‘I’m curious about you. For so many reasons, I’m stuck here. You can’t blame me for asking questions.’ She looked at him wistfully, imagining his world, which would be so different from hers. A world without obligations and responsibilities, where work was something that could be picked up and dropped on a whim. Maybe he did other, odd jobs, aside from the grape picking, although she doubted it because his knowledge of the wine industry was so detailed. He obviously loved what he did.
‘No, I can’t,’ Luca told her honestly. ‘But guilt is no way to lead your life, cara. You’re too young to think that you’re stuck somewhere without hope of escape, looking at places on a map and assuming you’ll never get to visit any of them.’
‘You’ve met my father. You’ve seen for yourself that I can’t just waltz off in the sunset...’
Luca shrugged. Yes, he had met Clive Ramsey, a weathered man in his sixties whose life revolved around his daughter and the sea. He’d lost his wife and he’d never really moved on. Just another example of what a waste of time love was. It got its hooks into you and from that point on, you were on a road to nowhere. Luca struggled to think of a single example of all that starry-eyed, fairy-tale rubbish soppy movies promoted.
In fairness, Clive hadn’t been around much. The fishing season was at its height and he was gone most days and many nights, trawling for crab and lobster, leaving the running of the house and his business to the daughter he clearly couldn’t do without. Luca was sure things would have been different had her brother lived, but now, as she’d told him, she’d had no choice but to step up to the plate.
He suddenly had an overwhelming urge to take her away and show her all those faraway sights she had only ever dreamed about.
‘We’re talking too much,’ he murmured, bringing things back down to familiar terrain. ‘Let’s just enjoy being here.’
Cordelia smiled, heart swelling with excitement. There was nothing she yearned for more than to enjoy the moment for what it was. She wanted so much for him to touch her, really touch her, but her lack of experience was crippling.
He was attracted to her. She knew he was, unbelievable as it was. That was a start in the right direction.
‘No one ever comes to this cove,’ she confided nervously. ‘At least not during the day...’
‘Shame. It’s exquisite.’
‘It’s because you need a boat to get here. It’s inaccessible from land. Not that many people have boats that they can just take out for the fun of it.’
‘Lucky you.’
‘I feel it. Right now. Lucky, I mean...’ she said breathlessly. She shifted onto her side and shuffled a bit closer in what she hoped were movements barely visible to the naked eye.
She fought down a wave of nervous nausea and ran her hands softly over his stomach, enjoying the feel of muscled strength under her fingers.
She saw the look of astonishment in his eyes and was tempted to pull her hand away, but she didn’t because something inside her knew that if she didn’t seize this moment, it would never be there for the taking again.
‘Cordelia...’ Luca said in a roughened undertone, shifting but not doing what he knew he should be doing, namely removing himself from temptation. He hadn’t been able to resist touching that satiny smooth skin but alarm bells in his head were louder than the church bells in his local village.
‘I really like you...’ she admitted, blushing furiously but maintaining eye contact.
Luca groaned and clenched his jaw hard. He was rock hard. If he glanced down, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to miss the sizeable bulge underneath the still slightly damp trunks. Nor would she. If she’d been more brazen, it would have been easy to pull away, however attractive he found her, but her innocence, the courage to say what she had, which he could tell was costing her dear, her damned back story, was lethally persuasive.
She reached out for his hand and he felt the tremor in her fingers. He heard himself say something softly under his breath when she placed his hand on her breast and then, shockingly, reached to stroke his thigh.
Not courageous enough to touch what clearly needed touching, but it didn’t matter because what she was doing was sending his body into explosive overdrive. Those little circular motions with her finger, gentle and delicate. They made him wonder what it would feel like to have her tongue there, and that elicited another guttural groan of desire.
‘This...’ He struggled to sound normal. ‘Not a good idea...’
She immediately removed her hand. ‘I was wrong. You don’t fancy me. I understand.’
Luca couldn’t answer. Instead, he grasped her hand and returned it to his thigh.
‘I’ve never wanted any woman more in my life,’ he confessed shakily. ‘But...’
‘But I guess you’re more accustomed to sexy, dark-haired Italian women...’
‘You need to look in the mirror a little more often, la mia bellezza.’
He drew her close, pressed her against him while the sun poured down like honey and the impossibly blue sea stifled all the perfectly sound thoughts in his head, hypnotising him into wanting one thing and one thing only. Her.
By way of response, Cordelia nuzzled his neck and then tentatively covered his thigh with her own. She could feel his hard erection pulsing against her belly and she desperately wanted to put her hand over it, feel it moving, but when she actually thought of doing that, she felt faint.
She had zero experience when it came to men. At least, none of her fumbling adventures, such as they’d been, were worth writing home about.
She hadn’t avoided sex. She’d never had any puritanical ideals to turn it into some kind of prize to be handed to the right guy. No, as luck would have it, she’d just had the one semi-serious boyfriend and they hadn’t ended up in
