Not a day passed when Cordelia didn’t think of the future that had turned to dust before it could even begin, but she had hunkered down, had thrown herself into the business and had proved herself an exceptional sailor. The sea became her haven. It brought her peace and out there, in the open ocean, she could let her thoughts drift and wonder what it might be like to see the world. She could swim like a fish and swimming was always a wonderful escape.
What would this swarthy stranger think were she to confide in him? she wondered.
‘Being snapped up by some eligible local boy has never been one of my ambitions,’ she retorted quickly.
Luca smiled slowly and that slow smile sent a tingle of awareness racing through her body, igniting everything in its path. Her nerves fluttered and the sudden throb between her legs, a sensual reaction that was immediate and intensely physical, shocked her to the core.
Her eyes wide, the thoughts vanished from her head in a whoosh and she stared at him for a few panicked seconds, completely blindsided by a rush of sensation unlike anything she had ever felt before.
He’d hoisted himself higher up on the bed and she subliminally took in the breadth of his shoulders and the raw physicality of his body, which, maybe, she’d subconsciously noticed before but not like this. Then again, he hadn’t been addressing her before and engaging with her the way he was now.
She edged off the bed and for the first time in for ever was acutely aware of how she looked.
Faded jeans, faded grey jumper, her waist-long blonde hair pulled back into a lopsided ponytail. As always, she was bare of make-up and as tanned as she ever got from the summer sun, which was hot enough to burn when it decided to show its face. She was barefoot, as she always was when she was in the house, and she shoved her hands behind her back. They were practical hands, used to boats and ropes and the sea.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I have stuff to do. Work. I only came in here to check on you and refresh your glass of water.’
‘You mentioned a telephone.’
‘Huh?’ She was backing away towards the door, wondering why she was so nervous when, in actual fact, she never was when it came to the opposite sex.
‘In the absence of my mobile phone, I’ll have to use your landline to make contact with...my father.’
Cordelia blinked. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t find any contact numbers in your wallet,’ she said in a rush. ‘It must feel like an invasion of your privacy, but, like I said, I only wanted to find out who you were and who I might be able to contact to let them know about the boating accident. Your dad must be worried sick.’
‘That’s not entirely how my life works.’
They stared at one another for a few long, silent seconds.
She was quite stunning, Luca thought absently, and what was almost impossible to credit was the fact that she seemed so unaware of her attributes. She was tall and athletic, her body, from what he could see, sinewy and strong. It should have put him off because he had always been drawn to slight, ultra-feminine women, but it didn’t. Her legs, encased in faded jeans, were long and he could detect the fullness of her rounded breasts beneath the drab jumper. Never had he seen any woman so successfully conceal every single womanly trait she might possess. Was that deliberate, he wondered, or did the fashion police patrol the streets of the village, clamping down on anything that wasn’t functional?
His eyes drifted up to her oval-shaped face. Her lips were full, her nose short and straight and her eyes a shade of violet he had never seen before. But her hair...
Luca thought of the highly groomed, sophisticated women who flitted in and out of his life. The woman in front of him couldn’t have been more different and her hair said it all. She had yanked it back into a ponytail that couldn’t seem to quite make its mind up as to which way it should fall, but, even so, the colours were so vibrant that he couldn’t drag his eyes away. Every shade of blonde was there, from platinum blonde to the rich hues of pale honey and deeper toffee. A life spent outdoors, he assumed, doing whatever it was she did out there on the high seas. Fishing and rescuing idiots who went out in boats without first having a look at the weather forecast.
He closed down wayward thoughts that suddenly shot into his head at speed. Thoughts about how she would look underneath the workman-like clothes, what that body would feel like under his exploring hands.
Such options, for a multitude of reasons, were firmly off the table.
‘I will, naturally, pay you for the cost of the phone call.’
‘Why would you do that?’ Cordelia asked, bewildered. Did he think that they intended to charge him for his stay at the house? That they wanted money from him? That he had to pay his way the second he gained full consciousness, right down to the cost of a phone call? She bristled. ‘We’re not the sort of people who would think of charging you for using the telephone,’ she said coolly. ‘I may have rescued you but I didn’t bring you here so that we could start charging you for your stay.’
‘The phone call will be to Italy,’ Luca said drily.
‘Italy?’ He was Italian. She should have worked that out for herself going by his name alone, but she hadn’t because this wasn’t the sort of Cornish village that was invaded by tourists during the height of the summer season. Outsiders were few
