A Dangerous Solace

by Lucy Ellis

  It wasn’t an accusation...more an observation.

  She lifted her chin to sling back a clever reply—something along the lines of, I’d have to be to go anywhere with you...

  Instead she gazed owlishly up at him.

  ‘I will drive you back to your hotel,’ he informed her in a tight voice, but somehow he didn’t seem angry any more.

  Ava wanted to argue, but she already knew she was in no condition to make a fuss.

  * * *

  ‘Where to, Principe?’

  His driver, Bruno, addressed Gianluca calmly over the roof of the limo, as if ferrying drunken sick women around the city nightspots was a regular occurrence.

  Good question.

  A sensible man would find out where she was staying, do the right thing and not look back.

  Si, a sensible man... He’d just bounded out of the car and charged after her, so clearly he didn’t qualify.

  He had not behaved sensibly from the moment he’d put the Jota into a screaming U-turn this morning. No, it was long past time to assert his much-vaunted judgement.

  He leaned down to find out where she was staying.

  To his surprise she appeared to be asleep. He gave her a gentle shake. Her head fell forward.

  Bene! Drunk. Blind drunk.

  Swearing under his breath, he noticed her right hand was clutching something. When he prised open her fingers he found some crumpled euros and an embossed white card.

  She was offering him money?

  A cab—of course... It all clicked into place. She’d thought he would just bundle her into a cab? In her condition?

  Pulling back on his first thought to wake her up and get this sorted out, he retrieved the card.

  The Excelsior.

  Nice hotel. Not far from here.

  Being as careful as he could, he gently shifted her into a more comfortable position. Her mouth hung slightly open and she was breathing softly. For the first time the tension had left her face. She looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. She looked like a woman who didn’t go to bars to pick up men and drink so much she passed out. She looked, in short, like the kind of woman who needed looking after.

  He pitied the poor bastardo who ended up with that job.

  Then he noticed other things. There were holes in the knees of her stockings. Her dress was thin. She must have been cold out on the street. Not questioning his actions, he shrugged out of his coat and laid the heavy silk-lined jacket over her.

  Unexpectedly she pulled her head back and opened her eyes, green and swimming. She seemed to try and focus. For a moment neither of them spoke, and then she dropped her head again and made a sound that reminded him a little of a hog rooting for truffles. He was so astonished he smiled.

  Straightening up, Gianluca slid the hotel card into his back pocket.

  ‘Casa mia,’ he said to Bruno. Home.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘WAKE UP, SLEEPING BEAUTY.’

  A deep, sexy male voice nudged her out of her dream.

  Who says I’m not a passionate woman? Ava thought happily as the landscape of his face enlarged, each delicious detail communicating itself to her—the olive perfection of his skin, the line of his sensuous lips, eyes so golden they blistered like a flame over black heat until all she could see was the darker rim of his iris, like an eclipse of the sun. Everything was dark and warm and...real.

  He was kissing her. The feel of his lips coaxing hers so confidently had all the hormones in her body popping like seeds coming to the surface of the earth after a long winter. She strained towards him and long fingers tangled in her hair as he murmured against her lips, ‘Cosi dolce, cosi dolce, mi baci bella.’

  So romantic...so enticing...so real...

  She lurched to full consciousness. Her eyes flew open and fixed on the living, breathing version of the dream she had entertained too many times over the years. All two hundred pounds of prime female fantasy.

  ‘You!’

  ‘Yes, me, bella. Who did you think you were kissing? Or do we all blur after a while?’

  What on earth was he talking about?

  Lifting her hands to his chest, she gave him an almighty shove. But he was fixed over her, his expression nowhere near as friendly as his mouth had been.

  ‘Get off me, you—’

  Ava wasn’t sure what to call him, but the solid weight of all that hard muscle under the flat of her hands, the appealing masculine scent of him curling around her, and her mouth still tingling like an electrical storm after his kiss made her protests sound a little feeble to her ears.

  He clearly thought so too. He gave her an intriguing appraisal from her bed-head hair, to her raccoon eyes, to her bare shoulders.

  Bare shoulders.

  Ava clapped a hand to her chest. She was naked. Holy hell! She was too well-endowed to be going around without a little stitching and support. She wriggled. No, not naked. She definitely had her knickers on. Vaguely she remembered flinging her clothes off. She was pretty sure no one else had been involved.

  ‘Get off,’ she slung at him again.

  ‘I like you better when you’re unconscious,’ he commented. But before she could process that he had sprung up with a lithe, muscular grace she could only envy and was heading for the door.

  Ava struggled to sit up and keep the sheet gathered modestly under her arms. Her eyes widened slightly, because for a moment there she thought she’d glimpsed a distinct bulge in those jeans.

  A band tightened around her skull and she winced.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she groaned.

  ‘It’s a new day, Ava. Get dressed.’

  And with that smooth-as-silk instruction he was gone.

  Ava stared at the door he’d shut behind him and then down at her own long shape, wrapped in a white sheet like a mermaid. Instinctively her fingertips caressed the fabric—a thread count so high it felt like water on her bare skin. For a moment her mind went fuzzy again, and she felt the softness of his breath mingling with hers, the solid weight of him under the press of her hands and the new knowledge that he was every bit as susceptible as she.

  Come back, her libido pleaded.

  She slapped a hand to her head. What had got into her? Her hormones had led her into all this trouble and she was still letting them run riot!

  The pulsing behind her eyes gave an extra punch, as if to remind her of the evils of giving in to rogue impulses, and she lowered her head carefully back down onto the pillow. It felt like a brick.

  Get dressed, Ava... He could go to hell...

  Ava... Get dressed Ava.

  Ava.

  She almost fell out of bed. He knew.

  * * *

  He needed a cold shower.

  Gianluca stood under the pulsing jets in the wet room, massaging out the tension bunching in the tendons behind his neck.

  Ava Lord.

  Not Evie—Ava.

  For seven years when he’d thought of her—and it was about time he acknowledged he had thought of her—it had been as Evie.

  It had been one night, years ago. How could he be expected to get her name right? But he had never known her real name. Somehow he’d misheard, and she hadn’t corrected him, and right now that was the sticking point for him. Had it been so anonymous for her she didn’t need names? And why was that little detail bothering him? A better question was why did his gut muscles clench when he remembered rolling over and finding her gone?

  He’d been twenty-two at the time, had what he’d imagined was success, in the form of a media frenzy around his soccer career, and girls had been climbing down drainpipes to perform for him. He’d been an idiota plenty of times in those early years when it came to women, and he’d been pretty jaded by the time Evie...Ava dropped into his lap.

  It had been different, though. She had been different. She’d had attitude even then—giving him directions when he was cruising the Ducati downtown, fussing and complaining. He’d humoured her and pretended to get lost. He
’d thought he’d enjoy watching her lose it...but she hadn’t.

  Instead she’d lost her edge and grown curious about his city, and then excited when he took her to the Forum, where she’d wanted to know the entire history of the place. He’d found himself having to compete with monuments and long-dead historical figures for her attention.

  She’d made him compete. She’d forced from him what other girls had never demanded—to be entertained. By the time they’d reached the top of Palatine Hill she’d had him in the palm of her hand.

  He actually hadn’t planned anything when they’d sunk down into the grass. She’d talked a lot, he remembered, and he’d found he didn’t mind listening. He might have said a few things himself, and when she’d begun to cry he had kissed her, because her tears had felt real. It probably wouldn’t have gone beyond that...but she had smelled incredible, and tasted so sweet, felt warm and soft. The minute he’d slid his hands under the boned bodice of her fairy-tale dress and felt the warm satin weight of her breasts, her nipples pushing up against his palms, there had been no going back.

  He had known she wasn’t like any girl he’d ever met. He had known there would be a messy aftermath. He had known he was inviting a thousand complications into his clear-cut life but he’d dived in anyway.

  Evie, Evie, Evie. Ava.

  What he hadn’t known was that she’d cut and run before he could learn another detail, and within minutes of waking to an empty bed he’d received the phone call that had changed his life.

  He was still shouldering those changes.

  What he also hadn’t known then was that seven years later he’d be woken at 6:00 a.m. by another phone call, this time from his cousin Alessia, to tell him her husband’s sister was in Rome. She was refusing point-blank to come to them. He was to bring her with him this weekend.

  ‘Her name is Ava Lord and she’s staying at the Excelsior. Josh has been ringing and ringing, but her phone’s switched off.’

  This had been followed by another phone call from his mother. ‘You must pick up this girl, Gianluca. Alessia tells me she refuses to come to us. We were not kind to her at Alessia’s wedding, and I’m afraid it’s influencing her decision-making. I feel it’s my fault.’

  Gianluca killed the water jets and, shaking his cropped dark hair free of water, padded from the wet room, dragging a towel over his shoulders.

  Ava Lord.

  Alessia only had to say her name and he knew what he’d done.

  He’d gone and slept with the groom’s sister!

  * * *

  He shaved and dressed rapidly, punching his arms into his shirt, swearing under his breath. Going into his room earlier this morning he’d intended to confront her. But that had been his first mistake.

  He’d found her lying in the middle of his bed, twisted in a sheet that did nothing not to remind him of how lush her curves were, making it pretty obvious that she was naked under the sheet.

  Her thick, lustrous hair had been spread about and one arm flung out, as if to showcase the curve of shoulder, breast and hip. It was a ratio of numbers that would make a mathematician weep.

  She had shifted, and the full impact of her made-for-sin body had been outlined in fine white Egyptian cotton. All the blood in his body that hadn’t already headed that way had surged to his groin.

  Madre di Dio.

  How was he supposed to conduct any sort of conversation with her and not think about sex?

  Irritated, he’d hit the controls for the window shutters and a wave of morning light had splashed over the bed. He’d intended the harsh light of day to take the edge off her sensual display.

  ‘Come on—wake up.’

  He had reached down to shake her but his hand had hovered over her bare shoulder. He’d tried to find a portion of her body he could touch with impunity, but she seemed to be made up entirely of erogenous zones. He had known if he touched any part of her it would be soft and pliant and far too female, and his self-control would be history...

  Cursing under his breath, he had struggled to peel his mind off the rise and fall of her chest.

  ‘Wake up, Sleeping Beauty.’

  She’d murmured something and his gaze had been drawn away from the sheet and due north, like a compass, to that strawberry of a mouth, as luscious as any of her curves. Sultry green eyes had gleamed behind slowly lifting lashes.

  She’d absolutely killed him.

  God help him, he’d wanted another taste of the soft pink fullness of her lips, the heat of her mouth, the explosive reaction in the kiss they had shared last night. His ungoverned imagination had moved on, taking the sheet down slowly. He would shape the heaviness of her breasts with his hands and feast on nipples he remembered amazingly clearly as being the same strawberry colour as her mouth...and when she was wet and wanting, begging him to come into her, he would push himself deep inside her, fill her hard and...

  She’d given a sigh, gazing dreamily up at him as if awaiting his pleasure. There had been only one thing for it under the circumstances.

  He’d leant down and found her lips with his, and that kiss in the piazza last night had been pushed aside by the sweetness of this one. Her mouth had been as luscious as he’d remembered, and just like last night she had responded. This time there had been no fury in her—just sleepy, soft sensuality.

  Even half asleep she had kissed a man as if her heart and soul were involved, and he had found himself tangling his hands in her thick, silky hair until...

  ‘You!’

  He had drawn back and seen the shock and accusation in her eyes. As if she’d had no idea who she was kissing. As if she responded to every man who put his arms around her, drew her close, put his mouth on hers with the same incredible abandon.

  Dio mio, he told himself now, as he put his hand to the door. It wasn’t jealousy of other men that had driven him from that room this morning into a cold, cold shower. It was a matter of good taste.

  This was not some woman he’d just picked up last night. There would be no indiscriminate coupling. Not now that he knew her identity.

  She was his guest. She was Alessia’s sister-in-law. She was the one woman in Rome he definitely wouldn’t be sleeping with.

  This time he made sure he knocked before shoving open the door. He didn’t know what he expected—at the very least a woman dressed. Her hair would be better neatly combed away into that ugly knot she’d been wearing yesterday—before all of this got out of hand.

  Instead she was sitting in the middle of the bed, legs tucked under her, wearing the sheet.

  Still wearing the sheet.

  Naked.

  ‘Santa Maria,’ he snarled. ‘For the sake of decency, will you put some clothes on?’

  Her head jerked around and for a moment she looked almost shocked. But it must have been a trick of the light because those green eyes instantly narrowed and she yanked at the sheet, winding it more securely under her soft, pale arms.

  Bene. That was exactly what he wanted. Her covered up. Except if anything the gesture only exaggerated the spill of flesh beneath her fine collarbones and made her more of a feast for his male senses.

  He hadn’t realised until this moment how incredibly appealing a voluptuous woman could look in nothing but a bedsheet. He’d clearly been sleeping with far too many skinny girls. She was every inch Venus emerging from the foam. A goddess of love and sex and the secrets of the flesh. If she went about in nothing else but a sheet there would be riots on the streets of Rome...

  ‘That’s what you’ve got to say to me?’ She sounded incredulous.

  He tore his thoughts away from her bountiful cleavage and told himself he needed to tackle this rationally—and for that to happen ideally certain things needed to occur. He needed another cold shower and she would need to be dressed. But, frankly, he didn’t have time.

  He folded his arms. ‘I’ve got plenty to say to you, Signorina Lord,’ he said heavily. ‘Given your lack of modesty, we’ll get started now. Does your brother
know you’re here?’

  She blinked at him. Clearly it wasn’t what she’d expected him to say.

  ‘My brother?’

  ‘Si—the brother you so cleverly omitted to mention.’

  She shook her head. ‘Why are you interested in my brother?’

  ‘I suspect he would have been interested in me seven years ago, when I deflowered his sister in a public park.’

  The look on her face was priceless.

  She clearly understood nothing. His position, hers, how everything had now taken on a different complexion.

  ‘I am the head of the Benedetti family. You are a de facto member of that family by marriage. I hold responsibility for your safety while you’re here in my city.’

  It was a perfectly reasonable thing to say. Gianluca waited for her response. A little feminine reserve would go a long way at this moment. She would ask for his assistance and he would give it.

  She gave him an incredulous look. ‘You are kidding?’

  Gianluca knew in that moment this was going to be a long morning.

  ‘I rarely...kid.’

  ‘Then I’d kindly ask you to keep your nose out of my private business. You most certainly are not responsible for me—and nor, may I add, is my brother.’

  ‘In point of fact,’ he responded with bite, ‘I am responsible for your brother. I employ him.’

  ‘You do not,’ she asserted confidently. ‘Josh runs a vineyard in Ragusa.’

  ‘Si—on my land in Sicily.’

  Ava frowned. This wasn’t the picture Josh had painted in their rare phone calls. She had thought he was doing well, that he was his own man and the vineyard he owned was thriving. In point of fact when she’d last talked to him a few days ago he’d used the start of the harvest as an excuse not to see her.

  ‘I’m not any happier about this than you, Signora Lord. A day never starts well when my mother feels the need to phone me.’

  ‘Signorina,’ she reminded him—then wished she hadn’t, given the now speculative look on his face.

  ‘Signorina,’ he said, disturbingly softly.

  ‘Yes, well...I’ve heard about how close Italian men are to their mothers,’ she bustled on crisply.