by Anna Cleary
She stared, taken aback. She’d assumed he was leaving. Was he planning now to stay and watch her?
Quickly she scanned the water—the enormous water. Whoever said the sheltered waters of the Bay of Naples were placid? It was the Tyrrhenian Sea, for goodness’ sake, and turbulent. There were waves boiling into the little cove, hissing out again, and she suspected that along there at the cliff’s edges where the waves were smashing themselves the water was deep. Seriously deep.
If he stayed there she would be forced to go in. Not only to wade in a little way, as she’d planned, but to swim.
She moved a way along the beach, creating a few metres of definite distance between them, hoping he’d take the hint, then wasted a bit of time pretending to survey the pebbles and the huge rocks at the base of the nearby cliff. Little frills of foam lapped the edge of the sand, and she supposed she could inch her way into it for a couple of metres. Clearly he’d been about to leave before. Maybe by the time she got up to her knees he’d be gone.
Though maybe she should just ignore him and go home. Who cared what he thought, anyway? She felt such a longing to turn tail and run for cover, but his public announcement about her cowardice was still raw. She steeled herself.
The worst part was having to undress. She might have been wearing her one-piece, but the air was rife with vibrations. Though he was staying put at his end of the beach, she could feel his glance scorching her through his sunglasses.
Glass magnified heat ten times, she’d once read, and she believed it. By the time she got home she’d have third-
degree burns.
It was better to be quick and have the ordeal over, so, bracing for it, she whipped off her top, then unzipped her shorts and let them fall. As she stepped out of them she’d hardly ever felt more exposed. Why hadn’t she smoothed on some fake tan? Nothing looked more naked than white skin.
She could feel his gaze searing down her spine like a blowtorch.
She cast a surreptitious look back to see if he was watching and he was. In fact he’d taken his glasses off to get the clearest possible view. She met his bold, sexy gaze, smouldering hot and amused, as if he knew and was enjoying how self-conscious he was making her feel. How—sensual.
A bolt of red-hot anger roiled through her. How dared he?
Fine, signore, she hissed mentally, gritting her teeth as steam issued from her ears. She straightened to stand tall, shoulders back, tummy in, stretched her arms up to give him a chance to check out her curves, and adjusted the edges of her swimsuit at her breasts and bottom in case he’d forgotten her best bits. She drew her fingers through her hair and ruffled it. See all you can, Valentino Silvestri. Enjoy.
She left her clothes in a neat pile on the towel, then walked firmly down to the edge. The sand was grey blue and charcoal, more like fragmented pumice, in fact, and not so soothing on tender feet. It was the least of her worries.
The first shock of the waves chilled her toes, but she kept on. She was boiling with such rage the water around her might have sizzled, but she hardly noticed, only aware that the further in she went, the less Valentino could see of her. The pebbly bottom had a steep slope, and with surprisingly few steps the water level rose to her knees, then her hips. She was in nearly as far as her waist and still furious when she stepped off the pebbly shelf and into the deep, deep sea.
The deep swallowed her cry as it closed over her head. She kicked and struggled for minutes, how she struggled to gain the surface again and breathe. For dreadful suffocating moments she flailed wildly, suspended in the churning underwater.
She did at last burst through into the light before her lungs exploded. She gasped in a breath and went under again, but, having made the surface once, some automatic part of her brain remembered the water-treading motion and set her body to action, treading and puffing.
Were there sharks in the Tyrrhenian Sea? She should have found that out, but she was grateful not to be drowning, at least. Keeping her head just above water, she noticed that she’d drifted a surprising way out from the little inlet in that short time. Valentino was still there, watching her, sitting forward now, alert.
It was all his fault.
‘Go away,’ she yelled with all her might. ‘Go aw—’ A wave swamped her then and filled her mouth, nose, head, and the entire universe with salt water.
When her choking gasps had subsided, she noticed Valentino on his feet, staring intently at her. She started to breast-stroke to demonstrate she could swim to shore, but couldn’t seem to make much headway. She gave up being graceful then and swam as strongly as she could with more vicious little waves slapping her in the face, but almost imperceptibly, relentlessly, she felt herself being tugged towards the jagged cliffs at the end of the beach.
The familiar panic gripped her lungs. In an attempt to power out of the situation, she tried to take charge of it by changing to freestyle, changing direction, but it was hard to breathe while panicking, and she’d swallowed a bit of water at some point and didn’t quite have the strength to fight the current.
Yes, she could freely admit now to any man who wanted to mock her, there was a current. A powerful current racing her towards those cliffs.
Despite her thrashing efforts, before she knew it they loomed frighteningly near, towering above her with awful menace.
Something scraped her knee and she let out a shriek, then she felt something grab her at her waist. Startled out of her terrified skin, she twisted around to see what had her in its jaws. Through a curtain of water she glimpsed the face of a man.
He pulled her close, holding her against his chest. Horror at being forced in such proximity to his big strong body set off some crazy reflex in her brain, and she struggled against him, then with all her might punched him.
He grabbed her flailing fist. ‘Calmi,’ he roared. ‘I am rescuing you. Here, turn this way and kick your legs.’
He changed his grip then, swiftly switching her into the classic lifesaving position, where she was helpless to struggle as he towed her into the shore.
He helped her up onto the pebbles and patted her back while she sagged onto her knees and coughed up her guts. Well, half of the Bay of Napoli, at least. She was almost surprised not to see crabs and little starfish dislodge from her lungs. When the coughing paroxysm had eased, she managed a watery, ‘It’s all right. I’m fine.’
Valentino Silvestri smoothed her hair and dabbed her face with her towel, then wrapped it around her shoulders and murmured soothing things in English and Italian. ‘Rest here, rest a while.’ He knelt beside her and continued to pat her and rub her back. His warm strong hand was comforting, she may as well admit. She might well have started to purr if he’d continued in that soothing vein, but after a few minutes he said, ‘Are you all right, Pia? Can you stand?’
‘Of course,’ she said, feeling as energised as a jellyfish. ‘I’m fine. Absolutely fine.’
She made a shaky effort to stand. Truth to tell, her legs were wobbly and she might have weaved a bit. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ she gasped as he propped her up with his strong hands, his dark eyes brimming with concern. God, it was mortifying.
Teeth chattering, she locked the towel around her breasts. ‘You didn’t have to rescue me. I would have been all right once I—found my—stroke.’
Valentino’s eyes glinted, and when she pulled away from him to stoop and gather up her clothes and sandals he watched with a little twist to his mouth. She looked narrowly at him. There was a cut under his eye she hadn’t noticed before with something of a bruise, though it was hard to tell with his tan. He must have scraped his face.
‘We need to put antiseptic on that leg,’ he said firmly.
She blinked to see a nasty graze above her knee, blood trickling down.
‘Oh, that? It’s nothing.’
But he ignored her weak protest. And of course it did need antiseptic. Toxic bacteria were swarming all over it already and diving into her bloodstream to give her a massive dose o
f septicaemia, but it was the ‘we’ she was resisting.
‘You just worry about yourself,’ she argued, blue and shaking, her chin wobbling uncontrollably. ‘Look at you. You’ve done something to your eye. It’s getting all puffy.’
‘Is it?’ he growled. He compressed his lips with grim
severity.
‘You look as if someone gave you an almighty whack.’
‘Someone did.’
‘Who? Oh, you mean…me?’
‘Forget it,’ he said curtly.
She felt dismayed, utterly shamed. Who would have thought Pia Renfern could give a man a black eye? The very idea was so surreal that in her delirium she felt an urgent desire to laugh.
‘I’m so sorry.’ She tried to hold her smile in, but try as she might the laughter bubbled up and she couldn’t prevent a chuckle from escaping. ‘Oh, sorry. Honestly. I thought you were a shark.’
‘Cosa?’ Unamused, he stared at her. ‘A shark?’
‘Yes, well, when you grabbed me like that…’ Another chuckle burst out, then a couple more, but with a massive effort she reined the rest in when she saw his austere expression. ‘Anyway, that’s what you do. You—punch them in the face and they—let you go.’
‘Some of them.’ He clipped the words rather savagely.
‘Yes. Some.’ She cast down her eyes for fear the laugh would explode again. Her cheeks ached with the effort of remaining grave. There was nothing left with which to fill up the grim silence except babble, so she turned to that.
‘These pebbles are cruel on your feet. In Australia we have sand, the real thing. Lovely long white beaches of soft, white, really soft…’
‘Tell that to Vesuvius,’ he interrupted. ‘Andiamo.’
There was a sudden bracing note of command in his voice she might have taken exception to if she’d had more energy. He steered her along for a few steps as she huddled into her towel, picking her quavery way across the pebbles to the steps. She hesitated, shivering and looking up, wondering how she would ever manage the climb.
Clearly Valentino hated waiting. He made an impatient little sound, then swung her up in his arms and carried her up the steps, pausing only to push open the ornate black iron gate with his shoulder and haul her inside.
The only regrettable part of being pressed against his vibrant, strong, manly body was that she was really a little too non compos mentis to extract the maximum amount of enjoyment out of it.
CHAPTER TEN
IN ORDINARY circumstances Pia wouldn’t have chosen to enter the villa of a man who’d warned her off as if she were a love-struck schoolgirl. Neither would she bathe in his tub, or allow herself to be persuaded into his big leather recliner and swaddled in a blanket. But the circumstances were far from ordinary.
She could have been dashed to pieces on those rocks, so even if Valentino Silvestri was a ruthless misogynist who used women then cast them aside like old socks, she had to give him some credit for jumping in to rescue her. He would hardly have done it with the intention of attempting a repeat performance of their doomed affair. This situation was for first-aid purposes only. Nothing more than that.
She had nothing to reproach herself with.
These were the dim muddled thoughts she soothed herself with anyway, while Valentino ushered her firmly through rooms with walls of pale stone and beautiful old vaulted ceilings to a bathroom.
‘You’re in shock,’ he said while she sagged against the pipes, shivering in her tottery state, staring blankly as the water level rose. ‘We need to get you warm. Here, drink this.’
He pressed a glass of some yellowish liquid into her hand.
‘What is it?’
‘Limoncello. Sip it slowly, now. Piano, piano.’
She sipped and something like a sledgehammer slammed the back of her head. Still, once it was down the liqueur had a lovely lemony flavour. ‘Wow,’ she gasped, taking another sip.
‘Basta.’ He frowned, whipping the glass away from her before it could reach her lips a third time and placing it on the marble vanity.
Even to a woman in a state of shock the bathroom felt overcrowded. Though it was spacious enough, with its vaulted stone ceiling, large mirrors and a huge old-fashioned tub on croc feet, perhaps because he was still in swimming trunks Valentino took up all the air and the space. Wherever she looked he was there with his long powerful thighs, bronzed, sinewy arms, in the mirrors and in the hard, lean flesh close by her until her senses whirled. Though he took painstaking care not to allow even the tips of the curly black hairs on his limbs to brush her as he showed her where things were kept, his very constraint made the air crackle with tension.
Somehow he managed to avoid looking at her, though her wan reflection was bouncing at him from all directions until the rising steam misted the mirrors.
‘I will leave you,’ he said abruptly once the bath was ready, with a last glance from beneath his thick black lashes that didn’t quite touch her.
Just as well, because she looked a sight. He ejected himself through the door so swiftly it was clear he couldn’t wait to escape. When he was gone the room breathed again and became quite spacious, as if a bomb had been defused.
She locked the door after him, though even without the lock she’d have had no hesitation about undressing and easing into the water. Valentino was highly unlikely to come bursting through that door. In her experience, guys found reasons to steer well clear of needy women.
Her graze stung a little at first contact with the water, then she allowed herself to relax back and let the soothing heat seep through her bones. It felt so luxurious. If she stretched out her right arm the limoncello was just within reach. She snagged the glass and sipped a little more for its soothing medicinal properties. As the minutes drifted by and her muscles lost their tension, the horror receded and she floated into a gentle dozelike trance.
* * *
Valentino paused with his razor to contemplate his reflection. Above the shaving foam, his angry swollen eye glared back at him. Sacramento, he looked like the loser in a prize fight. Unbelievable it was she who had inflicted the injury. How did that sweet, feminine little woman come by such a punishing fist?
He regarded himself with rueful amusement. It wasn’t all bad. At least after his disastrous lack of control in bedding her she’d be forced to talk to him now. Grazie a Dio that for all his sins he hadn’t given into his temptation to question her more closely about her cousin.
The results there were mystifying. There was a curious lack of information about Miss Lauren Renfern, apart from her photographic career, as if officialdom had somehow slipped up in its record-keeping. There were some intriguing possibilities he could have suggested, but he still needed to dig deeper.
And against his own judgement, Valentino had found himself digging deeper into Pia’s past too. He wasn’t sick. It wasn’t a case of reaching any particular crossroads.
And it wasn’t that he was an especially curious guy. Not usually. But when a woman continually surprised him it was only natural his interest should be piqued. And with her reluctance to reveal the most elementary things about herself, how was he to see the true picture if he didn’t run a check?
It didn’t have to mean anything significant.
Pia Renfern was different. Too complicated. Too difficult for a straightforward guy like himself. As for this hogswill about her being a free spirit…
He wouldn’t believe it. She just wasn’t the type.
What did being a free spirit mean anyway? Did she think she could live any sort of a life without a man? Plenty of women did, of course. But in her case it just didn’t ring true.
He’d felt pretty certain he’d find nothing against her.
Still, the wait had been agony and when the email with the priority attachments had finally flashed into his inbox his blood pressure had made a monumental leap and his fingers had needed to brace themselves on the mouse before clicking.
Of course he had been right in his assessment
, In Pia’s case, Pia’s delicious case, his instincts were fully borne out. There was one minor traffic infringement, incurred when she was much younger. Regrettable, and no laughing matter, but it didn’t surprise him in the slightest with what he knew of her. But apart from her tendency to drive faster than the law allowed, she was a cleanskin.
What really grabbed him, though, and had moved him in some mysterious way, was to learn that she had been a victim of crime. And not only a victim, a recent victim.
Why hadn’t she mentioned it? Surely something like that would seem huge in the life of the average civilian, especially one so…soft. He was a reasonable guy, wasn’t he? Friendly, trustworthy? Sure, there’d been a glitch over his handling of the Fiorello encounter and the sex, but she’d had opportunities where she could have told him. If she’d thought he was someone she could rely on. He frowned.
It shouldn’t have mattered, but it did. Facts gathered through a database could be fascinating, but they lacked the sheer compelling power of information confided face to face.
Whether she trusted him or not, every decent instinct he had, professional or otherwise, demanded he should warn her and work at extracting her from the unhealthy sphere of La Fiorello. And he would do it for her own good.
Flexing the muscles in his arms and shoulders, he felt an energising surge of masculine satisfaction.
The Renfern case was going well.
Uber well.
All he had to remember was not to succumb to his baser instincts. No flirting, no lusting, no seduction. At least his current disfigurement should work for him in that regard.
Anyway, what sort of a low life would even contemplate having sex with a woman he’d only just plucked from drowning in the sea?
* * *
Pia stood on a towelling bath mat to dry herself, wondering what she could put on besides her shorts and top. Her sea-soaked swimsuit lay in an unappealing huddle on the tiles, and, unable to bear the thought of crawling back into it, she resigned herself to going without underwear for a space. This posed the age-old feminine problem. What to do about her nipples?