Flo stopped her fur-licking momentarily and regarded Nat with half-closed eyes before stretching her leg in the air and cleaning it with long firm kitty strokes from her little pink tongue.
Shit!
Nat almost screamed in frustration, knowing she was going to have to climb on to Alessandro’s enormous bed and retrieve the recalcitrant pet. As she hovered in a quagmire of indecision, a door opened from the middle of the far wall and a semi-naked Alessandro stepped out. His hair was wet and the only thing stopping him from being totally nude was one white towel riding low on his lean hips.
Nat’s mouth dried to dust. She didn’t mean to ogle but she also couldn’t look away. The soft lamp bathed his body in a beautiful bronze glow and, backlit by the en suite’s light, his face looked darker and more dangerous than ever. His gaze was intense and unnerving in his grim-faced way.
‘Oh… er, sorry. I didn’t know you were… Flo came in.’ She averted her gaze to point at the guilty party like a lawyer holding up Exhibit A in a courtroom. The guilty party purred loudly into the tense silence. ‘I was just trying to… retrieve her.’
He didn’t say anything for several beats, during which Nat was fairly certain her heart had stopped. When he did say something, it wasn’t what she expected or wished to be reminded of.
‘I… apologise for this afternoon.’
Dear Lord, she didnotwant to talk about this now – not with him in a towel. In fact, she didn’t want to talk about it at all. She was perfectly fine pretending it hadn’t happened.
‘I gave you assurances that your virtue would be safe.’
‘It’s fine,’ she dismissed, her voice practically a squeak, her eyes lifting and fixing on his face. And not on anything below his chin.
But he shook his head, clearly wanting to get it off his chest. ‘No. It’s just that… I mustn’t… I can’t… get involved. My wife…’ He paused, raked a hand through his hair. ‘It was inappropriate… It won’t happen again. You have my word, Nathalie.’
And that’s where it all fell apart for her. He couldn’t call her Nathalie and not expect her to melt into a puddle. Not the way he said it – like a sigh. Like a whisper from the devil. Not after what had happened this afternoon.
‘Nathalie’inflamed, it didn’t soothe.
A startling urge to cross the room and whip his towel away was so strong she could actually see herself doing it in her mind’s eye. See herself sinking to her knees. Thankfully Flo chose that moment to meow loudly and spring up from her reclining position to strut within reaching range.
Thank God for kids and animals – where would they have been today without either of them?Naked on the kitchen floor, that’s where. Going at it on his bed.
She blinked at the images before ruthlessly dragging her wayward mind back on track.
‘Of course. It was just…’ She stroked Flo’s fur as she cast around for something to say, some syndrome or insanity plea to blame it on. But with him nearly naked before her, her brain wasn’t functioning that well. ‘Impulsive.’
She picked Flo up and squeezed her tight.
‘And you’re right, it won’t happen again. Can’t.’ If she said it out loud maybe she’d believe it, right? ‘Also, sorry,’ she said again as she slowly backed away, ‘for the…’ She gestured at his nakedness as she continued her backward trajectory. ‘Flo’s intrusion. That won’t happen again either.’
And with that promise made, she did exactly as he had done earlier – she turned on her heel and fled the room.
8
The next morning Nat finally wandered downstairs to find father and son both up and about. She’d been lying in bed, wide awake, putting off the inevitable after a long restless night, Alessandro’s perfect flat abdomen and the hot lick of his tongue taunting her through elusive layers of sleep.
The very last thing she wanted to do was face him again. But she wasn’t a coward either, so she’d hauled herself out of bed, showered and dressed to face the day.
The man in question looked up from his bowl of cereal when she entered the kitchen. He was shirtless in just a pair of pyjama bottoms and his hair was rumpled. Avoiding the acres of bare flesh, her gaze travelled over his face. He looked like he’d slept even less than she had.
And yet still he looked better than any man had a right to.
Determined to reset from last night, she gave him a bright smile and kept her eyes firmly trained onhiseyes. ‘Where’s Julian?’
Alessandro’s gaze raked over her. Over the fall of her hair hanging loose for a change, the ends still a little damp from the shower. Over her sundress with a scooped neckline that sat wideon her shoulders with thin straps that tied in bows. He eyed those bows for a moment, his jaw clenching a couple of times as if they offended him, before he dropped his gaze back to his bowl.
‘Watching television.’
Sucking in a slow, steady breath and ignoring whatever mood this was, she advanced into the kitchen and headed for the coffee pot. ‘Why aren’t you in there with him?’
‘I asked him if he wanted me to watch with him and he said no.’
