And there was something banging around in the sitting room.
She couldhearit through the thin wall separating the bedroom from the sitting area.
At first, nerves paralysed her but after a lifetime of frozen fear, she finally managed to leap out of bed, step back into her flip-flops and race into the pitch-black space of the sitting area. When she banged on the light, she caught the swoop of wings racing up towards the high rafters.
She didn’t stop to think.
She scooted at lightning speed out of the cabin and only felt safe when she was banging on Raffaele’s door.
Raffaele woke fast, muscles reflexively primed before his brain had even come back online.
He didn’t run. He walked purposefully to the door and pulled it open. Only then did his brain really engage and, disconcertingly, it engaged in a way he had least expected.
Erin was there. Wearing next to nothing.
Some tiny shorts and a sexy little vest. He could see the rounded shape of her small breasts. Everything that she had managed over the years to conceal under an array of drab clothes was revealed now, from the slenderness of her arms to her smooth, shapely legs andthe tiny span of her waist…
He felt his breath catch and blood rushed to a place that hadn’t been active since he’d broken up with Alexa of the infinite text messages.
Swiftly he moved slightly behind the half-open door because he was only in boxers himself and,hell, he had an erection! Rock hard, utterly inexplicable and highly embarrassing. ‘Erin…’
‘There’s something in the cabin!’
‘Wait…“something in the cabin”?’
‘Raffaele, I’m sorry… I know it’s…it’s…’
‘After three in the morning?’
‘I…’
She was close to tears.His perfect, coolly controlled, unflappable secretary was close to tears!
Another punch of raw arousal hit him, making him wonder what sort of dinosaur he was if he could be actively turned on by a damsel in distress. Although, in fairness, not just any old damsel in distress.
‘Okay. Come in. I’ll grab some trousers and don’t worry… I’ll sort it out.’
He spun around on his heels and disappeared quickly into the adjoining bedroom before his body could betray him even more than it already had.
Erin stepped into his cabin and it was only when he had vanished that two things struck her, temporarily banishing the fear and panic that had gripped her as she’d flown to his cabin.
The first was that Raffaele had answered the door in just his boxers. For the first time her fantasies had crashed slap bang into reality and the body she had idly and guiltily daydreamed about had been there right before her eyes. No amount of daydreaming could come close to the magnificence of the real thing.
Broad, muscled shoulders, sexy dark hair on his chest and a flat belly that tapered to narrow hips.
She’d felt the air leave her body in a whoosh when he’d answered the door and then, before she could really absorb what she was looking at, he’d somehow manoeuvred himself behind the door, probably in an act of kindness to spare her blushes.
She knew he thought she was all those things a brilliant secretary should be—smart, efficient, professional—along with all those things a woman should never be as far as femininity went,smart,efficient,professional, equalleddrab,unexciting,uptight…
The second thing that struck her, hard on the heels of her semi-naked boss and his glorious body, was the fact that she had scrambled over to his cabin without bothering to shove on anything over her pyjamas. The sensible dressing gown she had brought with her was still hanging pointlessly on a hook on the bathroom door.
And here she was…
Appalled, she folded her arms, covering as much of her breasts as she could, and waited for him to emerge from the bedroom.
With a sinking feeling, it was dawning on her that whatever had been flapping around in the cabin would have been easier to deal with than this.
‘Ready to face the monster in the room?’
