‘Not for me it isn’t,’ he’d replied, looking as stunned as she had felt.
Her eyes on his face like a sleepwalker, she took a half step towards him, remembering as she did so how she’d felt the first time she’d set eyes on him. Her nervous system had gone into meltdown, her brain short-circuited. She had never experienced anything sovisceralin her life before.
He had terrified her, not because there was anything threatening in his behaviour; despite his physicality, the opposite was true. The way his big hands with their long, tapering brown fingers had moved down the nervous colt’s flanks was incredibly gentle.
She had been too stunned in the moment by the whirlwind of sensation inside her to register how the skittish animal responded to the soft words the most beautiful man she had ever imagined was murmuring into its ear. Sensing her presence, he had turned his head, brushing his hands along the torn denim that covered his muscular thighs.
Amy had shivered as fire crackled along her nerve-endings when his dark eyes connected with her stare. She could see the flare of awareness flash in his, and then he’d smiled and she was lost.
‘I am so sorry, Leo,’ she pushed out, feeling the heat of tears that pressed against her eyelids. The deep ache of loss in her belly.
From nowhere, the rain came. Under the shelter of the porticoed porch she stayed dry, but in seconds Leo was drenched—not that he reacted to it, or the water that ran down his face, glossing his golden skin—skin she loved to touch.
In her peripheral vision she was aware of her father appearing in the doorway behind her. She half turned and saw that he was holding a phone in his hand, wielding it like a weapon, not looking at her but at Leo.
‘I’ve already called the police to tell them we have an intruder. I’m filming this, so keep your distance!’ he added, even though Leo hadn’t moved. But without moving at all he suddenly seemed taller and even more imposing.
Leo stared her father down before his glance shifted to Amy, lingering on her face for a long moment. There was no doubt in his face, just encouragement. The fact he believed in her and had total confidence that she would take the hand he stretched towards her made not doing so the most painful thing she’d ever experienced in her life.
Amy saw the brief look of confusion flicker across his chiselled features before he switched his scrutiny to her father.
‘I didn’t come here to argue with you. I just came here for Amy.’
Amy stared again at the hand extended to her, the internal conflict that was raging inside her finding release in a series of white-faced, agonised gasps. ‘You don’t understand, Leo.’
For three seconds their eyes held, then he broke the contact as his hand fell down. ‘I think maybe I do. You want this.’ His hand lifted again but this time his sweeping gesture encompassed the illuminated manor house. ‘You like your designer life, you love it…the tennis clubs, the skiing holidays. You were never going to walk away from it all, were you?’ His shoulders lifted in a shrug as one dark brow elevated. ‘I get it,’ he ground out, his gorgeous voice now sounding like broken glass.
‘No, it’s not like that at all! I just can’t…’
‘Amy.’
Her father’s voice stopped her in her tracks.
‘I am so sorry, Leo, but—’
His head reared back as he made a cutting gesture with his hand. ‘I don’t need buts. Goodbye, Amy. It’s certainly been an…experience.’
He turned and walked away, taking something of Amy with him.
Chapter One
Nine years later
Leo Romano, who waswalking and talking as he spoke into his phone, paused by the glass wall that afforded thrilling views across the City landscape. But he ignored the view as he ended the call with a crisp,‘Ciao.’
He slid the phone into a pocket of the tailored dark jeans he wore and applied the towel hanging loosely around his neck to his wet hair before discarding it in a crumpled heap. It landed wetly on one of the designer leather chairs arranged to enjoy the view as he shook his head, leaving speckles of moisture on the dark blue of the silk shirt that he had not yet buttoned. It hung open, revealing a slice of his golden, densely muscled torso. His broad chest had a light dusting of dark body hair, his flat belly was ridged with muscle. The dull gold buckle of his unfastened belt was a shade lighter than his skin.
Fastening his shirt one-handed, he paused by the open laptop set on a table. The screen was frozen on a shot of a slim figure. In the background, the building she was leaving was totally blocked out by hordes of press wielding sound booms, microphones and cameras. There was no sound on the clip but it had to be bedlam, yet she appeared calm, if very pale, with her eyes fixed on a point up ahead, her tilted chin displaying the graceful curve of her neck.
The rich caramel-coloured hair—hair he had once tangled his fingers in—was drawn back from her face in a thick glossy braid that was pinned around her oval face. The puritanical hairstyle left nothing to hide behind, but there was nothing to hide.
Amy Sinclair was beautiful, more so now than she had been nine years ago.
The delicate bone structure of her face and melting softness of her wide-spaced, darkly-lashed brown eyes were perfectly balanced by feathery dark brows and the lush curve of her mouth—a mouth that had launched a thousand fantasies. Many of those fantasies, he thought grimly, belonged to him.
Leo looked away, resenting the degree of effort it took to break the connection, unable to deny the scalding rush of frustrated heat that had settled in his groin. It was humiliating for a man who prided himself on his total objectivity, the ability to take the emotion out of decision-making or, for that matter, from life in general. Amy’s rejection had made him the man he was today, so he had that much to thank her for.
Taking a couple of deep breaths, lips compressed, hands clenched tight with his long brown fingers bone-white from the pressure, he forced himself to turn back. It would have been simpler to pretend he felt nothing, but after nine years the act was wearing thin.
