by Lynne Graham
‘You’re very insecure about him. I suppose you can’t believe your good luck in attracting a male of his calibre and are still wondering what he sees in you,’ Opal remarked with deadly accuracy. ‘But if he’s a commitment-phobe, better to find out now than later. Don’t do what I once did. Don’t waste five years of your life making excuses for him and chasing rainbows.’
And that was the surprising moment when Amber learned that her sister, whom she had naively assumed to be ultra-successful in every way, disabused her of that notion. Prior to meeting Neville, Opal had apparently been strung along by an older man she’d adored and then been ditched when she’d least expected it. That confession of vulnerability allowed Amber to feel close to her older sister for the first time. But the one person she could have trusted with her confidences, she refused to trust.
By the time she had been with Rocco an entire three months, Amber was literally bursting with the simple human need to verbally share her happiness with someone. It was sheer deprivation to have no friend in whom to confide the news that Rocco was the most romantic, the most wonderful guy in the world. Years of attending evening classes several nights a week and working long hours had left Amber without close friends. Dinah Fletcher had gone to school with Amber, made the effort to get Amber’s phone number from Opal and rang up out of the blue to suggest a girly get-together, a catching-up on old times...
Deep in her disturbing memories of that disastrous evening with Dinah, Amber hoisted herself up onto the low, sturdy branch of a giant conifer and braced her spine against the trunk. At least everything was still dry below the thick tree canopy, she reflected ruefully, staring up at the loose dead branch pointed out to her by her employer and wondering how best to dislodge it. Reaching down for the leaf rake, she clambered awkwardly higher.
Hearing the rustling, noisy passage of something moving at speed through the undergrowth, she stiffened in dismay, recalling her experience of being cornered by a very aggressive dog a few weeks back. The owner, a guest of the Wintons’, had called the animal off, boasting about what a great guard dog he was, not seeming to care that Amber had been scared witless. But now when she peered down anxiously from her perch, she saw that it was Rocco powering like an Olympic sprinter into the clearing below. Her tension ironically increased.
‘What the hell are you trying to do to yourself?’ Rocco roared at her from twenty feet away. ‘Get down from there!’
Amber assumed that now that the rain had quit he was the advance guard of a larger party getting the official tour of the woods, and her teeth gritted in receipt of that interfering demand. ‘Why are you trying to make me look like a clown when I’m only trying to do my job?’ she snapped in a meaningful whisper. ‘Do you think I’m up here for fun?’
Lean, bronzed features stamped with furious exasperation, Rocco strode up to the tree, removed the leaf rake dangling from her loosened grasp and pitched it aside. ‘If you knock that hanging branch down, it’s going to smash your head in!’
‘I’m as safe as houses standing here!’
‘Don’t be bloody stupid!’ Rocco reached up and simply snatched her bodily off her perch. As he did so, the branch on which she’d stood bounced and sent a shiver up through the tree. With a creaking noise, the loose branch above them lurched free of its resting place and began to crash down.
Rocco moved fast, but not fast enough to retain his balance when he was carrying her. Sliding on the soft carpet of leaves below the trees, he went down with her on top of him. Weak with relief that neither of them had been hurt, Amber kept her face buried in his shirt-front, drinking in the achingly familiar scent of him that clung to the fibres, listening to the solid thump of his heartbeat.
‘So how are you planning to say thank you?’ Rocco enquired lazily.
Amber pushed herself up on forceful hands and scrambled backwards and off him as if she had been burnt. ‘Thank you? When you almost killed both of us?’
‘I saved your life, woman.’ Raw self-assurance charging every syllable of that confident declaration, Rocco strode over to survey the smashed pieces of wood strewing the ground. ‘Winton should have hired a forester or a tree surgeon for this kind of work—’
‘He’s too mean to pay their rates.’ Her uncertain gaze followed him and stayed with him. In a dark green weatherproof jacket, his well-worn denim jeans accentuating his lean hips and long, powerful thighs, the breeze ruffling his luxuriant silver fair hair above his lean, dark, devastating features, Rocco looked so sensational, he just took her breath away. ‘How come you seem to be out here on your own?’
‘I’m escaping some serious Monopoly players.’ Rocco leant back with fluid grace against the tree trunk and surveyed her with heavily lidded eyes, his gaze a golden gleam below dense, dark lashes.
‘Monopoly? You’re kidding me?’ Amber said unevenly, wandering skittishly closer, then beginning to edge away again as she registered what she was doing.
‘I’m not into board games.’ He stretched out his long arms and captured her by the shoulders before she could move out of reach. ‘You’re pale...all shaken up.’
‘Maybe...’ Amber connected with his stunning dark golden eyes and she wanted to say something smart, but all inventiveness failed her.
Rocco tugged her to him with easy strength. ‘I’ll be gone in a couple of hours.’
‘Gone?’ In the act of forcing herself to pull back from him, Amber stilled in shock. She wasn’t prepared for that shock, either. Indeed the shock came out of nowhere at her like a body blow. He was a weekend guest, of course he was leaving. ‘But it’s only Saturday,’ she heard herself muttering weakly.
‘Twenty-four hours of the Wintons goes a long way, tabbycat.’ Framing her taut cheekbones with long, sure fingers, Rocco extracted a hungry, drugging kiss as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Amber was defenceless, all concentration already shot by the knowledge of his imminent departure. Leaning into him, she slid her hands beneath his jacket to rest against his crisp cotton shirt. Shivering, desperate hunger had her in a stranglehold. Going, going, gone... I can’t bear it, screamed a voice inside her head. Her heartbeat racing at an insane rate beneath the onslaught of that skilful kiss, she blocked out that voice she didn’t want to hear.
‘While one minute of you doesn’t last half long enough,’ Rocco husked, and let his tongue pry between her readily parted lips, once, twice, the third time making her shiver as though she were in a force-ten gale.
He stopped teasing and devoured her mouth with plundering force. She pulled his shirt out of his waistband, allowed her seeking fingers to splay against the warm smooth skin of his waist, felt him jerk in response. He dragged her hand down to the hard, thrusting evidence of his very male arousal. Her fingertips met the rough, frustrating barrier of denim. He pushed against her with a muffled groan of frustration, angled his head back from her, feverish golden eyes glittering, to say with ragged mockery, ‘No sheet to hide under out here, cara.’
‘Rocco...’ Cheeks flaming, she was assailed by bittersweet memories that hurt even as they made her shiver and melt down deep inside where she ached for him. And the combination released a flood of recklessness. She stretched up and claimed his sensual mouth again for herself and jerked at his belt with trembling fingers. He tensed in surprise against her and then suddenly he was coming to her assistance faster than the speed of light, releasing the buttons on his tight jeans.
The feel of Rocco trembling like a stallion at the starting gate was the most powerful aphrodisiac Amber had ever experienced. Her own legs barely capable of holding her up, she slid dizzily down his hard, muscular physique onto her knees.
She pressed her lips into his hard, flat stomach and then sent the tip of her tongue skimming along the line of his loosened waistband. His muscles jerked satisfyingly taut under that provocative approach and he exhaled audibly. ‘Don
’t tease...’ he begged her, Italian accent thickening every urgent syllable. ‘I couldn’t stand it...’
‘Stop trying to take control...’ Taking her time, she ran her hands up his taut, splayed thighs, loving every gorgeous inch of him, loving the way just touching him made her feel. As she eased away the denim, dispensed with the last barrier, Rocco was shaking, breathing heavily. Finding the virile proof of his excitement was not a problem. The extraordinary effect she was having on him was turning her so hot and quivery inside, she was sinking deeper and deeper into a sensual daze.
As she took him in her mouth, he groaned her name out loud, arching his hips off the trunk in surging eagerness. She felt like every woman born since Eve; she felt a power she had never dreamt she could feel. He was hers and he was out of control as she had never known him to be. It gave her extreme pleasure to torture him. He meshed his hand into her hair, urging her on, and then he cried out in Italian and he shuddered into an explosive release when she chose, not when he chose.
In the aftermath, the birdsong came back to charge a silence that still echoed in her sensitive ears. She was so shaken up, her body so weak, she felt limp.
Rocco hauled her up to him to study her with dazed and wondering dark golden eyes and then he wrapped his arms round her, pulled her close, burying his face in her hair. He held her so tightly she could not fill her lungs with oxygen, but she revelled in that natural warmth and affection of his, which she had missed infinitely more than she had missed him in her bed. He muttered with a roughened laugh, ‘So...I sack the gardener at my own country estate. I hire you...I get into rustic daily walks...no problem, cara!’
Amber went rigid and, planting her hands against his broad chest, she pulled free of him like a bristling cat.
‘Joke...’ Rocco breathed when he saw her furiously flushed face. ‘Obviously the wrong one.’
Amber wasn’t so sure: Rocco had a very high sex drive. Rocco was still surveying her with stunned appreciation. Rocco always just reached out and took what he wanted. But she wasn’t available; she wasn’t on offer and never would be again.
‘No encore. Goodbye, Rocco.’
‘So you weren’t in a joking mood—’
Amber crammed her shaking, restive hands into the pockets of her jacket as she backed away from him. ‘Your days of being stalked by me are over...OK?’
‘I openly admit that I was stalking you today, cara.’
‘Do you think I didn’t work that out for myself?’ She forced a jarring laugh for she was actually only making that possible connection as he admitted it. ‘But I turned the tables—’
‘Yes. You also turned me inside out...’ Rocco rested his intense golden eyes on her, a male well aware of the strength of his own powerful sexual appeal.
Amber dealt him a frozen look of scorn that took every ounce of her acting ability. ‘So now you know how that feels.’
CHAPTER FIVE
THE instant Amber believed she was out of sight and hearing, she broke into a run, her breath rasping in her throat in a mad flight through the trees.
It was only four but it was getting dark fast. As Neville had promised, he had had her car brought back. She blundered past it into the cottage, shedding her jacket in a heap, pausing only to wrench off her boots. Not even bothering to put on the lights, she was heading up the stairs when she noticed the red light flashing on the answering machine. With a sigh, she hit the button in case it was something urgent.
Opal’s beautifully modulated speaking voice filled the room. Opal and Neville had gone to visit friends, were staying on there for dinner with the children and were planning on a late return. ‘Freddy’s getting loads of attention,’ her sister asserted. ‘He won’t get the chance to miss you. I’ll put him to bed for you when we get back home.’
The prospect of hugging Freddy like a comforting security blanket that evening receded fast. Eyes watering, Amber hurried on upstairs. In the tiny shower room, she switched on the shower and pulled off her clothes as if she were in a race to the finish line. Stepping into the cubicle, she sent the door flying shut and stood there trembling, letting the warm water flood down over her.
What had got into her with Rocco? Sudden insanity? She didn’t know what was happening inside her head any more and she was too afraid to take a closer look. All she remembered was feeling as if she were dying inside when Rocco had said he was leaving. So had she somehow had a brainstorm and imagined he was going to move in with the Wintons for ever? Rocco playing board games? Rocco, who was so full of restive, seething energy you could get tired watching him?
She sank down in the corner of the shower, letting the water continue to cascade down over her still-shivering body. What had come over her out in the woods? She didn’t want to know. He was gone, he was history...he was gone. A horrendous mix of conflicting feelings attacked her. Rage...fear...pain. She hugged her knees and bowed her head down on them.
Rocco had come in search of her. He had admitted that. To say goodbye? Impossible to imagine the Rocco she remembered planning to take advantage of her smallest show of weakness and drag her down into the undergrowth to make love to her again. She would have said no anyway, she definitely would have said no, she told herself. He hadn’t laid a finger on her, she reminded herself with equal urgency. But then, bombarded by erotic imagery which reminded her precisely why Rocco had been so unusually restrained, she uttered a strangled moan of shame. Rocco not having touched her was no longer a source of reassurance or comfort.
She hated him, she really did. She was over him, over him. She hadn’t even been kissed in eighteen months, had conceived a violent antipathy for every male her brother-in-law had brought home to dinner in the hope she would take the bait and start dating again. Maybe that had something to do with how she had behaved with Rocco. Or maybe she just loved his body. Yes. Wanton, shameless...starved of him? No, she swore vehemently to herself. Just a case of over-charged emotions, confusion and an overdose of hormones out of sync. She stayed in the shower until the water ran cold.
Wrapping herself in a towel, she padded out of the shower room. She frowned at the sight of the dim light spilling from her bedroom out onto the landing. She hadn’t even been in her bedroom yet. Had she left the bedside lamp switched on all day? If so, why hadn’t she noticed it when she’d come upstairs earlier? Acknowledging that she had been in no state to notice anything very much and that she still felt hollow and sick inside, Amber pushed the door wider and walked into her room.
On the threshold, she froze. Rocco was poised by the window.
‘How on earth—?’
‘You didn’t hear me knock and your front door was unlocked—’
‘Was that an invitation for you to just walk on in?’ Amber snapped, thinking how very lucky she was that he had not gone into Freddy’s little room next door to hers first. Had he done so, he would hardly have failed to notice the cot and the toys in there.
He had changed out of his designer casuals. Sheathed in a formal dark business suit, his arrogant head within inches of the ceiling, Rocco looked formidable.
Agitated by the severe disadvantage of having a scrubbed bare face, dripping hair in a tangle and only an old beach towel between herself and total nudity, Amber added, ‘And walk right up into my bedroom?’
Rocco gave her a cloaked look. ‘Since I’ve already said my goodbyes to my host, I didn’t think you’d want me to advertise my presence by waiting downstairs in a room that doesn’t even have curtains on the windows.’
Amber flushed at that accurate assumption. ‘I haven’t got around to putting any up yet,’ she said defensively.
‘I think a woman living alone and secluded by a big empty courtyard should be more careful of her own privacy and safety—’
Amber lifted her chin. ‘You’re the only prowling predator I’ve ever known. So what are you doing her
e?’
‘When you turn me inside out, you take the consequences,’ Rocco murmured with indolent cool.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘That what you start, you have to finish.’
‘We are finished,’ she said breathlessly.
‘I’m not hearing you...’ Rocco sidestepped her and pushed the bedroom door closed like a guy making a pronounced statement.
‘Rocco—’
‘You want me...I want you. Right now, when I’m flying out to Italy for three days, everything else is superfluous.’
A tide of colour washed up over her heart-shaped face.
The expectant silence rushed and surged around her.
‘Unless you say otherwise, of course,’ Rocco spelt out with soft sibilance. ‘I can’t say goodbye to you again.’
Rocco wanted her back. She couldn’t believe it. He had wrongfooted her, sprung a sneak attack, thrown her in a loop. She had had no expectations of him at all. She had said goodbye and she had meant it. But her saying goodbye had been kind of pointless when no other option had been on offer, an empty phrase that nonetheless could rip the heart out of her if she thought about it.
‘You have incredible nerve...’ she mumbled shakily, wondering what had happened to all that stuff about him never being able to trust her again, fighting to focus her brain on that mystery, utterly failing.
‘No, I’m a ruthless opportunist.’
She saw that, could hardly miss that. Show weakness and Rocco took advantage. He had taught her that within twelve hours of their very first meeting. A brilliant, ruthless risk-taker whom she had once adored and could probably adore again, but the prospect terrified her. Freddy...what about her son, their son, Freddy? He didn’t know about Freddy and she didn’t think that it was quite the right moment to make that shock announcement. Rocco seemed to believe that the clock could be turned back and, dear heaven, she wanted to believe that too, but... A baby made a difference; Freddy would make a difference.