by Penny Jordan
When Nico eventually left her at her father's side, she felt bereft, and it showed in her expression. Richard Wykeham observed her with concern.
'It's all right,' she assured him, but her voice shook, and her eyes clung betrayingly to Nico's departing back.
She didn't see Nico again until she and her father were on the point of leaving, and then it was only the merest glimpse. He was standing at the side of an expensively fast Lancia, elbow resting on the open driver's door as he stared into the darkness. Just for a second in the powerful beam of their own car headlights Saffron saw his expression, and the shock was like a volt of electricity—stingingly painful. His face was drawn in lines of bleak anger, bitterness grooving his mouth; he was a stranger, and although he seemed to be looking straight at her, there was, no recognition in that look.
It brought home to her the fact that they were strangers and that she knew nothing about his life; nothing about whatever had brought that look of inward and bitter brooding to his face.
*
Saffron had been at the villa for three days. The villa and surrounding countryside were beautiful but lonely, but strangely enough it wasn't her father who occupied most of her thoughts. It was Nico Doranti.
The couple who looked after the villa for her father were pleasant but in the main silent; neither of them was inclined to converse with her, and Saffron had decided to put her time in waiting for her father to the best use she could by topping up the tan she had got in Greece earlier in the year. She had given in to one of her friends' pleas to join them on a yachting holiday, cruising round the Greek islands; an idyllic-sounding holiday which, unfortunately, had turned out to be something of a nightmare. It was only when she joined the cruise at Athens that Saffron had discovered that everyone was paired off in couples and that she was expected to partner Jean-Paul. Events had gone from bad to worse, culminating in an appalling scene between herself and Jean-Paul one afternoon when the yacht was lying off the island of Corfu.
All the others had gone ashore and she had been sunbathing alone—or so she thought, until Jean-Paul crept up behind her and untied the strings of her bikini top. Since she had realised she wasn't x alone her initial shocked reaction had been to whirl round, and it had been at that precise moment that a hovering photographer had seen his opportunity and snatched a picture of her from the quayside. Saffron had writhed in mortification to see it splashed all over the gossip columns days later. The grainy photograph had not shown clearly her shocked expression, but what it did show were the unmistakable curves of her breasts minus her bikini top. The usual innuendo-riddled caption had accompanied the photograph; she was holidaying with friends, including international playboy Jean-Paul Chalours, etc., etc.
Her father had pointed out that the photographer was only doing his job, but Saffron had felt besmirched by the incident, and it had proved the final straw in helping her to make a complete break with her old crowd. She had been surprised how little she had missed them; how content she had been in her father's company. She moved drowsily in the sunshine, her skin tanned a warm golden brown, contrasting with the minute emerald scraps that comprised her brief bikini. There was a matching jacket and wrap-round skirt on the sand beside her, and she sat up, swiftly fastening the skirt, as she stared out to sea. She would have hated Nico to have met her as the girl she had been. The other girls in her set would have drooled openly over him as they were wont; no doubt laughing shrilly in their attempts to focus his attention on them, the sharp, supposed to be witty, suggestive comments that were second nature falling from their glossed lips.
How would he have reacted to that photograph? Something told her that had she been spotted in such a compromising situation with him those photographs would never have reached the newspapers. But then Nico Doranti was hardly likely to steal up behind a girl and behave as childishly as Jean-Paul had done. For one thing he wouldn't need to, and for another, when Nico chose to make love to a woman it wouldn't be with one eye on the publicity he might gain. Saffron's face felt hot—nothing to do with the sun; a strange languor was creeping over her as she contemplated how it would feel to be made love to by Nico.
Long shadows were starting to creep across the beach—a sign that the afternoon was dying. Soon she would have to leave the beach and trudge up the flight of stone steps cut in the cliff which led to the villa perched at the top. She started to gather up her belongings, glancing towards the cliffs and freezing as she saw the lone male figure sauntering towards her.
He was wearing ragged denim shorts, and a gold medallion on a fine chain glinted in the sun before disappearing into the dark tangle of body hair.
'Nico!'
His name left her lips on a startled whisper, her eyes widening in unconscious appreciation of the male litheness of his body. The shorts were well worn and faded. They looked as though they had once been jeans and had been cut down—the genuine article, not some expensively fashioned beachwear, and the frayed cuffs drew her eyes to the solid muscle of his thighs. The sight of his near-naked body had a powerful effect upon her senses, heightened by the fact that he had been in her thoughts almost constantly since their meeting.
'They told me up at the villa that I'd find you down here,' he told her with a smile.
'You came to see me?' She hardly dared believe it.
His eyes were mocking. 'Of course not! I can think of at least a dozen other reasons why I should drive hell for leather down here during the middle of a particularly hectic working week. But they'd all be lies,', he added softly, devastating her by the way he looked at her, his glance encompassing the feminine curves of her body.
'You surprise me,' he said at last, shifting his inspection to her flushed face and tremulously parted mouth. 'On a secluded beach like this I'd hardly have thought that ‑' he nodded towards her bikini and the skirt she had tied loosely round her waist, 'charming though it is—necessary.'
It was several seconds before the full implication of his words sank in, and when they did Saffron reached nervously for her sunglasses and slid them quickly on to her nose to conceal her expression. Had he genuinely expected to find her sunbathing in the nude when he made his way down those steps?
Suddenly awkward, she stepped away from him, appalled to discover how difficult she found it to think logically while he was there.
'Have you ... will you be staying long?' The question was disjointed, and she regretted the gaucheness of it the moment it was asked, but Nico seemed unconcerned.
'One day, perhaps two; I have booked into a hotel—if you can call it that in San Lorenzo, just down the coast. You know it?'
'Yes ... but you could have stayed here, at the villa.'
His eyebrows rose. 'Would your father approve of such intimacy?'
Again Saffron was shocked by her body's response to the picture he was painting; the two of them alone in the villa when Maria and her husband had returned to their own home in the evening. They could dine on the terrace that overlooked the sea, only the brilliance of the stars illuminating the scene, and afterwards ...
Her mouth had gone dry, her whole body responding with a sensuality that rocked the ground beneath her feet. She had never felt like this before. She glanced downwards distractedly, absently noticing her towel and suntan lotion still lying on the sand, acutely aware of the aroused firming of her nipples beneath the emerald cotton. And Nico was aware of it too. She could see his glance focusing briefly on the hollow between her breasts where the cotton twisted in a provocative bow, and for one delirious moment she almost willed him to untie the green fabric and replace it with the hard warmth of his hands. She shuddered deeply, perspiration breaking out on her upper lip. What was happening to her? Had Nico seen what she was thinking?
'Come, your Maria asked me to tell you that she is preparing dinner early tonight because she wishes to leave early. She mentioned that tomorrow is her day off and she intends to spend it with her daughter. I would suggest that we dine together, but,' his smile deepened the
cleft in his chin, 'but it has been a long drive from Rome, and I am very much afraid I might disgrace myself and fall asleep. However, if I might be permitted to have breakfast with you, and then later, perhaps, we could go for a drive?'
Swallowing her disappointment, Saffron clung to the fact that he had driven all this way to see her, that he wanted to see her tomorrow, and managed an answering smile, bending to collect the rest of her belongings; a sharp exclamation leaving her lips as she stepped back on the jagged edge of a shell.
Pain lanced through her tender skin. She overbalanced, falling awkwardly, and was deftly caught by Nico.
His hands seemed to burn through the flesh of her back, spread palm to fingertip against her skin as he steadied her.
'What happened?' He frowned and she shook her head.
'I stood on a shell—nothing much.'
'Let me see.'
He dropped on his haunches beside her, lifting her injured foot, so that she was forced to balance herself by gripping his shoulders. His skin had the taut sensuality of raw silk; the muscles it cloaked were supple. Saffron had to quell her desire to run her fingers over his shoulders and back. It would be like stroking the pelt of a jungle cat, she thought hazily, and just as dangerous. She glanced down, observing the dark head, and the deftness of the fingers exploring her injured foot.
'It looks okay,' Nico pronounced. 'It's bleeding quite freely, and as long as you wash and cleanse it thoroughly when you get back to the villa there shouldn't be any complications. I can't see any pieces of shell in it. Still, best to be sure.'
Before she realised what was happening Saffron felt the warmth of his mouth against her foot. Lean fingers curled round her ankle, and the feeling uncoiling inside her as Nico used his tongue to cleanse the small cut was like nothing she had ever experienced before. Who would have thought that the steady brush of his tongue against her skin could be so erotic?
'Saffron?'
Nico raised his head, his hand stroking upwards from her ankle, an expression in his eyes that sent her pulses hammering with answering desire. And then he was on his feet and she was in his arms, her lips parting eagerly for the hot possession of his kiss. His hand found the curve of her spine and caressed it, tracing its length, his mouth making hungry demands on her own. She was weightless, pure plastic to be moulded and re-formed as he wished, conscious of the fierce body heat he was generating, the need to press closer to the male hardness of his thighs.
When he released her it was like losing part of herself, and incredibly Saffron knew that if he had suggested there and then that they make love she wouldn't have made the slightest protest. She wanted him to make love to her, had wanted it, she now acknowledged, from the first moment she saw him. Nico wasn't like a stranger. In some compulsive way it was as though she had known him before; as though she had been searching through a millennium of time to find him; her senses recognised and welcomed him in a way her mind couldn't come to terms with. She wanted to tell him about it to ask him if he felt the same, but she was too shy.
He released her, steadying her and gravely handing her her things.
'Ciao,' he said softly. 'Don't forget, breakfast tomorrow. Something tells me you always look extremely attractive dispensing orange juice and coffee.'
There was a hint of mockery in his voice and Saffron wondered if he thought she was in the habit of breakfasting with men—with lovers, but surely if that was the case he would not have demurred about staying at the villa. Saffron knew he wanted her; and she also knew Italian men—: very male, aggressively macho, and yet Nico was treating her with all the delicacy he might afford a piece of exquisite china; and she was enjoying it. She loved his reticence almost as much as she loved the sleek masculinity of him; the passion she suspected slumbered beneath the outward control. She obviously meant more to him than a mere one-night stand.
She longed to be able to communicate to him her joy that this should be so; the dizzying pleasure of knowing that he saw her as a person, not simply her father's daughter. But then he already knew how she felt, she thought on a soft sigh; how could he fail to do so? She had seen it in the quizzical smile he had given her, had felt it in the pressure of his mouth against hers.
Her heart full of dreams, she turned towards the villa, already looking forward to the morning.
CHAPTER TWO
When she woke up, for the first time since her arrival at the villa Saffron felt a brief tingle of excitement; of anticipation for the coming day.
She showered swiftly, donning a white tee-shirt and a pair of khaki jeans, finding a clean bikini and matching towelling cover-up which she rolled into a towel and placed in the canvas rollbag that matched her jeans.
She had no idea what Nico's plans for the day • might include, but she was not going to be caught out if he suggested stopping somewhere for a swim. She was aware that a less inhibited girl would probably not have worried about a bikini— certainly she couldn't think of anyone among her old crowd who would have been anything other than delighted to display their bodies in front of Nico Doranti.
With impeccable timing he arrived just as Maria was carrying breakfast out on to the terrace. Saffron heard the' car and walked through the villa to the front door. As she opened it Nico was emerging from the driver's seat of a scarlet Mercedes convertible. In those moments before he saw her he looked almost withdrawn, the black knit shirt he was wearing stretching to mould his body as he bent to retrieve the car keys. Black jeans moulded the contours of his thighs—a casual outfit, not specifically designed to attract, and yet she was intensely aware of him; of the bronzed vee of flesh in the opening of his shirt, the gold medallion nestling against his chest, the rugged power of the indolently lean male body as he came towards her, checking suddenly as he became aware of her presence. His expression was immediately transformed, the grimness banished and purely male appreciation taking its place.
'If I'd known you look so good in the morning, nothing would have persuaded me to return to my hotel last night,' he drawled as he caught up with her, curving an arm round her shoulders and bending his head to obliterate the morning sun as he kissed her lightly. Saffron wondered if he was as intensely aware of the scent of her perfume as she was of his cologne. He smelled clean and masculine, and she had an overwhelming desire to place her lips against the tanned column of his throat.
'Breakfast is ready,' she told him huskily, her lips still tingling from the brief contact with his. 'You timed it just right.'
'That depends.' He gave her a stunningly comprehensive oblique glance that sent her pulses racing. 'Personally, I wouldn't have minded at all arriving a little too early, and discovering you like Sleeping Beauty still slumbering, awaiting the Prince's kiss.'
It was ridiculous to be so affected by his verbal lovemaking. She had experienced it often enough in the past without response, why should Nico be so different? She didn't know. All she did know was that the thought of him in her bedroom was creating the most erotic pictures in her mind, and she hurriedly tried to dispel them as she led him through the villa and out on to the terrace.
She was glad she had taken such trouble with the breakfast table when she saw him glance at it.
The newly warmed rolls lay in a golden heap in the basket; the small dish of apricot jam in the pretty green dish she had bought to match the pale green cabbage rose pottery they used in the villa making an attractive splash of colour against the buttercup yellow tablecloth.
They might almost have been a placidly married couple of longstanding, Saffron reflected half an hour later as she poured Nico a second cup of coffee. He was leaning back, relaxing in his chair as he studied the view from the terrace.
'What exactly are your plans for the day?' Saffron questioned, colouring faintly as she saw the way he studied her. 'I mean, should I make up some lunch for us or ...'
'By all means, if it isn't too much trouble, although I must confess that right now, food is the last thing on my mind.'
Excusing her
self to clear away their breakfast things and stack them in the dishwasher, Saffron left him alone in the main sala.
'Saffron.'
She hadn't heard him come into the kitchen and she nearly dropped the knife she was using to slice through rolls before she buttered them.
When she glanced up the expression in his eyes puzzled her. He looked preoccupied, as though he had far more on his mind than a day out.
'Perhaps this isn't such a good idea.'
He had his back to her, for which she was grateful, because it meant that he couldn't see the humiliated pain in her eyes. What did he mean? Was he having second thoughts about wanting to spend the day with her? Had he discovered that she wasn't after all the girl he had thought her in Rome?
'If you say so.' She managed to make her voice sound calm and indifferent. 'Although somehow I wouldn't have thought last-minute doubts were your style.'
Suddenly they were strangers and her last few words were designed to taunt and hurt. She saw his face change and knew with a shock that they were on the verge of a quarrel; a sudden black cloud in a hitherto blue sky.
'Obviously they aren't yours.' There was a hardness about the words that chilled her. 'Do you always make up your mind so impulsively about people—or is it only men?'
He had hit to hurt and had succeeded. How could she tell him now that she had never responded to anyone as instinctively as she had to him?
He walked back into the sala and Saffron followed him, knowing that the day was spoiled.
'I think we'd better call today off,' Nico began, suddenly pausing in front of a framed photograph on one of the tables. It depicted Saffron with her father, and one of her father's oldest friends. Nico was staring at it with a fixity that puzzled her, his eyes and mouth tautly bleak.
'An old friend of my father's,' Saffron told him. 'He ... he died last year.' Her voice faltered and she bit hard on her lip. She hadn't known John Hunter all that well, although he and her father had been friends for many years, but she still found it painful to talk about his death. He had been a kidnap victim, and his subsequent death at the hands of his kidnappers had made headline news. Even now Saffron found it hard to shake off the sick horror that crawled through her veins as she dwelt on his ordeal. She had never even told her father about her own almost pathological fear of being kidnapped. Some people were terrified by spiders, she told herself flippantly; her phobia was kidnappers.