Captivated by Her Innocence

Naked and under me.

He really had said it. And the words had carried all the hallmark of compulsion.

Anna knew all about compulsion. Bringing her eyelashes down in a concealing sweep, she wrapped her arms around herself, but the instinctive protective action did not protect her from anything. She felt wide open and exposed, her feelings so close to the surface that she shook with the effort of maintaining a façade of control.

Having now experienced forbidden lust, she felt guilty, because although she had always said the right supportive things to Rosie, no matter how hard she had tried not to judge, secretly she had wondered how her cousin could allow herself to fall for the man who had wrecked her life. Rosie wasn’t stupid; she was smart and beautiful. She could have any man so why choose one who belonged to someone else and believe every lie he told?

It had seemed utterly incomprehensible to Anna, who knew that she would never allow herself to want someone unsuitable. Yet here she was, looking at the embodiment of unsuitable and wanting...wanting so badly that she ached with it. She dreamed that want, she breathed it and she was utterly exhausted trying to pretend it wasn’t there!

Giving her head a dazed shake, she unwound the fingers that had somehow got tangled with his and snatched them away, laying her hands primly in her lap. Unlike Rosie she wasn’t being lied to and unlike Rosie she was going to protect herself.

‘What else was I meant to think? Your name...’ His voice thickened as his eyes lifted to her burnished head. ‘I saw you, your hair—’ he shook his head and dragged a hand through his own dark hair. ‘It was obviously not you, but you looked so alike. You looked like the girl I saw with Paul in the restaurant and you didn’t deny it!’

Anna’s slender shoulders hunched as her attitude of defiance fell away. Enough was enough—he’d find out the truth with or without her help. ‘It wasn’t my story to tell. Rosie swore me to secrecy. No one else knows about any of it.’

The tension in his shoulders relaxed slightly. At last they were getting somewhere. ‘Is Rosie your sister?’ That would explain the likeness, the similarity in colouring.

‘As good as—she’s my cousin but we were brought up together. Aunt Jane and Uncle George became my guardians after my parents...the accident, but we couldn’t be closer if we had been sisters.’

‘I did not know you were an orphan.’

‘Why would you?’

‘And the name?’

‘I’m Rosanna and she’s Rosemary. I get called Anna and she gets Rosie. She’s the last person in the world you would imagine having an affair with a married man,’ she told him fiercely.

‘And where do you come into this? I’m not judging your cousin. I just want the facts.’

But Cesare was judging her. Anna had tricked him. Had she been laughing while he...? He clenched his teeth. He needed to stop blaming her for what was his massive error of judgment.

Again she displayed her startling ability to tune into his thoughts. ‘You judged me;’ she hit back bitterly before lowering her gaze to hide the sudden rush of tears that she blinked rapidly to disperse.

The glistening point of moisture sliding down her cheek made his chest tighten. He lowered the hand he had reached out to blot it and said roughly, ‘I thought you didn’t give a damn what I think of you.’ No one in a long time had challenged him the way this tiny little redhead had.

Her head came up at the charge. ‘I don’t.’ She bit her quivering lip and sniffed angrily. ‘But I won’t have you sneering at Rosie,’ she told him fiercely.

‘I’m not looking for a target. I’m looking for explanations.’ He clenched his jaw and struggled to control his impatience. ‘My best friend just came to ask me for help and I showed him the door. I think that entitles me to a little information.’

Anna’s eyes widened, some of her anger falling away as her blue gaze lifted in startled enquiry to his face. ‘You sent him away?’ she probed. She couldn’t imagine what had happened to make Cesare act this way to the man whose cause he had championed so robustly. A man he had been determined to think the innocent victim.

‘Because it’s time to break the cycle, because I’m his friend and I owe him a debt, one I can never repay.’ It was the right call but it wasn’t easy.

Anna struggled to make sense of his comment. ‘He lent you money?’ While she had had the impression from Rosie that her ex lover was not a poor man, she had not got the idea that he was in the same league as Cesare, but then who was?