She was in a dressing gown, loosely belted at the waist, flip flops on her feet, and she had draped her hair over to one side so that it fell in blonde, tumbled disarray over her shoulder.
No make-up. All one hundred per cent, natural woman.
His body clocked into a response that was fast, furious and immediate.
Just as it was, now, utterly inappropriate.
‘What are you doing downstairs?’ He salvaged the eggs. ‘I was about to bring you your breakfast.’
Lucy strolled to the kitchen table and sat down. Here, as everywhere else in the villa, large windows allowed maximum light in and French doors led out to the lush back garden. It was already a warm, blue-skied day. The French doors had been flung open and a gentle, tropical breeze wafted in. She could smell the salty tang of the ocean air.
He was truly magnificent, she thought, in a pair of faded jeans and a white tee-shirt that did wondrous things for his physique.
‘I woke up this morning feeling as right as rain.’ She smiled and propped her chin in the palm of her hand. ‘So I thought I’d come downstairs to have breakfast.’
‘You should go back to bed,’ Dio urged, abandoning the eggs to lean against the counter, arms folded.
‘I know the doctor said that,’ Lucy told him wryly, ‘but I’m sure what he meant was that I could actually get out of it once I started feeling better...’
Dio gave her a long, considering look. She looked better. In fact, she looked in rude health, but was it an act? She had spent so much time apologising for her ill health getting in the way of why they were here that he wondered whether a sense of guilt hadn’t propelled her into this act of sunshine and smiles.
‘No need, Lucy.’
‘No need for what?’
‘Do you want breakfast? Of course you do. You need to eat.’ Did he really want to get involved in a long, complex conversation? He’d already been knocked sideways by the last one.
And the last couple of days had thrown him off course even more. As marriages went, theirs had not been one that had involved any of the usual things he assumed were normally taken for granted. He had cooked meals—a first—and sat by her bedside, keenly aware that, whatever some doctor said, who knew whether this whirlwind virus would just miraculously disappear? He had mopped her brow and frankly put his own life on hold.
He’d barely managed to get any work done and his Hong Kong deal had been rearranged.
His life had always revolved around work so, like cooking meals, shoving it to the back burner had also been a first.
And she had told him things he had stupidly never suspected. How was it that it had never occurred to him that Robert Bishop, the man who had cold-bloodedly swindled his father, not to mention the people who had entrusted their pensions to him, might not have been the upstanding, loving family man he had assumed? If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, then it was a duck. Robert Bishop had been a thoroughly unpleasant criminal, ergo he had been a thoroughly unpleasant man, full stop.
And Lucy...
So she might have got hold of the wrong end of the stick in one small detail, but if she only knew the half of it...
Yet his body was still on fire at the sight of her sitting there on the kitchen chair, looking as young and as fresh-faced as a teenager. The sun had brought out a scattering of freckles.
‘Maybe we could have something aside from scrambled eggs...’
Dio forced a smile, while his mind continued to roam through all sorts of unexplored avenues. ‘Are you telling me that you find fault with the chef?’
‘Not at all. In fact, the patient couldn’t be more grateful to the chef, although it has to be said that the chef’s repertoire is very limited.’
‘As you know only too well, I haven’t made it my life’s career to get to grips with a kitchen.’
‘I’ll help. Maybe we could cook something together. It’ll do me good to be up and moving.’
Dio shrugged and Lucy stifled a sudden feeling of hurt but she stood up anyway and headed to the fridge, where she pulled out some ham, then she rifled through the cupboards and managed to locate enough ingredients for French toast.
‘You sit, Dio. You’ve spent the past few days cooking for me; the least I could do is repay the favour.’
‘Like you said, scrambled eggs don’t exactly qualify as cooking.’
‘I’ll bet it’s more than you’ve ever done.’ She glanced over her shoulder and felt her heart constrict.
Had she disturbed whatever reading he had been doing? He couldn’t have got much done while she had been ill and she knew that his Hong Kong trip had been postponed. He’d had to play the good Samaritan and she could hardly blame him if his mood wasn’t all that great.
‘You can prepare breakfast if you really want to, Lucy, but that’s it. I’ll get Enid in to take over the cooking arrangements for the remainder of the time that we’re here. The last thing I need is for you to have a relapse.’ This was what he had to do. Dio hadn’t banked on long confessionals, and he hadn’t banked on discovering what had really happened on their wedding night, what had led to her physical withdrawal from him. He got the uneasy feeling that something in her had changed towards him.
She had looked at him...differently after that little chat.
Maybe it was simply the fact that she’d been ill, running a high fever. Maybe that look in her eyes had been virus induced. Had she revised her rock bottom opinion of him because he had truthfully told her that he hadn’t married her for her connections?
Did he want her to have revised opinions?
He recalled the way she had looked at him when they had been going out on their handful of dates. He had been charmed at the unexpected find of Robert Bishop’s daughter.
Who’d have guessed...?
She had looked at him as though she were a starving waif and he were her specially prepared banquet.
He’d liked that too. What man wouldn’t? He hadn’t known just when it had occurred to him that she might play a part in the revenge plan that had been his companion for more years than he could remember. He didn’t know whether that had been a conscious decision or not.
He just knew that emotions had never played a part in it for him. Emotions had never played a part for him in anything. He had absorbed one very simple reality growing up and that was that emotions were a train wreck waiting to happen.
Emotions had propelled his volatile, brilliant father into trusting a guy he considered a friend. It hadn’t occurred to him to get signatures on a dotted line, to get lawyers involved when it came to his invention. He’d paid dearly for that oversight and they had all paid as well. Not just his father, but his mother, who had had to live with a bitter and disappointed husband and a son who had not been spared the details of a wrecked life.
No, Dio had learned from early on that emotions were not to be trusted. Logic, common sense, the intellect—those were the things to be trusted. They never let you down.
And money... With money came power and with power came freedom.
The only emotion Dio had allowed into his life was a healthy thirst for revenge and he had made enough money to ensure that, whatever form that revenge took, he would be able to cover it. His money had bought him the freedom to do just as he pleased when it came to ensuring that Robert Bishop paid for past sins.
He’d married Lucy because he’d fancied the hell out of her, because at thirty-two he’d been ready for marriage and the undeniable advantages it brought and because she’d been Robert Bishop’s daughter—and how better to twist the knife than to parade her in front of her father as his wife?
But it would appear that nothing had been quite as it seemed.
He hadn’t married a daddy’s girl; he’d married someone who had been desperate to escape. For her
the escape hadn’t gone quite according to plan but, because she had been wrong about one small detail, did she now imagine that he was, in fact, the knight in shining armour she had originally placed all her trust in?
Because Dio didn’t want that. Not at all...
She’d lost her virginity to him.
In the cold light of day, he was all too aware of the significance of that and it scared the hell out of him.
‘I’m not going to relapse.’ Lucy laughed uncertainly as she began focusing on food preparation.
‘I’ve already had to postpone my Hong Kong deal...as you no doubt know.’
‘Yes.’ Tears stung the back of her eyes because he wasn’t being cruel, he was just being honest. ‘And I believe I apologised to you about being the cause of that. Several times over. But I’m happy to tell you again that I’m sorry I screwed up all your precious plans.’ Lucy said all of this in a rush without looking at him.
Dio raked his fingers through his hair and glared. He could tell from the slump of her shoulders that she was close to crying.
‘I’m not asking for your apologies. I’m making sure that you don’t overdo it and end back up in bed.’
‘I know.’ She clattered and began dipping the bread in the egg and frying. She could detect the grim impatience in his voice and it dawned on her that the honeymoon was well and truly over. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll take extra care to make sure I’m bouncy and in top form and, if I do feel a little tired, I’ll make sure I don’t bore you by saying anything. These are done, although suddenly I’m not very hungry.’ She was mortified at the foolish hope that had propelled her down the stairs in a dressing gown and not much else. Still not looking in his direction, she spun round with the frying pan in her hand to find that he had somehow, stealthily, managed to creep up on her.
He should have been at the kitchen table. Instead, he was an inch away from her and now he was gently removing the frying pan from her vice-like grip.
‘I’ve never been a fan of crying women,’ he murmured.
‘And I’ve never been a fan of crying.’ Lucy’s voice wobbled. ‘So you’re in luck.’
Dio sifted his fingers through her hair and knew that he really shouldn’t. She wanted out of the marriage and she would be a lot better off out. He was no knight in shining armour. He was, in fact, a lot worse than she had taken him to be.
What she needed—and he could see that, now that she had revealed her true colours—was a guy who could give her all those things she was looking for. Friendship, security of an emotional kind, a shoulder on which she could lean...
She needed one of those do-gooder, social worker types she had hitched up with at her out-of-hours teaching establishment. Her turbulent background had conditioned her for a guy whose ideal night in would be cooking together before settling down in front of the telly with just the dog between them. He didn’t fit the bill, didn’t want to and never would.
In which case, the kindest thing he could do would be to distance himself from her, starting from right now...
But when her hot little body was pressing up against him the way it was now, it was difficult to keep a handle on noble thoughts.
And she wasn’t making things easy, either. She had pressed her face into his shoulder and he felt her body quiver as he stroked her hair with an unsteady hand.
Dio made a half-hearted attempt to create a little space between them and he wondered whether he was imagining that she held on to him just a little bit tighter.
‘So you think I was being cruel when I reminded you of my deal in Hong Kong and the fact that I’ve had to reschedule it? You think I’m somehow blaming you?’
‘I don’t.’ Her voice was muffled as she spoke into his shoulder. ‘The only thing you really care about is work, isn’t it?’
‘How well you know me...’
A fortnight ago, had he said that, she would have shrugged and told herself acidly that that just about summed up why she didn’t like the guy and never would—forget about what he had done to her, forget about how he had used her.
Now that she knew that he hadn’t used her, she was seeing him in a different light—seeing his humour, the depth of his intellect and the way he had looked after her when she had been ill.
There was a warmth there she’d never known existed. He might tell her that the only thing he cared about was work, but there was so much more to him than that, whether he accepted it or not.
She had sensed that all along, hadn’t she? Which was why her heart had remained his even though her head had tried to persuade her otherwise.
If she let him, he would turn her away. She sensed that. Maybe she should fight for him. Would it be possible for her to seduce him into a place where he might find her presence indispensable to him?
They had slept together! Why shouldn’t they carry on sleeping together? Why shouldn’t this marriage become the real thing? She couldn’t remember why she had been so passionate about getting a divorce.
They could stay as man and wife, but their lives would change in so many ways! She could carry on doing her maths classes at the centre...at the new and improved centre! Of course, she would have to come clean about who she was, but why should that be a problem?
She wriggled against him and the silky dressing gown dislodged just a tiny bit.
She made no attempt to belt it back into shape.
Dio groaned softly as her soft breasts squashed against his chest. When he looked down, he could see the shadow of her cleavage, the gentle swell of her naked breasts, nipples tantalisingly half-concealed by the dressing gown.
All he had to do was shift his hand, dip it under the silky fabric and he would be able to cup her breast, feel its weight in the palm of his hand...
‘I want you to touch me,’ she said huskily, shocking herself with her forwardness. She guided his hand under the dressing gown and felt his big body shudder. Heady satisfaction overwhelmed her. She was damp between her legs and she shifted, rubbing her thighs together and, more than anything else, wanting to feel his hand down there...
Even here, she’d shied away from making love in broad daylight, preferring to have the curtains drawn, which he had found very amusing.
Now, though...
She clasped his hand and stood back. ‘This isn’t the place.’
Dio knew that he could step in now and make clear his intention to put this honeymoon behind them...
Unfortunately, his body had other plans.
Maybe, if she’d said ‘bedroom’, he would have come to his senses. Maybe if she’d been predictable in her wants...
But she inclined her head to the kitchen window, tugged his hand and smiled shyly.
Dio followed the direction of her gaze and felt a charge of supersonic adrenaline flood through him.
‘You like the curtains closed,’ he said gruffly.
‘Maybe I’m ready to branch out.’
‘Luce...’
Lucy took a deep breath, untied the barely tied belt on the dressing gown and then shimmied out of it, leaving it to pool at her feet so that she was stark naked aside from her underwear.
She watched the flare of his nostrils, the way his eyes darkened, and noted the sharp intake of breath.
She’d never wanted him more desperately than she wanted him now. She’d spent months making sure to keep her heart under lock and key and, now that it had been released from captivity, she couldn’t bear the thought of them walking away from one another.
She’d misjudged him and that put everything in a whole new light.
‘I want to make love on the beach,’ she said, brazening out her absolute terror of her body being exposed in the full, unforgiving glare of daylight. She was long and slim but her breasts had always been smaller than she’d wanted, her figure not voluptuous enough. She
wondered whether he was making comparisons with all those other women he had slept with, now that he was actually seeing her like this, then she squashed that thought which did nothing for her self-esteem.
This is still honeymoon time... Dio thought, waving aside the introspection that had led him to resolve that he had to get out of a situation that had developed like a swift-moving hurricane. That the man he was definitely wasn’t the one she thought she’d unearthed; that he had done what he had set out to do—he had acquired the company that should have rightly belonged to his father, had acquired Robert Bishop’s daughter. Job done.
Now she was standing there, bare-breasted, her rosy-pink nipples pointing at him, her skin paler where it had been covered by her bikini top...her long slender legs going on for ever.
How was any red-blooded man to resist?
He walked slowly towards her and decided, in a sudden brainwave, that it would be downright callous to turn her away. She had a lot of issues. He’d never realised that before, but he knew now. She’d grown into adulthood with deep feelings of insecurity, unable to enjoy the looks she had been given.
If he rejected her now, all those insecurities would return tenfold.
Would he be happy being responsible for that? No. So...
In one easy movement, he pulled his tee-shirt over his head and smiled wolfishly as her eyes dipped compulsively to his washboard-hard stomach.
He never failed to get a kick at the way she looked at him, as if she was compelled to and yet, at the same time, was mortified to be caught doing it.
She was looking at him like that right now.
He linked his fingers through hers and gently brushed her hair away from her face.
‘If you’re sure...’ Dio drawled.
‘I am. Are you?’
At this moment in time, with an erection bulging against his trousers, Dio had never been more sure of anything in his life.
Outside the sun was already hot. The villa was set in its own very private grounds and the only sound they could hear was the sound of the sea lapping lazily on the shoreline.
The Wedding Night Debt: Christmas at the Castello (bonus novella) Page 15