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‘Idiota!’ he muttered again and saw those big blue eyes widen in shock and apprehension as she took a stumbling step backwards, away from him. Immediately his conscience reproached him savagely. With her blonde hair darkened by the water and tangled around her face, her skin pale and her lips almost colourless, she looked like nothing so much as a half-drowned kitten, one he had just kicked out at, hard.
‘Not, not you—me’, he assured her hastily. ‘I should not be keeping you here talking when you’re soaked through to the skin. You need to get inside—get warm—change your clothes. We have to get you home—where are your car keys?’
‘Here…’ She pulled them from her pocket, where, luckily, she had obviously put them before her wild dance in the water. ‘But—but there’s a problem…’
‘There is?’
Vito had been turning away, heading for the promenade, but the comment and the shaky voice in which it was uttered brought him to an abrupt halt, swinging round to frown down at her again.
‘What sort of problem?’
For a second he thought she was going to keep silent. The way she huddled closer into his jacket, avoiding his eyes, seemed to indicate that. But then she bit down hard on her lower lip and lifted her gaze to look him straight in the face.
‘I—I don’t live locally.’
‘You don’t?’
Emily shook her head, sending cold drops of sea water flying from her pale hair. ‘I only meant to be here for the day—I was just passing through.’
No. His mind rebelled at the thought, rejecting it out of hand. That wasn’t going to happen. She wasn’t going to ‘pass through’, moving on and out of his life without a backward glance. He hadn’t met a woman who had stirred his senses so ferociously in a long time—if ever. He wasn’t going to just let her go without knowing what it would be like to take this instant, blazing attraction further. An attraction that she had felt too. He had sensed it in every inch of her body; felt it when she had trembled against him.
That hadn’t been from cold, but from the exact opposite. The burning heat of desire that he’d experienced had made him shake too, but with need, with a hunger that he had been barely able to control. Its force had been primitive enough to bring him almost to the point of flinging her down onto the sand and indulging in the raw, primal need that they were both enduring. Only the knowledge that they were in such a public place had forced him to rein in the fierce desire that had him in its grip.
He still felt that way. But seeing the way she huddled into his coat imposed a control over his actions that warred cruelly with the still burning desire.
‘But you have clothes in your car—something to change into…’
The words died on his tongue as she shook her head again.
‘I didn’t bring any with me. I—wasn’t thinking straight.’
‘Just passing through.’ Vito repeated her words automatically, his mind busy.
‘Just passing through,’ she echoed and shivered again as a drip of water tumbled from her fringe and landed on her nose.
The small response made up his mind for him.
‘Then you’ll have to come back with me,’ he declared, making it a statement of fact, not a suggestion. To him it was the only answer. There was no other way.
But Emily’s blonde head tilted to one side, blue eyes studying him warily. And there was a new expression in them now. One that had suddenly reminded him that she might be just a kitten—but even the smallest cat had very sharp claws.
‘Back where?’
‘To my flat—’
He waved a hand in the direction of the far side of the seafront, vaguely indicating the general area of the small apartment he was renting for this year.
‘You can have a shower, dry your clothes…’ He saw her reaction in the way her face changed, even before she spoke. ‘No?’
‘No…’ Her voice was low but firm.
‘And why the hell not?’
He couldn’t believe she was actually backing out of this. He had been so sure that it was what she wanted too—almost as much as he did. This wasn’t the same woman that he had held in his arms. The woman he had kissed.
Silently Vito cursed the fact that he had ever stopped kissing her—ever let her go. If he had just kept her in his arms, if he had clamped his lips to hers, sealed her mouth with his and carried her off the beach and down the road to his flat, then she would have gone without a word, he knew. The woman he had kissed had melted under his touch, yielding mindlessly and immediately, and he could have kept her that way—should have kept her that way. That woman would never have hesitated, never given him that wary, assessing stare. That woman would never have said no. He knew that without a doubt.
But he had let her go. He had given her a chance to pause and think and as a result she had drawn back. Something had changed her mind, stopped her from going with what she felt and making her act instead on careful, rational thought. And the heady, burning passion that had flared between them couldn’t survive in the same atmosphere as careful, rational thought.
‘I don’t think that would be wise.’
‘Wise!’ He flung his hands in the air in a gesture of total exasperation. ‘Wise! And you think being wise matters right now?’
He’d said the wrong thing. He could see it in the way her eyes sparked, the mulish, mutinous set to that neat chin.
‘Common sense certainly does,’ she said stiffly, all trace of that warm, responsive woman disappearing under a layer of ice. ‘I know nothing about you! Not even your full name or—’
‘Corsentino,’ he inserted sharply as she drew a breath to go on. ‘Vittorio Corsentino, usually known as Vito.’
‘And is that supposed to mean something to me?’
‘No.’
He was glad to see that it didn’t. That there was no change in the expression in those soft blue eyes. There was no flicker of recognition and definitely not, grazie a Dio, any surfacing of the sort of acquisitive glint that had burned in Loretta’s eyes when she had tried to press home her claim for support for herself and her unborn child.
‘But you wanted my name.’
‘And you think that’s enough for me to let you entice me into your flat? You could be planning anything…’
‘Madre de Dio!’ Vito exploded. ‘And why should I want to do you any harm? I rescued you…’
‘You rescued me,’ Emily flung at him. ‘That doesn’t mean you own me.’
‘It does in some cultures,’ Vito shot back. ‘Save a life and it’s yours to do with as you please.’
But that was just too much, Emily admitted to herself. It sounded too ruthless, too possessive, too much like Mark’s gloatingly domineering, ‘You can’t leave me—you know you can’t. Where would you go? How would you live?’
‘Well, this isn’t one of those cultures. And I am definitely not yours in any way.’
She wouldn’t let herself think of the disappointment his reaction had created. Wouldn’t let any hint of the pain that slashed at her register as she admitted that she had brought this on herself. She had been so stupid in reacting the way she had. In kissing him the way she had. Shock did weird things to the mind—and the body—and as a result she’d given this Vito quite the wrong impression. An impression it seemed he was determined to act on, while she was equally determined not to let him.
That all sounded fine and rational inside her head, so why didn’t it quite ring true? Why couldn’t she convince herself that this was truly what she meant?
Why was there still a tiny bit of her, a weak, emotional bit of her, that fought against the sensible, rational approach? That yearned for this to be more than that—to mean more than that? A yearning that made her fight to control her voice as she continued.
‘I’m grateful to you for your help, obviously, but that’s it. There’s nothing else that need concern you.’
‘I don’t think so.’
Would the wretched man never listen? Why didn’t he just give in and walk away? She was really beginning to feel the after-effects of the fright and the icy soaking she’d endured and it was a struggle to stay on her feet, never mind argue. All she wanted was to run to her car, get in and lock the door against the world. There, she could rest her aching head on the back of the seat, close her eyes and let the world go away. That was what she had wanted when she had first arrived. To switch off and let the world go away.
It was a cruel irony that she had only come here today to be on her own—get away from the problems at home—to escape from all the fights and the arguments that had been her life for as long as she could remember. She had wanted some peace and quiet which was why she had headed towards the sea. And she had thought she’d found it.
Until Vito Corsentino had appeared on the scene.
Until he had taken her in his arms and kissed her senseless.
Exactly—senseless! He had kissed her until she had lost what little remained of her mind. Until she had reacted in the most stupid, irresponsible way possible. So Vito Corsentino had affected her as no man had done for years. So he’d woken the secret, sensual part of her that had been buried, hidden away for so long. So his kisses and his touch had left her wanting more—she wasn’t going to give in to that need. The results would be far too complicated—dangerous—destructive. She didn’t want to get tangled up with anyone—least of all a man like Vito Corsentino.
‘I want you to think so!’
She aimed to make her tone emphatic but the effort she was putting into stopping it from shaking at the same time only succeeded in making it sound harsh and brittle, colder than the waves that still broke against the shore near their feet.
‘I appreciate what you did for me, and I thank you for that, but I don’t need anything more. And I definitely don’t want to go to your flat—or anywhere with you! What I need—what I want—is for you to leave me right now. Just turn—walk away…’
For an uncomfortable, worrying second or two she thought he was going to argue further. She saw the flash of rejection in his eyes, watched that beautiful mouth harden and thin, his face losing all warmth, becoming as hard and fierce as the face of some wild hunter just as it scented its prey. But then, just as her heart quailed inside her and she struggled to find the strength to face another argument, to fight him further—to fight herself further and deny the weak, disappointed clamour of her own senses that were trying to tell her it didn’t have to be this way—he suddenly, and totally unexpectedly, gave in.
‘Fine.’
He threw up his hands in a gesture that in another man might have been meant to express defeat but even on such short acquaintance she knew that defeat was something this man would never acknowledge. Instead, he was revealing total exasperation, and dismissing the argument as not worth bothering to take any further. He’d had enough of this, his body language and the dark, glowering scowl he turned in her direction said. Enough of this and enough of her.
So he did as she’d asked, or, rather, demanded. He turned on his heel in the sand, sending the fine grains spraying up around his legs with the determination of the movement. And he walked away.
So now she’d got what she wanted. She’d got what she’d said she needed. So why didn’t she feel as if that was what had happened? Why weren’t her shoulders relaxing, her heartbeat easing as she watched him move away from her? Why didn’t she feel glad—or at least a sense of release—at the way that every line in that tall, powerful body, the way that the long, straight back was held, the set of the broad shoulders, spoke of rejection and dismissal so that it was obvious that he wasn’t going to reconsider or even hesitate? It couldn’t be clearer that he had no intention of changing his mind, of turning back. And that was what she’d wanted; wasn’t it?
So why did she feel a thickness in her throat, a knot around her heart, as if she was in danger of losing something valuable? Something she would regret discarding so carelessly in the future?
She watched him stride further up the beach to where his shoes had been kicked off in that wild, frantic run towards the sea. To rescue her. As he stooped to snatch them up, still not giving the slightest glance backwards in her direction, her conscience twisted sharply inside her, giving a nasty little stab of reproach that made her wince inwardly. She shifted awkwardly from one foot to another on the soft sand, huddling closer into the jacket as a cold wind coiled round her, the black clouds now scudding across the sky, darkening the atmosphere threateningly.
The jacket! Her conscience stabbed at her again, more cruelly this time. Vito Corsentino had come to her rescue without hesitation. He’d dragged her from the waves and brought her safely to dry land. He’d even given her his jacket to keep her warm and to cover her sodden, bedraggled clothing and all she’d done was to tell him to go and leave her alone.
Had she even thanked him properly? What sort of an ungrateful idiot was she?
‘Wait!’
He hadn’t heard her. Or he’d heard her but he wasn’t prepared to stop.
She watched his long, determined stride cover the sand, taking him further away from her with each movement…He would soon be out of earshot.
‘Wait—please!’
One more stride further away. And another. But then, with this last one, he slowed, stopped, swung round. He didn’t say a word but those dark eyes flashed the question Well? in her direction with a fierce impatience that made her heart quail inside her.
‘Your jacket…’
She was shrugging herself out of his coat, coming forward, holding it out to him.
‘You need it back.’
For a moment he stayed where he was, looking deep into her eyes, and then, briefly, that black-eyed gaze flicked down to focus on the garment she held towards him.
The hand he used to gesture expressed such total contempt that it was a dismissal of her as well as the apparently unwanted jacket.
‘Keep it,’ he said. ‘You need it more than I do.’
‘But…’
But Vito was already turning away again, even as she tried to form the protest.
‘Keep it,’ he tossed over his shoulder at her. ‘It’s getting cold and you have nothing else to keep you warm. I would hate to think that my efforts to save you from the sea would all go to waste because you caught a chill as a result.’
The memory of his rescue—the way that he had dashed into the sea without a thought—stung at her conscience again, making her shift uncomfortably on the sand, tracing a pattern in it with one bare toe.
‘Vito, please don’t do this…’ she began again. ‘I’m sorry—I—’
But what she had been about to say was drowned, totally obliterated, as with a roar of thunder and a brilliant flash of lightning the storm that had been threatening all afternoon broke suddenly and violently right overhead.
‘That settles it!’
At least that was what she thought that Vito said but the truth was that she saw his lips move and barely caught any sound from them. This time it was the rain that swept away any hope of hearing properly, the heavens opening and a savage downpour thundering onto the sand, taking just a second to drench them all over again.
‘Vito!’
His name was a cry of shock and confusion as once more water lashed against her face, drove into her eyes. Gasping and spluttering, Emily lifted her hands to cover her face, providing a little, inadequate cover, then just as swiftly let them drop down again as she realised that she was holding Vito’s expensive and now very much worse-for-wear jacket up too.
‘Oh, I’m sorry!’
But Vito didn’t hear her or if he did, he didn’t care. The next moment she was grabbed, those strong hands clamping hard on her again as once more she was swung off her feet and up into his arms.
‘Damn the jacket!’ he muttered roughly, inclining his head so as to dodge another battering from the rain. ‘I told you it didn’t matter. We’ll talk about it when we get inside.’
‘Inside where? I told you…’ Emily began, only to have the words die on her lips as Vito glared down into her rain-swept eyes.
‘And I told you that we’d talk about this inside!’
He was moving as he spoke, carrying her off the beach and climbing precariously up the steep wooden steps to the promenade. And all Emily could do was fling her arms around his neck and hold on tight, her heart in her mouth with the fear they might fall making her shiver even more than the storm that buffeted them ferociously. Vito had to pause a couple of times, rebalance himself, but he made it safely to the top of the steps and onto the security of the paved promenade.
‘All right—you can let me down now!’ Emily tried again but he simply shook his head, jaw set hard, dark eyes shuttered against her.
‘I’m not letting you go until we’re inside. We need to talk and we can’t talk in this. I’ve saved you from drowning once—I don’t intend to do it again. Like it or not, you don’t have any choice—you’re coming home with me.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘ALL right, we’re inside…’
Emily’s voice was cold and tight, seeming even more stiff and hostile in the sudden silence that had descended after the door to the flat had slammed behind them, shutting out the slashing rain and muffling some of the sound of the storm that was still raging outside.
‘So put me down—you promised!’ she insisted when Vito hesitated, tempted not to go along with what she wanted.
