The Man Who Risked It All

‘Sorry,’ Lexi said. ‘I accept that she has to be a special case, but …’ Her hair was getting in her way as she bent over the task in hand, and she paused to loop the long tresses back behind her ear, meeting Franco’s fingers as they arrived to do the same thing. Like an idiot, she glanced up and caught the full power of his glowing dark gaze as the back of his fingers stroked against her warm cheek. Sensation erupted with a swirling coil of sensual heat low down in her belly.

‘But what?’ he prompted distractedly.

Lexi struggled to remember what she had been going to say. In fact she was struggling to think of anything other than that look in his eyes that she knew so well. ‘Your rules are irrationally selective,’ she managed to finish. ‘Or is it just me you don’t want to discuss the accident and Marco with?’

‘I need a shower. Care to join me?’ he invited softly, gently stroking her hair back behind her ear so that she quivered.

More blocking tactics, she thought, and decided to ignore him for a change. Frowning, she dragged her attention back to releasing the second cufflink, then she sighed, sitting back on her heels and thereby removing herself from his easy reach.

In a way it was a mistake: it gave him leave to run his eyes over the green print summer dress she had changed into, its short swirly skirt leaving a lot of naked leg on show.

That coil of heat tightened its grip on her. ‘Stop looking at me like that.’ Getting up, she turned away from him.

‘Like what?’

‘Like you have the strength to do what you’re thinking.’

‘You believe I’m too feeble to at least try?’

Walking across the room to lay the cufflinks down on top of a glossy wooden chest of drawers, Lexi turned and leant back against it, folding her arms. ‘Tell me why you brought me to Italy,’ she demanded up front.

At first she thought he was not going to answer. His silence stretched along with the steady way he was looking at her. Then he eased out a controlled sigh and heaved himself to his feet so he could slip off the shirt. The moment he did so Lexi began to feel vulnerable, as if she was suddenly being placed under threat. Yet what could he do to her? He might like to believe he was physically able to take on the seduction of a protesting woman, but she could see he was already swaying on his feet.

He was like a man of two halves, she found herself thinking. One half darkly, painfully battered and bruised; the other half pure, golden male, glowing with robust health. Even the dark bruising did not detract from what she could see was all attractively smooth and tight. He’d bulked out in the years since she’d last seen him like this, she observed, running her gaze over his wide shoulders, then his bulging pectoral muscles and the beautifully ridged stomach, unaware that her breathing had shortened or that her finger

s were clenching and unclenching where she held them tucked away beneath her arms.

‘I had an epiphany.’

Blinking rapidly in an attempt to clear her head, Lexi dragged her eyes back up to his face, saw he’d been watching her look at him, and felt guilty heat pour into her face.

‘Excuse me?’ she murmured.

His dark eyes narrowed, glinting knowingly, ‘An epiphany,’ he repeated. ‘About my life and what I wanted to do with it.’

An epiphany … Rolling the tip of her tongue over her lips, Lexi straightened up and dropped her arms to her sides—though she wasn’t sure why she needed to do it. ‘And this epiphany told you what?’

‘That it was time to win my wife back,’ he enlightened her. ‘Time to put aside the bad stuff and get our marriage back on track.’

‘It was never on track—’

‘To place our marriage on a good solid track, then.’ The flick of a hand tossed semantics to one side.

‘Stay where you are,’ Lexi told him jerkily when he started crossing the space separating them. ‘When—when did you have this epiphany?’

‘Does it matter?’ He didn’t stop walking.

‘Yes.’ Lexi knew why she’d straightened up now. Even battered and bruised Franco could be incredibly intimidating—if only because her senses liked it when he came over all domineering and broodingly macho.

‘When I finally accepted how miserable I was without you.’

‘Y-you were even more miserable with me,’ she reminded him, feeling one of the rounded brass knobs on the chest of drawers dig into her back as she backed off more the closer he came.

‘I know. That is why I called it an epiphany.’ He came to a stop six inches away. ‘Like a sudden leap of intuitive understanding that told me I was miserable with you but more miserable without you.’ He added a small descriptive shrug. ‘It is as simple and as crazy as that.’

‘You said it.’ Wishing she could stop looking at his half bruised, hair roughened torso, she asked tartly, ‘Were you suffering from another epiphany when you had Claudia clasped to your wounded chest?’

‘That was sympathy.’