He didn’t rise to her provocation, simply looked her up and down as if she were a pair of old boots he couldn’t wait to discard, then unlocked the bedroom door with a key he must have been holding. He stepped out, returning seconds later with her clean clothes. “For you, Miss Marino.”
Her underwear was at the top of the tiny pile. Boring, functional underwear that she knew would be nothing like the lingerie his lovers clad their bodies in. Just as instinct told her he’d had many lovers, it told her those lovers would be beautiful and sexy. Experienced. And she really shouldn’t be thinking that while she was close to spontaneously combusting over him and he was carrying her boring, functional underwear.
Hugely embarrassed but determined to hide it, Francesca jumped to her feet and bounded over in her usual fashion to take her clothes from him, but she was in such an internal fluster that her hand inadvertently landed on top of his.
Oh God, not only was she touching him, but his naked chest was right in her eyeline, and, oh God, he had to be naked beneath that towel, and, oh God, he smelled incredible.
Quickly sliding her hand off his, she tugged her clothes out of his hold and gathered all her vocal strength and chutzpah to say, “You’re just too kind, Mr Vicario,” but so clumsy had she become in her need to get her unattractive underwear away from him that her knickers fell to the floor in a slow-motion horror story that temporarily froze her. Before she could unfreeze herself to grab them, Gino crouched down for them.
Now enflamed in mortification, the moment he straightened, she snatched them from his hand and met a clenched jaw and a stare hardened to granite.
“Don’t take too long in the shower, Miss Marino,” he said curtly, locking the door. “Business needs attending to.” With that, he strode into his dressing room and closed the door behind him.
By the time Francesca had showered and dressed, she felt much more like her normal self. She’d done this by deliberately spending way too much time in the shower, delighting more with each passing minute at how pissed off Gino would be getting at her tardiness. Gino. The man who’d kidnapped her. The man she’d spent all their hours together happily tormenting.
The man she couldn’t deny she found incredibly attractive.
She could only assume it was because he was such a powerful and sexually masculine man that seeing evidence of just how sexual he really was had sparked something in her. After all, she’d never seen an erection before. She’d also never seen aman’s naked chest – her father and brother absolutely did not count – in the flesh before either.
Gino’s chest was incredible. His whole body was incredible. She might be his hostage, but she was only human, and she didn’t know how any red-blooded, heterosexual woman could look at him and not think he was a magnificent specimen of manhood. She’d seen from the clothes he wore and the way he carried himself that he was well built, but she’d not guessed just how incredible the muscularity of his physique truly was, and that dark hair covering his pecs…
She’d thought of that chest hair when she’d lathered her body, wondering what it would feel like to the touch. Wondered, too, what it would feel like to have his touch on her skin, and now, as she flossed her teeth, she wondered if he’d imagined what it would feel like to touch her. Probably not, she decided. Still, imagine if he experienced even a flicker of attraction to her. It would infuriate him! Feeling attraction for someone you found hugely annoying would be almost as bad as finding yourself attracted to your kidnapper! Not that she found her attraction to him bad. How could she when it felt like her body was coming alive? All that hot blood zooming through her veins, the tingles on her skin, the rapid beats of her heart... It was all brand new, and all the more thrilling for it.
Poor Gino. She almost felt sorry for him. She’d sensed his discomfort with her being naked beneath his oversized t-shirt and had played on it, safe in the knowledge that he couldn’t touch her. The mindset she’d put herself into had stopped any natural shyness about her body, which only made it weird that embarrassment had only reared its head when he’d carried her ugly underwear in his hands.
As she’d predicted, he had a face like thunder when she emerged from the bathroom. Dressed in black jeans and a darknavy shirt, he rose from the armchair he’d been waiting for her on, and snapped, “I told you to be quick.”
“You didn’t have to wait for me,” she said serenely, relishing both his temper and the dancing of her blood at his nearness. “You could have locked me in the room and hoped I didn’t find a way to set fire to the place. Have you got a hairdryer I can use?”
The contortion of his gorgeous features was fascinating to witness.
“Do I look like someone who uses a hairdryer?”
She looked at his close-cropped black hair and smiled. “I thought you might keep one for your lovers, but before you carve out two hours of your time to discuss your love life in detail with me, I’m ready to call my mother.”
He pulled in a deep breath of obvious irritation. “You can call her later.”
“We made a deal, Mr Vicario. I didn’t say a single word throughout our dinner in exchange for calling my mother this morning. The morning is almost over.”
“Because you spent most of it in the bathroom,” he said pointedly.
She tilted her head and sighed in the exact manner of disappointment her mother used to make when she found Francesca reading after lights-out. “Are you a man of your word, Mr Vicario? Or was that just a lie you told my cousin?”
Gino closed his eyes and breathed in deeply through his nose, fighting to force his mind and body back into the calm state he’d willed it into before it became obvious Francesca intended to stay in the shower until the water for the whole street ran dry.
God in heaven, if she wasn’t the most infuriating person, man or woman, to walk the earth. And God in heaven if he hadn’t spent the entire time she was in the bathroom fighting his mind from imagining her naked beneath the running water.
That was half the problem, he’d realised. His irritation with Francesca and his growing attraction to her were making him handle her all wrong. She was feeding off his irritation and anger. The more he showed it, the more it encouraged her to play on it. He needed to stop feeding her and bore her into giving up.
Steeling himself to meet her light brown eyes, he gazed into them and smiled. “As you have rightly pointed out, I am a man of my word. I will get your phone for you.”
Something – surprise? – flickered in her eyes.
He held her stare a little longer, then, smiling broadly at his first victory over her, unlocked a drawer in his dresser and removed her phone.
He held it out to her. “You have exactly two minutes.”
“And if I go over?”
