about computers.’

  Luca saw her before she spotted him. She was glorious. Long limbs, arms swinging, her hair, as always, tied back. She radiated vitality and health and he marvelled that he had succeeded in keeping his hands to himself when he’d spent the last three days itching to reach out and touch her. His freedom might be on the brink of disappearing but, right now, he was still as single as the day was long.

  But for once, he hadn’t dared. There was an innocence about her that kept him at bay. For the first time in his life, he also had no idea how she would react if he made a pass at her. Slap him down? Kick him out of the house? Fling herself into his arms and beg for satisfaction? He had no idea and the uncertainty was paralysing.

  He waved when she spotted him and she beamed back at him.

  For a second, Luca felt a stab of guilt at the way he had played fast and loose with the truth. He’d talked a lot about his country but had been diplomatically light on detail. He knew that she’d somehow assumed that he’d been over on holiday, maybe chartered a boat for a day out, but the fact that he was hanging around had led her to assume that he was currently jobless and he hadn’t disabused her of the notion. Why would he? He would soon be gone and this rare chance to be whoever he wanted to be was addictive.

  ‘I’ve brought us a picnic.’ Cordelia dumped a basket on the table and looked at him.

  It was hot. A perfect summer day. This part of the world did perfect summer days like nowhere else. Bright blue sky, turquoise sea, clean smell of the ocean and the soft sound of the water slapping against the sides of the fishing boats.

  She shielded her eyes from the glare and stared at him. With only the clothes on his back when she rescued him, he had had to buy a few more things and was wearing a pair of khaki shorts, some loafers and a white tee shirt. He looked magnificent. So exotic, so foreign…so much a vision of everything that was out of her orbit.

  ‘And I’ve contributed in my own, small way.’ He reached down to a cloth bag on the ground and when she looked inside, she saw two bottles of champagne.

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘If you’re going to do something, then you don’t do it in half measures.’

  ‘But champagne… It must have cost a fortune.’

  ‘I won’t worry about the price tag if you don’t.’

  ‘I like that,’ she confided as they began heading out towards where her boat was anchored just off the jetty.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The fact that you’re so carefree.’ She slid her eyes across to him and drank in the lean beauty of his face. His hair was longer than when she’d brought him back to the house, curling at the nape of his neck.

  ‘I don’t think anyone has ever described me as carefree before,’ Luca commented with complete honesty. ‘Frankly, it’s not a description I would ever have used for myself.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you? Why not?’ She glanced at him, smiling, then began the business of getting the boat ready for them while he watched and admired her quiet efficiency, doing something she had probably done a million times before. It was compulsive viewing. She was wearing some cut-off jeans and a striped tee shirt. He could just about make out the heavy swing of her breasts as she expertly loosened the boat from its mooring, bringing it into position for them. She had braided her hair into one long plait that fell down the centre of her spine like rope.

  ‘You’re here,’ she pointed out, steadying the boat and then half jumping on board without really looking where she put her feet because the manoeuvre was so familiar. ‘You’re not rushing off to do anything. You know how to slow down. So many people don’t, although I guess if you’re going to slow down, then this is the perfect place to do it and the perfect time, given what you went through.’

  * * *

  Cordelia watched as he hit the deck as confidently as she had. When he suggested he sail the boat, she found herself instantly agreeing because something inside her trusted his expertise, which was contrary to everything she had been brought up to believe.

  ‘Everyone thinks they know what to do when it comes to boats,’ her father had told both her and her brother when they were young. ‘Don’t trust anyone with a throttle, a rudder, a tiller or an engine unless they can produce a captain’s licence. It’s easy to get out of your depth when it comes to handling a boat, and out at sea, that could be fatal. I’ll make sure the pair of you know exactly what to do when you get on a boat. If anyone gets on with you and asks for a go, tell them to get lost.’

  She gave directions, sat back and tilted her face up to the sun.

  ‘Do you ever slow down?’ Luca murmured, obeying directions, enjoying the speed of the boat as it sliced through the water to the hidden bay she had told him about, enjoying even more the feel of her next to him, her body warmed from the sun, the hairs on her hands white-blonde in the sun.

  ‘Only when I do this,’ she replied, eyes still closed. ‘Or when I go swimming. I slow right down when I go swimming. Especially if I go swimming at night.’

  ‘At night…and you don’t get scared?’

  ‘Of what? I know everything there is to know about the tides around here. I’d never swim if there was a hint of a current, but if the water’s calm, then there’s something about being in it when it’s dark. I can think.’

  They’d arrived at the bay. It was deserted and protected by dense shrubbery and tangled trees. The sand was very white and, when they stepped out onto it, already warm from the sun.

  ‘What do you think about?’

  Cordelia looked at him and couldn’t look away. She’d thought
long and hard about what to tell him about herself and, in the end, had said very little. She was ever so slightly in awe of him. He was like a bright, tropical bird of paradise, blown in on the winds, and every time she had felt that urge to confide, she had been overcome by a surge of shyness.

  ‘This and that.’ She shrugged and broke eye contact to set up a little picnic area in the shade of one of the overhanging trees. When she turned round to look at him, he had divested himself of his tee shirt and was staring out at the horizon with his back to her.

  Her heart sped up. He was a few inches taller than her and perfectly proportioned. Broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, lean-hipped. He’d shoved his hands into the pockets of his shorts. He’d asked her what she’d been thinking but now she wished she could see into his head, find out what he was thinking. His life in Italy sounded idyllic. ‘Vineyards,’ he had told her, waving aside more in-depth questioning, as though working on a vineyard was something she couldn’t possibly find that interesting.

  ‘Grapes…’ he had shrugged, when she breathlessly asked for details ‘…that’s pretty much all there is to say on the subject of vineyards. Grapes. You either eat them or you turn them into wine. I’m involved in the latter option.’

  She was still shamelessly gawping when he spun round to look at her and she reddened.

  ‘Tell me you’re not going to spend the day in jeans and a tee shirt,’ he encouraged with a grin. ‘Did you bring a swimsuit or do you have plans on skinny dipping?’

  Cordelia made a strangled sound under her breath and hastily got rid of her jeans and tee shirt to reveal a sensible black whole piece. Skinny dipping? The thought alone brought her out in a cold sweat.

  * * *

  ‘Ah, swimming costume. Good. It would be a sin not to try the water on a day like this.’ Luca had never seen anyone under the age of eighty in a swimsuit as sensible as the one she was wearing and yet, conversely, had never been so tempted to touch. Her legs were long and shapely, the lines of her body strong and athletic, her skin pale gold.

  He averted his eyes but there was a steady pulsing in his groin that was going to prove embarrassing if he carried on giving free rein to his imagination.

  Cold water had never looked so inviting. He stepped out of the khakis, down to the swimming trunks he had bought a couple of days earlier.

  ‘Think I need a swim,’ he gritted, baring his teeth in something he hoped would resemble a relaxed smile. ‘So hot.’ He waded straight into the ice-cold water. Felt good. Anything to douse the rise in his body temperature when he had looked at her.

  He didn’t look back for five minutes and when he did, it was to find that she was striking out in his direction, in long, fluid strokes that ate up the distance between them.

  She hadn’t been lying when she’d told him that she could swim like a fish. She could. And out here, in the ocean where blue yielded to black because it was so much deeper, she was in her natural element. He could see that as soon as she had caught up with him. There was real pleasure on her face and she was smiling. All the hesitancy and shyness that seemed part and parcel of her personality had disappeared. She looked as though she had barely broken a sweat swimming out to him.

  ‘You’re a strong swimmer,’ she told him, treading water.

  ‘You’re surprised because you thought I was a wimp who could barely man a boat and had to rely on being rescued by a damsel in shining armour because of his own stupidity?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Luca burst out laughing and cast appreciative eyes over her face. She truly had the most amazing eyes, he thought. A shade somewhere between navy blue and bright turquoise with a hint of green and, for a blonde, her lashes were lush and dark.

  ‘Race you back?’ Cordelia backed away in the water. The way he was looking at her…she’d caught that expression before, a fleeting glimpse of something heated and dangerous, but she had told herself that it was her imagination playing tricks on her. She lacked the sophistication to interpret those kinds of games and she didn’t trust herself to even try. It was a lot easier to pretend there was nothing there, that any wayward expression she might have glimpsed in him was all in her mind. Why would a man like Luca look at a woman like her? He was so beautiful, so exotic, so compelling while she…was a country girl who worked her fingers to the bone in the fishing business. Vineyard versus fishing. Even if all he did was pick grapes and do whatever people did to grapes when they were picked, it was still impossibly glamorous as far as she was concerned.

  She didn’t wait for his response. She began swimming and all the thoughts left her head as she felt the cold water sluice against her body and the exertion of the swim heating her up until the sea was warm against her skin.

  He kept pace and then increased it so that he hit the shoreline before she did.

  She was laughing when she emerged from the water. Her hair was still in the braid but she tugged the elastic band off and rifled her fingers through its length so that it spread over her shoulders and down her back, reaching all the way to her waist.

  Luca felt as though he’d been punched in the gut and he was breathing heavily as he turned away to open the bottle of champagne. Hell, she might be fine with this scenario but he was in desperate need of a drink. He only wished he’d thought to bring something a little stronger. A bottle of whisky would have done the trick. Instead, he popped the cork on the champagne, which was still cold thanks to the sleeve into which it had been put, and he extended one of the two plastic glasses to her.

  ‘Are there rules about drinking and sailing?’ he asked, sitting on a rock while she tidily spread an oversized rug on the sand.

  ‘I’ve brought lots of water.’ She smiled and sipped some champagne. ‘And lots of food. That should take care of the alcohol.’

  ‘If it doesn’t, we could always spend the night on the beach.’ Their eyes tangled and he slanted a smile at her. ‘I guess living here, that’s something you must have done a million times…?’

  Luca knew that he was shamelessly fishing for information but he wanted to find out more about her, dig a bit deeper, which was something he was seldom inclined to do when it came to the opposite sex. He’d long discovered that the women he dated were all largely gifted in the art of talking about themselves. There was almost no need to ask questions.

  ‘Not once,’ Cordelia murmured thoughtfully. ‘Although there are loads of bays and coves around here and, yes, there were always parties during the summer holidays.’

  ‘But you didn’t go to them.’

  She swallowed some more champagne and grimaced. ‘When I was twelve, one of my friends had a birthday party on a cove not far from this one. Of course, adults were there. Since then, I’ve only ever sailed to one of these coves on my own.’

  ‘No reckless teenage parties with contraband alcohol and furious parents hunting down their wayward offspring to drag them back home?’

  ‘Not for me.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because…’ The sun was beating down but the rug was under the shade of a tree and there was just enough of a balmy breeze to make her feel sleepy. He’d left the rock at some point and was on the rug with her, sitting up, but then he lay flat, staring up at the cloudless blue sky, and she followed suit. ‘Because my father was very protective. My mother died when I was young. I told you that, but after she died, Dad, somehow, developed a crazy fear that if I ventured too far, something bad would happen. Of course, I didn’t notice it at all when I was young, but the older I got…the more I realised that I didn’t have the same freedoms as loads of kids my age. But then, my brother died and everything got…so much more difficult.’ She paused and gathered herself.

  ‘You had a brother? I had no idea.’

  ‘Why would you? Dad never talks about Alex. In fact, when he died, Dad made sure that all the framed photos of him were taken down. Alex was my twin.’<
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  She was surprised and then moved when she felt Luca link his fingers through hers. Her mind was engaged in the past, but she still felt a jolt of electricity run through her body. The warmth of his fingers was so good, so reassuring and it was the first physical contact they had shared since she looked after him. Excitement leaped inside her but she told herself that this was just the normal gesture of someone empathising with what she had just said. The equivalent of a hug. Hugs weren’t sexual. A brotherly hug from a friend didn’t end up in a steamy kiss. But she still liked the touch of those fingers…and the thought of a steamy kiss was…well…in her head before she could take defensive measures to keep it out.

  ‘Your twin!’

  He levered himself into a half-sitting position and leaned over her, to stare at her with startled, concerned eyes.

  Cordelia dealt with that by closing her eyes. His fingers were still linked with hers and having him so close to her, close enough to feel his warm breath on her cheek, was too much to handle.

  ‘Everything changed after Alex died,’ Cordelia said. ‘I’d planned on going to university, even though I knew that Dad would have to resist phoning twice a day to make sure I was all right. I think he always felt, deep down, that he should have been able to protect my mum, that he should have been there with her when she went to London, then she wouldn’t have been hit by that car and everything would have been all right. If he couldn’t protect Mum, then he would devote his life to protecting me. But going to university?’ She sighed. ‘I’d worked out that it was just something I had to do. Alex was destined to help Dad in the fishing business and eventually take it over. It was all he’d ever wanted to do whereas I…’