He averted his eyes but there was a steady pulsing in his groin that was going to prove embarrassing if he carried on giving free rein to his imagination.
Cold water had never looked so inviting. He stepped out of the khakis, down to the swimming trunks he had bought a couple of days earlier.
‘Think I need a swim,’ he gritted, baring his teeth in something he hoped would resemble a relaxed smile. ‘So hot.’ He waded straight into the ice-cold water. Felt good. Anything to douse the rise in his body temperature when he had looked at her.
He didn’t look back for five minutes and when he did, it was to find that she was striking out in his direction, in long, fluid strokes that ate up the distance between them.
She hadn’t been lying when she’d told him that she could swim like a fish. She could. And out here, in the ocean where blue yielded to black because it was so much deeper, she was in her natural element. He could see that as soon as she had caught up with him. There was real pleasure on her face and she was smiling. All the hesitancy and shyness that seemed part and parcel of her personality had disappeared. She looked as though she had barely broken a sweat swimming out to him.
‘You’re a strong swimmer,’ she told him, treading water.
‘You’re surprised because you thought I was a wimp who could barely man a boat and had to rely on being rescued by a damsel in shining armour because of his own stupidity?’
‘Something like that.’
Luca burst out laughing and cast appreciative eyes over her face. She truly had the most amazing eyes, he thought. A shade somewhere between navy blue and bright turquoise with a hint of green and, for a blonde, her lashes were lush and dark.
‘Race you back?’ Cordelia backed away in the water. The way he was looking at her...she’d caught that expression before, a fleeting glimpse of something heated and dangerous, but she had told herself that it was her imagination playing tricks on her. She lacked the sophistication to interpret those kinds of games and she didn’t trust herself to even try. It was a lot easier to pretend there was nothing there, that any wayward expression she might have glimpsed in him was all in her mind. Why would a man like Luca look at a woman like her? He was so beautiful, so exotic, so compelling while she...was a country girl who worked her fingers to the bone in the fishing business. Vineyard versus fishing. Even if all he did was pick grapes and do whatever people did to grapes when they were picked, it was still impossibly glamorous as far as she was concerned.
She didn’t wait for his response. She began swimming and all the thoughts left her head as she felt the cold water sluice against her body and the exertion of the swim heating her up until the sea was warm against her skin.
He kept pace and then increased it so that he hit the shoreline before she did.
She was laughing when she emerged from the water. Her hair was still in the braid but she tugged the elastic band off and rifled her fingers through its length so that it spread over her shoulders and down her back, reaching all the way to her waist.
Luca felt as though he’d been punched in the gut and he was breathing heavily as he turned away to open the bottle of champagne. Hell, she might be fine with this scenario but he was in desperate need of a drink. He only wished he’d thought to bring something a little stronger. A bottle of whisky would have done the trick. Instead, he popped the cork on the champagne, which was still cold thanks to the sleeve into which it had been put, and he extended one of the two plastic glasses to her.
‘Are there rules about drinking and sailing?’ he asked, sitting on a rock while she tidily spread an oversized rug on the sand.
‘I’ve brought lots of water.’ She smiled and sipped some champagne. ‘And lots of food. That should take care of the alcohol.’
‘If it doesn’t, we could always spend the night on the beach.’ Their eyes tangled and he slanted a smile at her. ‘I guess living here, that’s something you must have done a million times...?’
Luca knew that he was shamelessly fishing for information but he wanted to find out more about her, dig a bit deeper, which was something he was seldom inclined to do when it came to the opposite sex. He’d long discovered that the women he dated were all largely gifted in the art of talking about themselves. There was almost no need to ask questions.
‘Not once,’ Cordelia murmured thoughtfully. ‘Although there are loads of bays and coves around here and, yes, there were always parties during the summer holidays.’
‘But you didn’t go to them.’
She swallowed some more champagne and grimaced. ‘When I was twelve, one of my friends had a birthday party on a cove not far from this one. Of course, adults were there. Since then, I’ve only ever sailed to one of these coves on my own.’
‘No reckless teenage parties with contraband alcohol and furious parents hunting down their wayward offspring to drag them back home?’
‘Not for me.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because...’ The sun was beating down but the rug was under the shade of a tree and there was just enough of a balmy breeze to make her feel sleepy. He’d left the rock at some point and was on
