Just one kiss (The Ashcrofts Book 1)

by Anderson, Poppy J.

  Slowly, Amy’s gaze moved to his face, which seemed utterly relaxed. She could make out a strong chin, hollow cheeks, a straight nose, and dark eyebrows. Combine that with raven-black hair and broad shoulders underneath his blue polo shirt, and his countenance drew her eyes like a spell.

  Before she really knew what she was doing, Amy pulled out her sketchbook and began to draw him. Her fingertips tingled as she put his profile on paper with practiced lines and strokes, looking up to memorize his features and then, pursing her lips in concentration, hurrying back to her paper to continue. Over the past few weeks, she hadn’t been able to find her passion, but now she felt a piercing need to draw this man. As though, if she didn’t yield to this urge, she would burst into a million pieces.

  When she was in the midst of correcting the contours of his forehead, a shadow fell across her drawing pad.

  She gave a start, and her head jerked up, only to meet a pair of bright green eyes studying her with curiosity. She blushed when she realized her model had discovered her drawing him.

  “That is a very flattering drawing,” the man said, sounding amused. “Are you sure that’s supposed to be me?”

  Amy blushed violently, her heart racing like crazy. The man didn’t just study her drawing with interest, but also lingered on her face, her body.

  “I … I’m sorry,” she stuttered, searching for the appropriate words. “I just wanted …”

  “It’s okay.” He waved her fumbling apology aside, his lips curving into a wide grin. “To be honest, this is the first time I’ve seen a drawing of myself.”

  Amy stared at him without replying, her tongue stuck in her throat, as his gaze moved back and forth between the drawing and her face.

  Finally, he lowered his head. “Please excuse my intrusion. I was curious what you were drawing with such concentration. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

  “You didn’t,” she replied with a nervous little smile, unable to take her eyes off his handsome face. Close up, he really was as good-looking as she’d thought from afar. His bright green eyes were framed by thick, dark lashes that any woman would have killed for.

  “Patrick,” he said, holding out his hand.

  She swallowed sheepishly, offered him a hesitant smile, and shook his hand. “Amy.”

  When his skin touched hers, she felt a sudden heat spread through her body, which made her blush even harder. She was embarrassed by the force of her visceral reaction to the casual skin contact and the captivating smile of this stranger, who didn’t seem to be in a hurry to leave again. Instead, he let go of her hand and pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

  His lips curved into an amused smile as he confessed, “I actually assumed I’d be the only American up here. I was told this place is a secret haven for locals.”

  She blinked. “How … How did you know I’m American?”

  “Apart from your accent, you mean?” He chuckled. “The button on your backpack.” He pointed at the emblem of her university, which had been pinned to the side pocket forever.

  “Oh.” She smiled sheepishly up at him. “I’ve been found out.”

  He laughed and shifted his weight. “Given my investigative skills, I should have gotten into Langley. The CIA.”

  His humor made her a bit more comfortable. She lifted a finger to her lips and gave a stage whisper in mock seriousness. “If that’s really your plan, you shouldn’t shout it so openly.”

  “I’ve been found out,” he said, echoing her words. Then he raised his eyebrows inquisitively. “Between an American woman and an American man—I mean between you and me—let me ask you this, Amy: What made you as crazy as I was, coming to Rome during the hottest weeks of the year?”

  Her heart was beating in her throat by now. She brushed a stray curl of blond hair from her forehead and licked her lips. “I’ve actually lived in Rome for almost a year now,” she explained, before taking a deep breath and nervously rushing on, “But considering I led a twenty-head group from the States through the Roman Forum yesterday, I’d say that a great deal of our fellow Americans are crazy enough to visit Rome in August.”

  “Wow.” He gave her a wink. “That was quite a lot of information at once.”

  She blushed and pulled a tuft of grass from the lawn. “Well, I …”

  He made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Don’t mind me. I’m still jetlagged, probably not making sense anyway. So, Amy, what are you doing in Rome?”

  His obvious interest left her confused. “I-I’m a painter,” she stammered.

  “I see. So you’ve come to Rome to draw unsuspecting tourists in orange gardens?”

  “Sort of,” she said with a soft smile. His answering smile gave her confidence, so she said mischievously, “There are too many street artists at places like the Pantheon and Piazza Navona already, pressuring harmless tourists into letting them draw them. I figured my chances were better up here.”

  He smirked and let out a gleeful laugh. “And I’ve walked right into your pretty trap.”

  Amy couldn’t suppress the smile that spread across her face when she looked up at him. His own smile and the happy twinkle in his eyes were too contagious, she just couldn’t remain cool and composed. “Usually it’s only priests who stumble into this place, so my trap hasn’t been working that well.”

  “Interesting,” he murmured. “An American in Rome who doesn’t just draw unsuspecting tourists but also ambushes clergymen. Something tells me I should run away. Quickly.”

  She giggled and shook her head. “I’m completely harmless! Just wait until you get to the areas where you can’t walk three steps without being accosted to buy a selfie stick or a fake purse. Then you’ll know what ambushing really means.”

  “Thanks for the warning.” He knits his brow above his wondrous green eyes. “Although I wonder why anyone would try to sell me a fake purse.”

  She shrugged and leaned back a little so she could look up at him from a more comfortable angle. “You could be holding ten selfie sticks already, and they’d still insist you want another one.”

  He snorted. “You’re really getting my hopes up. Now I can’t shake the feeling that my sightseeing will be nothing more than a sales show.”

  She laughed. “You’ll get used to it. A tourist in one of my groups recently told me he bought a selfie stick from a vendor just to use it to beat him up afterward, to stop the constant sales pitch. I’m not sure if he was kidding or not.”

  “There’s an idea!”

  “And what are you doing in Rome, Patrick?” Amy asked, much to her own surprise.

  “You mean besides sneaking into deserted gardens hoping to be drawn by blond artists?” He flashed her a wide grin. “I thought I could use a vacation, and that there’d be great pizza in Rome. So here I am.”

  “And you can’t find pizza where you live?” she asked playfully.

  He groaned theatrically. “I’m from Connecticut, and I work in New York, which means there’s pizza on every corner. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good.”

  “Oh my,” she laughed. “A week ago, I had a group of New Yorkers. You’d be mauled by those people for what you just said!”

  “I’ll take the risk.” He cocked his head to one side and looked straight at her. “So you’re really a tour guide?”

  Amy shrugged. “Several times a week. When it’s not as hot as today, it’s actually a lot of fun.”

  His green eyes sparkled as he nodded. “Now I know who to ask for a tour of the city.”

  Speechless, she returned his frank gaze with puzzlement. If she wasn’t completely wrong, he was flirting with her. The realization caused her to lower her head, and she felt a stirring of butterflies in her stomach.

  He ran a hand through his hair and turned his head to let his eyes roam the garden. It afforded her the opportunity to study him covertly. Her heart was still galloping wildly, and the butterflies in her stomach were testing their wings, though she didn’t understand where they
’d come from so suddenly. She wasn’t the type to fall head over heels for a man she had met a mere ten minutes ago. Nor did she see herself as one of those naïve little girls who fell for flattering phrases and started giggling when a man paid them a compliment.

  So why was she reacting like that now?

  “Since you know your way around Rome, you probably know of a nice café around here,” he said, turning back to her.

  “Of course,” she replied obligingly. “Go left when you step out of the garden, then follow the street down. If I’m not mistaken, it’s about ten minutes …”

  His hoarse laugh interrupted her explanation. “How about if you accompany me there, Amy.”

  Surprised, she asked, “Pardon?”

  “Would you come with me?” he asked cheerfully. “Sitting alone in a café is even more depressing than sitting alone in an orange garden.”

  Chapter 2

  Patrick Ashcroft stood on the balcony of his hotel room and looked out on the busy alleys below. Given the oppressive heat of the day, he marveled at the number of tourists seemingly adamant about marching through the city for hours on end, risking heat stroke.

  He grinned as he leaned forward and focused his gaze on a typical group of tourists, who followed a stick held above their guide’s head, traipsing along in single file. It hardly mattered which sight you went to see, the guides with bright-colored sticks were everywhere. There was no getting away from them or the hordes in their wake. The same went for the hawkers trying to sell illegal, fake designer handbags and selfie sticks.

  Speaking of selfie sticks … When he’d taken a walk to the Pantheon yesterday evening, his lovely company by his side—after having spent four hours in the café she’d recommended—they’d been offered the sticks twenty-three times. He and Amy had kept count. In the space of minutes, twenty-three hawkers had shoved the cheap plastic things in their faces. If he hadn’t been so amused by their tactics, thanks to the comments of the young woman at his side, their pushiness would have annoyed the hell out of him.

  Strangely enough, yesterday, he had not been annoyed by the sweltering heat, nor by the selfie-stick hawkers, nor his own jet lag. He’d been having too much fun to even notice. That was due to the blond woman whose blue eyes had fascinated him from the moment he saw her.

  After his last experience with the opposite sex, he’d turned into a cynical misanthrope, a guy who took every feminine smile directed his way as a ploy to rob him blind. Yesterday, however, his gut feeling had told him that Amy’s bedazzling smile had been aimed at him—not his bank account.

  He couldn’t even put into words how relaxing it had been to meet someone who didn’t know what family he came from, nor how big the fortune he’d inherited when his father had died a year ago. In Connecticut and New York, everyone knew the Ashcroft family. Unfortunately, that influenced his dating life. A large sum of money drew a lot of women with a lot of ambition. They only went out with him in the hopes of getting a piece of the massive, money-coated cake. After breaking up with his last girlfriend—because he’d had enough of being taken to the cleaners—he’d been left with the depressing realization that he’d better focus on his job instead.

  He’d really needed this vacation after the preceding months. His life had changed completely after his father had passed. He was no longer an employee, assuming responsibility for the family company, and had fought hard to establish and cement his post before the board of directors. He was twenty-eight years old, so he’d been treated like an apprentice while simultaneously shouldering the burden of the crushing responsibility of heading a gigantic commercial enterprise, suddenly duty-bound to hundreds of employees.

  Of course, Patrick had been born into the company and had been carefully preparing for taking his father’s position one day, ever since he graduated from college. But he hadn’t been prepared for his father suffering a heart attack before sixty and dying on the way to the hospital. After his death, chaos had spread not only through the company, but also in the family. His mother had been devastated by her husband’s death, while his two younger siblings had made his life hell.

  Barbara, his younger sister by just one year, had shown up every single day—always dragging along both her sons—to push Patrick to get their mother to undergo grief therapy. And their twenty-two-year-old brother, Stuart, had seized the opportunity to run away from college to go on a sailing trip to the Caribbean.

  Thankfully, the situation at home had finally gotten back to normal again.

  Now, Barbara was concentrating on decorating her new house, which her husband had bought a few weeks ago, and working with various charities. And Stuart had finally agreed to go back to law school and promised not to skip out on his classes.

  And their mother had flown to South Africa to visit a friend. That had been the perfect moment for Patrick to pack his bags and go abroad as well. To get a break from everything. He didn’t want to field any more calls from his always-worried sister, or sit in his office until way after midnight, or be woken up by his best friend and co-worker in the middle of the night to solve some problem somewhere. And least of all did he want to have to feign interest when he was introduced to yet another young woman who’d read the damned article that had listed his alleged fortune.

  After he’d broken up with his girlfriend, Patrick had given a wide berth to women in his circle, because his time spent with the spoiled and coddled Cynthia had been more than enough. He’d concluded, with mounting resignation, that all of his girlfriends thus far had only been with him because he was Patrick Ashcroft. None of his exes had ever busied themselves with getting a job or leading an independent life, but they’d reveled in playing the part of the spoiled daughter of a wealthy dynasty, looking for a husband who would provide them with the life they’d been raised to know.

  But Patrick didn’t want to be with a woman whose only demand was that he paid for their life.

  He didn’t care if it sounded idiotic, but just once, he wanted to feel liked by a woman because he was a nice person, because he made her laugh, because he thought her jokes were funny. However, at home, it wasn’t so easy to find such a person.

  Wrinkling his nose at the memories, he went back inside and closed the French doors. Then he grabbed the remote, turned on the TV, and dropped down on the bed, stuffing a pillow behind his neck to make himself comfortable as he thought about the fact that last night he’d joked and laughed with a woman for the first time in a long time. Without wondering if she might pretend to be something other than what she really was, just to please him.

  He’d been enthralled by her.

  He’d been enthralled by the fact that it was so damned enjoyable to spend time with her, that it felt so easy to talk to her, that he could not help but smile when she smiled. He’d never have thought he’d be the kind of guy lay in bed with a wide grin on his face just from thinking of a woman. He was no romantic—at least he’d never thought he was.

  But even now he kept thinking about yesterday, reliving the details.

  When he’d discovered the woman sitting alone under a tree, sketching something on a drawing pad, totally engrossed in what she was doing, he’d left his comfortable spot on the park bench to approach her without thinking. It probably had less to do with his curiosity about the drawing, and more about the pretty blonde with the lovely doll face. He wasn’t fond of posh, overdressed women, which included most women he met at home—they never left the house without a truckload of makeup.

  This young woman, however, had been sitting in the grass of the church garden in shorts, a white blouse, and no shoes, her hair tied in a simple ponytail. Not a trace of makeup was on her beautiful face. He liked that.

  What he’d liked even more was that she’d been drawing him. The way she blushed when he caught her had struck him like lightning.

  She’d blushed a lot when they’d gone to the café afterwards, too, and he’d been charmed every time. And when they’d gone to see the Pantheon together, and sh
e’d gushingly lectured about the architectural skills of the Romans, Patrick had stared at her instead of the antique building, his eyes practically glued to her lips.

  If he didn’t know better, he’d have said he’d fallen in love.

  But the fact was, he wasn’t the type of man who fell head over heels for a woman. Nope. He was a very rational person, who weighed the pros and cons of everything, used to keeping a cool head.

  So how come he couldn’t he wait to see her again today?

  And why did his heart start to race as soon as he thought about whether she would look at him again with that soft, sweet smile of hers?

  ***

  “Oh my God!” Patrick couldn’t stop loudly moaning with absolute pleasure. He didn’t care who might hear him.

  “Did I promise too much?” Amy moaned too, uttering a sigh of satisfaction. “Oh God.”

  He closed his eyes. “Never—I swear to God—never have I ever experienced such bliss!”

  “I know what you mean,” she sighed. “That’s how I felt the first time, too.”

  “Here.” He held out his ice cream cone, his eyes glittering. “Try the champagne sherbet. It’s just … Wow!”

  “Thank you,” she said with an exuberant laugh. She dipped her tiny spoon into the creamy scoop in his cone, before holding out hers in return. “You need to try the blood-orange flavor as well.”

  He did, letting the subtle acidity tickle his tongue. He had really never had ice cream this amazing.

  He watched Amy try his sherbet and purse her lips with an ecstatic sigh, and goosebumps began to spread over his entire body. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea after all, making this pilgrimage to the famed Giolitti for gelato. Faced with her sigh and her enraptured face, he found himself swallowing hard several times.

  He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her the entire evening. He liked the way her light summer dress revealed her slim legs and even allowed a small glimpse of her cleavage.