His eyes gleamed with undisguised amusement. ‘This is going to be a private show. Unless you’d rather be naked. I thought you might be too modest for that, but I could be wrong. After all, you keep telling me how experienced you are and an experienced woman would be confident enough in her body to swim naked, isn’t that right? The decision is yours.’
With a seductive smile, he sprinted towards the shoreline and plunged into the sparkling turquoise sea. Watching him swim away from her with a powerful crawl, Jessie tightened her grip on the bikini in her hands.
A private show?
He wanted her to wear it for him. And she felt far too self-conscious, which was completely ridiculous given what they’d shared the night before.
Instead of changing, Jessie sat down on the rug, looped her arms round her knees and waited for him to return, still confused about why he’d brought her here.
Her thoughts were a tangled mess but she had an uncomfortable feeling that she owed him an apology.
He’d been trying to help Johnny—like he was helping all of the others; like he’d helped her.
When he finally strolled up the beach towards her, she was rigid with stress and braced for a difficult conversation.
Silvio ran his hand over his face to clear the water, and stooped to retrieve a towel from the rug next to her, supremely comfortable with himself. ‘Didn’t it fit?’
Realising that she still had the minuscule bikini clamped in her hand, Jessie released it. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t try it on. Silvio, there is something I really need to say to you.’ Her lips felt stiff and he gave a sigh, looped the towel around his lean hips and sat down on the rug next to her.
‘All right. Let’s get the talking part out of the way.’ His gaze focused on her face and there was something so mesmerising about his eyes that Jessie suddenly found it difficult to breathe.
‘I can’t concentrate when you look at me like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like you want to…’ Her mouth dried and he gave a slow, dangerous smile.
‘I do want to. I think I made that clear last night. But you obviously have things you want to say, so why don’t we get that out of the way first?’
First?
Hearing him say he wanted her drove all thoughts from her brain. ‘Could you move back a bit?’ she blurted out. ‘I can’t think when you’re sitting this close.’
A sardonic smile on his face, he shifted away from her. ‘Better?’
‘Not really.’ Jessie turned her head away, trying to resist the temptation to stare greedily at his bronzed shoulders and powerful chest. No one else had ever had this effect on her before and she had no idea how to deal with it—how to control it. The feeling was too big. Too powerful.
‘Jessie…’ His voice gentle, he reached out a hand and drew her face round, forcing her to look at him. Trapped by his gaze, she was dimly aware of the sudden changes in her body—the increase in her heartbeat, the melting feeling that started in her throat and spread slowly down all the way to her knees. She knew that if she’d needed to run now, she wouldn’t have been able to. Possibly not even walk. It was as if he’d cast an invisible spell over her body, the chemistry holding her captive.
For a moment neither of them spoke. His eyes dropped to her mouth and he leaned forward slightly as if he intended to kiss her. It was the merest hint of movement but it was enough to set off a chain reaction inside her. He hadn’t touched her, and yet the mere thought of him triggered the same wild response that had erupted the night before. The world around them ceased to exist and they were trapped inside their own invisible bubble of intimacy.
Jessie held her breath, sensing that she was poised on the brink of another wild, crazy ride and then he said something under his breath in Italian and tore his gaze from hers as if he too was disturbed by the astonishing connection.
‘You want to talk about Johnny.’
Dizzy and disorientated, Jessie tried to focus. ‘How do you know that?’
‘You’re easy to read.’
She sincerely hoped she wasn’t. If he could see what was going on in her head at that precise moment, she’d be too embarrassed ever to look at him again.
Trying to keep her mind on what she wanted to say, Jessie rubbed the tip of her finger over the blanket, mindlessly tracing the pattern to try and keep her mind on what needed to be said. ‘I said some awful things to you about Johnny—I see now that you thought you were helping.’ She’d imagined it would have been easier to look elsewhere, but her eyes were drawn back to his.
‘You were right to blame me. I gave him the money.’
‘You gave him a chance,’ Jessie said huskily, Stacey’s words clear in her head. ‘And he chose not to take it. You tried to help him. And he rejected that help.’
‘Don’t make me into some sort of hero, Jess.’ His voice rough, Silvio’s beautiful mouth curved into a cynical smile. ‘I gave him the money because I could. It wasn’t a big sacrifice on my part. And I made a gross error of judgement. He told me that he was serious about getting his life together. That this time he was going to come off the drugs. I believed him and I shouldn’t have done.’