Captivated by Her Innocence

Grinding his teeth, he swallowed and dragged his eyes back to her face. No make-up, hair a burnished messy tangle and faint purplish shadows under her bluer than blue eyes. It should have been a massive turn-off for a man who expected nothing less than perfect grooming from the women who shared his bed. Should be but wasn’t. Somehow she managed to look more soul-destroyingly sexy than any woman he had ever seen.

Anna got to her feet still reeling from the emotive impact of her shocking self-discovery. She was horrified and delighted then, with a dramatic change of mood, hotly furious.

‘Why would you want to do that?’ Wasn’t life dangerous enough without going out looking for ways to kill yourself...to the extent of choosing a career that involved risking your neck on a daily basis?

‘Do what?’ The nightshirt was short—very short. Distracted, he did not register her expression until she was close enough to touch him, and she did, but not in the way he had imagined. She threw a punch that landed in the centre of his chest. For a tiny thing she was strong.

‘What the...? He caught her wrists before she could repeat the performance.

Her eyes wild, she struggled for about ten seconds before she collapsed without warning against his chest and gave one dry, pain-filled sob that felt like a knife sinking into his chest.

Cesare wondered if he might have had a clue what was going on if he hadn’t been struggling to control his baser instincts. As it was he didn’t. He didn’t know what to do. He had known what to do since he was fourteen and since that moment had rarely experienced a second of indecision. As he looked down at the top of her flame-bright head pressed into his chest, Cesare heard himself blurt, ‘I didn’t mean to yell.’

She lifted her head and stepped backwards, conscious of a feeling of deprivation as she lost contact with his hard warmth. ‘I suppose you didn’t mean to nearly kill yourself either?’ Her swimming azure eyes slid of their own volition to the blank television screen; a deep shudder stole through her body and she looked away quickly.

‘Oh, that.’ He tore his thoughts away from sex and focused on an argument he had polished over the years. This was not the first time he had been called upon to defend his choice of profession, though possibly the first time anyone had made their argument quite so physically. ‘Statistically speaking these days Formula One is actually extremely safe. Now if you want to talk danger horse-racing is—’

Statistics! Anna didn’t believe what she was hearing. She had made the most monumental discovery in her life and he was standing there looking drop-dead gorgeous talking about statistics and horses?

‘The fact is I could get killed crossing the road tomorrow.’

If he carried on talking that way he wouldn’t have to wait that long, she thought grimly. She could see a dozen gaping holes in his spurious argument she could have challenged him on, but she made her point with a sarcastic, ‘That’s a very original argument.’

His lips twitched.

‘I’m sorry if I was over the top but I’ve not been sleeping that well.’ Then, aware that sleep deprivation hardly satisfactorily explained her outburst, she tacked on reluctantly, ‘I was in a car crash when I was a kid.’

‘You have nightmares?’ The doctors had warned him that this might happen for him but it never had. He had put his escape down to a lack of imagination, although his imagination was putting in some overtime at the moment!

Anna shook her head. ‘No, I don’t remember it, but my parents were killed and I suppose the idea of someone deliberately—’ She managed a shrug. ‘I guess it just hit a nerve seeing that. But that’s your choice. I had no right to go for you like that.’

‘I’m sorry about your parents.’

He sounded sincere, not just like someone trotting out a response. Anna met his eyes and saw he was. She felt desire drift through her and looked away quickly before she walked across to one of the sofas and sank down. ‘You lost your parents too.’

He came, not to sit down, but to stand behind the sofa opposite, his big hands on the brocade back. He had beautiful hands like the rest of him, strong and capable; his tapering fingers were sensitive and long. She felt a stab of sheer longing as she thought about how they would feel on her skin. ‘My mother is still alive.’

Her gaze lifted. ‘Oh, yes, you said. I forgot. Does she live in Italy?’ Presumably he had family there? Anna had a mental vision of a big warm family with lots of babies...Cesare’s babies would be beautiful.