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She swallowed down the new ripple of regret, ruthlessly.
‘When I agreed to do this, I thought it would be a lot sexier,’ he murmured grumpily, from the bed, adjusting for about the two thousandth time in the last fifteen minutes the sheet Milly had draped over his lap.
A chuckle popped out as Milly focussed on the sketch, already realising the amount of time she was going to be able to get him to sit for her would be limited.
‘Why do you find it so hard to sit still? Do you know?’ she asked, deciding that maybe if she could distract him, and get him talking about himself, she could help take his mind off his discomfort. Also, she was curious about him—and his refusal to talk about anything remotely personal.
‘Does anyone find it easy?’ he asked, with the deflection she had become used to.
‘I suppose not,’ she said, concentrating on the line of his torso, and adding shading to the defined musculature of his chest.
She’d done life drawings before during the evening classes she’d taken while working as a teaching assistant—before Brandon Cade had come into her and Lacey’s and Ruby’s lives and blown their normal everyday activities to smithereens. But the models had always been professional. She supposed it made sense this wasn’t easy for Roman—because he was such an active man—but it was his self-consciousness that really surprised her.
‘Although, you usually enjoy being naked,’ she added. They had been skinny dipping only yesterday, in La Baia Azzurra, away from the prying eyes of the staff, and Roman was the one who had suggested it.
‘It’s a lot more fun being naked when you are too,’ he offered. ‘Perhaps that would work,’ he added, his voice taking on the husky tone that could mean only one thing. ‘Why don’t you strip off while you sketch? That would totally help me to relax.’
She laughed, still sketching. ‘I don’t think so! Mr One-Track Mind. If I got naked we woulddefinitelyget sidetracked and this would never be finished.’
‘And that would be bad because...?’ he murmured.
She added detailing to the hair on his pecs, then concentrated on the design of the tattoo over his heart.
‘Why did you originally call your company after a pirate,’ she asked, changing the subject before she got pulled under again—into that bottomless pool of desire that they hadn’t come close to tapping, even after seven days of virtually non-stop sex.
She swallowed, attempting to ignore the liquid pull in her abdomen as she worked on drawing his torso. Not easy.
‘Why do you want to know?’ he countered.
She stopped sketching. ‘That’s not an answer.’ It wasn’t the first time she’d asked him about his tattoos. And the pirate theme. It also wasn’t the first time he’d avoided giving her a straight answer... Or any answer at all really.
He shrugged. ‘Pirates are thieves but they’re also romantic, mythical figures. At the time I had convinced myself I was stealing my legacy back, so it fitted.’
‘Who were you stealing your legacy back from?’ she asked, intrigued by the hint of bitterness in his tone. Was she finally getting a glimpse of the man behind the devil-may-care charm?
Roman went out of his way to seem reckless and unserious about everything. But she knew beneath that casual, careless, carefree persona was a man of strong passions—because that was the way he made love. Even when sex between them started out flirty and fun, it never stayed that way. He seemed to want to make her desperate for release, by tempting and torturing her until she begged. And when he finally found his own release, his focus was so intense she often felt burned by the passion they shared.
‘It’s just a figure of speech,’ he said, evasively.
He was a difficult man to read, but when his gaze dropped away from hers, she knew he was lying. And she wondered why. Who had stolen his legacy? Was that where his phenomenal drive and ambition had come from? A sense of injustice? Because he had become remarkably wealthy and successful for a man only in his early thirties.
‘But you didn’t come from wealth, did you?’ she probed, sure she’d heard something about him being self-made. ‘Not like Brandon?’
She knew her brother-in-law had inherited the Cade empire while still in his teens, from his father, who had been an autocratic and unloving man, according to what Lacey had confided in her. In the years since his father had died, Brandonhad modernised and expanded the Cade businesses—turning Cade Inc into a global media brand. But from the things Giuliana had told Milly about her boss, while the two of them chatted over breakfast each morning because Roman rarely woke before noon, Roman was almost as wealthy. And Garner Media had a similar reach. Which, now she thought about it, really was an incredible feat. To have built so much, so quickly, from what sounded like very little.
Roman straightened, the quirk on his lips flattening out. ‘What has your brother-in-law got to do with anything?’
She blinked, taken aback by the edge in his voice. He’d mentioned in passing he and Brandon knew of each other because they had some rival business interests, but what she saw in his expression seemed remarkably personal.
‘Just that you’re a similar age,’ she explained slowly. ‘And run similar companies, but I know Brandon inherited his from his dad. And I’m assuming you didn’t inherit anything, from what you just said about legacies. That’s all.’
The silence seemed to stretch out between them as he studied her. What was he looking for, with that suspicious frown on his face? And how had a fairly innocuous conversation suddenly become so tense?
She hadn’t asked him about his business before now, partly because she knew nothing about it, but also because she had discovered from Giuliana he was on the island to relax and get away from the stress of being, by all accounts, a workaholic. She and Roman had made a pact, to share their downtime here, so he could enjoy his break and she could focus on building a portfolio. All the extra-curricular sex had been hard not to binge on, because it made her feel so good, and so liberated. As if she’d discovered a side of herself she had never known existed—the insatiable sex goddess side, which she had spent so long denying.
What he’d given her with this break already felt like an enormous gift. But she was trying hard not to get it out of proportion. To give it more emphasis than it deserved. Or become too invested in this holiday from her real life.
But as he stared at her, his expression tightening as he continued to look for something she didn’t understand, it felt as if she had stepped over a crucial line by mentioning Brandon, of all people.
