Michelle Reid - Mediterranean Tycoons

Lizzy drifted asleep in the warm cocoon of his arms and awoke late the next morning to find an empty place beside her in the bed. In a way it was a relief. No awkward moments having to face him while her defences were down, no stumbling around trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t come out sounding silly and vulnerable and gauche. She could shower at her leisure and get her act together.

No, she couldn’t. Instead she sank down on the edge of the plunge bath and let the whole high octane event of her wedding night rush through her head and her body in small explosions of remembered feelings, few of which made her feel good about herself—or about him.

What were they doing to each other? Why were they doing it? All Lizzy knew as she sat there remembering the hot tempo of their passionate coupling was that somehow, in the last week leading up to last night, she had allowed Luc De Santis to become a terrible fever of desire that had built and built inside her until it had taken her over.

Because she loved him—?

No! She stood up with a jerk. No, she didn’t love him. She didn’t want to love him!

Dear God, don’t let me go down that no-hope route.

Coming down the stairs half an hour later took courage because she still hadn’t reconciled last night in her head. And she ached all over, in places she didn’t think it was possible to ache, places that made her feel sensitive and self-aware and—yes, scared of what to expect from him when they met.

Unsure where to go once she reached the hallway, she followed her instincts and found herself back in the room they’d eaten supper in the night before. It was late, almost lunchtime by her reckoning, though her body clock was so up the creek, she wasn’t sure if that meant lunchtime in Italy or lunchtime here because she’d forgotten to put on her watch when she’d changed before she’d left the Lake Como villa.

The room looked different in the daylight. Bigger and bright, with the sun shaded from streaming in through the wide open windows by a huge striped awning she could see rippling softly in the breeze outside. Beneath it was a smooth stone patio stretching out to the glinting blue of a large swimming pool, and beyond that the lush colourful growth of a lovingly tended tropical garden leading right down to the edge of a blinding white sandy beach, then the rich turquoise-blue of the Caribbean sea. No sign of the gazebo from this side of the house, she noticed, and the waves that washed the shore lapped gently as if they were too lazy to foam and roll.

A sound from behind her made her turn sharply, expecting to find Luc, only to watch Nina come hurrying into the room with a beaming smile on her face.

‘Ah, so you have surfaced, signora. Mr Luc said to leave you to sleep your jet lag away, but I was beginning to worry that you would never wake up to this beautiful, beautiful day!’

The housekeeper’s gushing bright chatter eased some of the tension out of Lizzy’s body. Within minutes she was sitting in the same chair she’d sat in the night before, sipping freshly squeezed orange juice and eating slices of delicious fresh fruit with Nina still fussing around her like a mother hen taking care of a brand-new chick.

‘Please call me Lizzy,’ she said after the signora began to grate. She didn’t feel like a signora, she didn’t even feel like Mrs, though the gold ring on her finger told her she was.

Which then asked the question—what did she feel like?

‘Mr Luc went out after his breakfast to check on his farmers, as he always does when he arrives here,’ Nina was saying, gaining Lizzy’s attention quicker than anything else could.

‘His farmers?’ she prompted.

Nina gave a nod, pouring steaming coffee into her coffee-cup. ‘He didn’t tell you? This house and the land belonged to his grandmamma. Her portrait hangs in the main salon. I will show you later, if you like. Mr Luc spent a lot of his childhood here, during the school holidays. His grandmother was a forceful lady who pioneered the concept of collective farming on the island. Mr Luc has continued her success in the wake of her untimely death last year.’

Last year? Lizzy had not known that Luc had suffered such a loss so recently.

Nina nodded. ‘We still miss her—Mr Luc most of all. She made him human, he once told me.’ The housekeeper paused to offer up a sigh. ‘It is the downside of being born into great wealth and responsibility, I suppose, that you switch off your softer instincts so you will keep yourself strong.’ Then she showed Lizzy her wonderful smile again. ‘Now you are here to make him feel human, heh?’ The gleam in her rich brown eyes made Lizzy burn. ‘His grandmamma would like you. You have a look of her, and you are stubborn like she was, and—’

‘English,’ a different voice drawled.

Lizzy froze in the process of picking up a juicy chunk of fresh pineapple, her eyes skittering towards the door where he stood leaning against the framework, casual as hell dressed in pale chinos and a blue tee shirt, his hair ruffled as if by the breeze. Every inch of him was long, lithe, so spare of flesh it was like looking at a breathtaking study of firm-muscled, lean golden strength that set her senses responding with tight little pulses deep down in the intimate place between her legs.

‘Virago.’ The housekeeper turned to smile at him, seemingly unaware as to how the tension in the room had just rocketed. ‘You called her the English virago.’

‘Il virago inglese’ he softly translated, then watched, his eyes mostly hidden beneath the heavy fall of his soot-black eyelashes, the telling dark flush march up Lizzy’s throat and cheeks.

He’d called her that last night, when she’d buried her teeth in him. He’d said something similar to her on the plane. Stifled beyond speech by the endearment’s link with one of his close family, she dropped the piece of pineapple back onto the plate and came jerkily to her feet.

‘Buon giorno, la mia moglie bella,’ he murmured smoothly then, the hidden gold in his eyes flaring briefly as they took in her tiny white vest-top and her short blue skirt.

Lizzy was suddenly excruciatingly aware of the pinprick sting of her nipples inside the flimsy white cups of her bra, and the amount of leg left on show by the shortness of the skirt. Her hair was tied back and she wished that it weren’t as a fresh layer of heat seeped into her cheeks. She wished she were standing here in a full-length woollen coat despite the overwhelming Caribbean heat.

‘No reply for me, cara?’ he mocked her numbing silence.

No, she thought, because I just can’t speak yet. Instead she used her tongue to soothe the sudden tremor that had developed across her lips. He watched it happen, and there was nothing on his face to tell her what he was thinking, yet she sensed a tension in him that literally picked at her flesh as he dipped those eyes down her full length once again.

‘So my sweet virgin bride is robbed of speech,’ he mocked her. ‘Perhaps there is some hope left for my lousy technique.’

Lizzy tensed. ‘Don’t,’ she shivered out, mortified beyond bearing that he could say something like to her at all after last night and especially in front of his housekeeper.

‘We are alone.’ He smiled briefly at the way she flicked her startled eyes to the place where Nina had been standing. ‘She beat a hasty retreat when you blushed so charmingly. And it is too late to keep your virgin status on our wedding night a secret, amore. There was blood on the sheets.’

The shockingly abrupt announcement froze the colour out of Lizzy’s face.

‘You did not notice?’ Levering himself away from the door, he started moving towards her. ‘One of the maids surely will have done when she remade the bed after you left it.’