‘I’ve come straight from work. What I have to say... I didn’t want to put it off.’
‘What?’ A stab of anxiety replaced the panic-attack feeling. ‘Are you okay? Is Annalise? Evalina?’
‘I’m not great, Sophie.’
‘What do you mean?’ She urgently leaned forward while her head filled with worst-case scenarios involving terminal illnesses.
He leaned against the wall, drew his knees up and let his hands dangle loosely between them.
‘You’re scaring me, Niccolo,’ she whispered, dropping to sit facing him.
‘Am I?’
‘Are you ill? Stop playing these word games. I can’t stand it.’
‘It’s taken a lot to come here today and yet I had no choice. Ever since you left me—’
‘I didn’tleaveyou, Niccolo. I...I...we agreed...that things would stop when we left the yacht and life went back to normal...and Evalina returned a little earlier than expected and so...there was no longer any need for me to stay on.’
‘But I wanted you to.’ His dark eyes held hers. She refused to yield to a thread of something in his voice that sounded a lot likehurt.
‘You can’t always get what you want.’
‘You walked away from me and left me time to realise how much I missed you.’
‘Is that what you’ve come to say?’
He missed her.
Translated, she knew what that meant. He missed her warm, pliable body in bed with him. To Sophie, it sounded very much like a repeat of what he’d asked of her on his yacht. Would she hang around for a bit longer...be his lover for just a bit longer...just until he got bored?
For the man who could have it all, not getting this one thing had been too much for him to handle. Well, that was tough because she was going to give him the same answer now as she had given him then.
‘No.’
Not knowing what to do with that unexpected response, Sophie tilted her head to one side and remained silent. Her legs were crossed, yoga style, and she fiddled her fingers restlessly on her lap, unable to drag her eyes away from his sombre, dark-eyed gaze.
‘I not only realised I missed you,’ Niccolo flushed darkly, his voice so low that she had to lean forward to pick up what he was saying, ‘but also realised that somehow, and I don’t know how, you managed to get under my skin to the extent that I couldn’t deal with the gaping hole you left in my life when you disappeared.’ He raised his hand in a gesture to wave aside any interruptions.
Actually, Sophie had no intention of interrupting anything. She was struggling to join the dots, but beneath the surface his expression was telling her everything her mind was bravely trying to ignore.
There was a soft tenderness there that pulled at her heart strings.
‘I never planned on sleeping with you. When I saw you for the first time...’ He smiled crookedly and looked down, those amazing, lush lashes concealing his expression just for an instant, before he returned his penetrating gaze to her face. ‘I immediately realised that my aunt was up to something when she’d decided to send you along for the job. I figured she’d finally decided to start meddling in my private life because she’s never been backward in telling me what she thought about it.’
‘I was cautious as well,’ Sophie reminded him. ‘I’d been through enough and had sworn off men, especially good-looking ones with racy private lives.’
‘I know. Truth is, my marriage left me with the deep-rooted conviction that love wasn’t for me.’
‘Love?’ Her heart sped up and she could feel a prickle of perspiration film her body.
‘You left, and missing you was just the tip of the iceberg. I fell in love with you, Sophie, and I was too blind to recognise any of the symptoms. My goalposts were firmly in place and it never occurred to me that they were capable of being shifted.’
‘You fell...in love...withme?’ She plucked at the braid in which she had tied her hair. ‘Please don’t tease me, Niccolo. You can’t get me back into bed by telling me what you think I want to hear.’
‘You admit that you want to hear it?’
Sophie blushed, feeling as though she’d been caught in some kind of trap.
