A Dangerous Solace

Something fierce ripped through her in response and she quickened her pace.

He turned that hard gaze on her. ‘You came.’

Ava pushed aside the shiver of premonition, the suspicion he was not just talking about this evening, because all of a sudden he had her hand and they were running.

Too soon they turned a corner and a shiny black limousine glided across the road towards them.

‘This is my ride,’ he said. ‘I prefer to walk on a fine night, but it looks as if we’re not in luck, signorina.’

He let go of her hand to get the door.

She hung back, hugging herself in the cool spring evening.

‘Let me take you where you want to go,’ he offered, with an expressive turn of a well-shaped hand, holding the door for her.

And Ava felt herself tumbling through time until she was once more that unhappy girl in a frothy pale blue dress, standing on the steps of a grand palazzo, looking in vain for a taxi cab. And he was the beautiful boy with the super-charged ego and five hundred pounds of Ducati growling between his legs, offering her a ride with an attitude of complete confidence.

The confidence had clearly solidified with the years as the dark drawl barely held an enquiry at the end of it. She was a woman. Of course she would dive into his car—no questions asked. Given she had chased after him across the square, joined in when he kissed her, and would still be holding on to his hand like a teenage girl with her first crush if he hadn’t released her...he probably had a point.

She had been in limousines before, ferried to and from corporate events that required her to walk the walk. But as she slid across the dark leather seating she recognised this was pure luxury—beyond the expense account of even the multi-million-dollar turnover of her business.

In the street he had been magnetic. Up close in the intimate, quiet confines of the car Ava felt a little overwhelmed by his physicality.

She wished once more she had her coat, aware that her body was on display in this dress, the hem pulling up over her knees. She tugged at it without making much difference.

‘I apologise for all the subterfuge.’ He sounded so Italian, so formal—as if he hadn’t kissed her and swept her into his car.

He had pushed back his coat, revealing the hard contours of a supremely fit body. Everything about his clothes screamed money and good taste, and they fitted him with a fidelity that made it impossible for her not to look at him.

Those golden eyes flickered lightly for just a moment over her body, as intimate as any touch, and Ava felt her nipples tightening as heat curled responsively in her pelvis.

It was a shock, wanting him like this. She hadn’t expected the pull between them to be this strong. But perhaps it explained one or two things...

‘If you give me the name of your hotel I will take you there.’

All of her fears of being exposed, of being disappointed, of losing the specialness of her memory of this man coalesced into one defining moment: he was going to get rid of her.

‘Or,’ he said in a quiet undertone, filling the tense silence, ‘we could go on to a quiet place I know first, have a drink, and you can tell me what brings you to Rome.’

He’d said first. What came second? Ava tried to ignore the tingling behind her knees, the way it seemed to creep into her thighs. Was he propositioning her? Did he want them to go to her hotel, take their clothes off and...?

Up until this moment she’d agreed with Bernard when he’d told her she just wasn’t a passionate woman, and yet here she was, starting up some kind of a sexual fantasy activated by nothing more than a single word: first.

‘I don’t—’ she began. I don’t know, she finished silently. I don’t know how to do this.

‘A drink in a public place. Two civilised people.’

Had he put a faint emphasis on civilised?

‘Isn’t that why you are here...?’

Ava wondered with a sort of horrified fascination if he’d just read her mind...

‘To have a drink with me?’

To her continued amazement she felt desire like honey slide through her body. This didn’t happen to her. It never happened to her. Sexual desire was something she had to work on. It never ambushed her like this.

It was a timely reminder that he was a man used to being pursued by women, and she was a woman who had never inspired pursuit in a man.

Most memorably in this man.

The heat in her blood suddenly knifed her.

‘I won’t be sleeping with you tonight.’

He gave her an amused look. ‘I wasn’t aware I had asked.’

Real embarrassment crawled through her. She was the one thinking about sex.

‘I wanted to be clear,’ she said uncomfortably.

‘What if we just have that drink?’ He’d leaned forward, clearly to instruct his driver, when something occurred to him. ‘Are you hungry?’

Ava shook her head. She didn’t think she could stomach a bite.

As he gave instructions to his driver Ava wondered what exactly she thought she was going to accomplish here tonight. She eyed him uncertainly. This entire situation felt illicit and fraught with danger. This was not what a sensible woman did, and beneath the glamorous dress and styled hair she was still at heart a conventional girl in her relationships with men, standoffish at the best of times. In the hare and the tortoise race she was the tortoise, steadily persevering with a man—specifically with Bernard—until inevitably it all fell apart.

She imagined Gianluca Benedetti’s private life moved at supersonic speed, and if anyone ended anything it would be him.

‘I apologise,’ he said, sitting back, that deep voice made far too seductive by the upper-class Italian accent. ‘It wasn’t my intention to ignore you tonight.’

No?

‘My mind was somewhat preoccupied.’

Snap! ‘Yes,’ she said, also sitting back, unable to keep some of the derision out of her voice. ‘I saw what was occupying it.’

A frown touched his brow.

‘The blonde woman who forgot her clothes?’ she reminded him.

His expression eased. ‘Ah, Donatella, si.’

She noticed he made no effort to deny she’d been the source of his preoccupation. Ava tried not to grit her teeth. They weren’t on a date. He owed her nothing. She still wanted to hit him.

She didn’t really know what she’d been expecting. She suspected it went along the lines of I remember you. I’ve never forgotten you. I never got your message...

‘There’s something I should tell you.’