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And for now, he’d allow that to be the case.
“A few hours,” he said.
Maddie’s fingers tapped the armrest of her chair. “Great. I’m halfway through a book,” she said, reaching for her bag. But anticipation was coiling tighter and harder, making his whole body thrum, and out of nowhere, he found it intolerable. Whether it was seeing the tight anxiety in her face, and knowing he could obliterate it, or simply sitting at this distance from her, Rocco was standing suddenly, extending a hand towards her. “I have a much better suggestion for how we can pass the time.”
Her eyes lifted to his and the breath caught at the very bottom of his throat, held there by a powerful leveraging of suspense.
“Do you, really?” She asked, but her voice was husky, and her hands were trembling a little. He watched as she reached for the champagne and finished it, replacing the glass on the table with just as much finality as the words she’d employed earlier. “Let’s go, then, cowboy.”
He laughed, a gruff sound that came easily to him. She made him laugh, he realized, more than anyone had in a long time. But then she stood, and her body brushed his, and laughter was the very last thing on his mind. Despite the fact that she had two perfectly good, beautifully shaped legs, he reached down and lifted her, cradling her against his chest as he walked towards the back of the plane, where a couple of deluxe bedrooms were always ready for use.
They were still in bed when the pilot announced that the flight would begin descending to Florence, and Maddie sat bolt upright with a start. “Already?”
Rocco’s smile was pure sardonic ease. “Time flies when you’re having fun.”
She grimaced. “It didn’t just fly, it ceased to exist.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
She rolled her eyes. “Like you need any more compliments.”
He grinned, laying back and watching as Maddie stepped out of bed and reached for her clothes. She felt his eyes on her, felt warmth buzz her skin, and a sharp sense of longing to be back in bed took hold of her.
Somewhere along the way, she’d forgotten that she was sleeping with the enemy. She’d forgotten he was the enemy at all and started to see him as just a man. A really seriously, sexy man. Someone she wanted, and needed, with a frequency that shook her.
It hadn’t been like this with Brock—she hadn’t even known it could be like this! — though she suspected it was normal for Rocco to be pulled into a sensual haze. This was how he lived his life, after all. For Maddie, with Brock, it had been a slow progression. A sensible path, from meeting to dating, to telling herself she felt a spark for him, to thinking he might be the other piece of her puzzle, the stability she’d been waiting for, the other half who might help her build a family and put down roots of her own, to create the life she’d always desperately craved.
And she’d wanted that. She wanted it so badly that she’d focused on their potential future to the exclusion of the present—a present in which the initial spark had long since faded, conversation had died down to the point it was hard to get through a meal together without long stretches of silence. She’d started to notice their differences in many ways—he wanted to travel and settle on the West Coast eventually, whereas Maddie could never imagine leaving New York. He liked staying up late and watching horror movies, whereas she preferred to go to bed early and wake with the sun, to go running. Most importantly, he came from a big family and had only negative things to say about them. In fact, he went out of his way to avoid seeing them, despite admitting they’d never done anything but love and support him. It was a key values difference that Maddie couldn’t look beyond, even when he’d promised her the kind of future she’d always thought she wanted. In the end, it hadn’t been enough.
She’d broken up with him gently—after all, they’d been dating eighteen months—and Brock had seemed to take it well. He’d argued a little, fought for their relationship. She would have been offended if he hadn’t! But he’d seemed to accept that her mind was made up, and that had been the end of it.
Until it hadn’t been, and she’d woken up to a threatening message from him, complete with a nude photo of Maddie. He’d said that she needed to think carefully about leaving him, that he had what he needed to ruin her life—a database of her contacts and a heap of nude pictures.
The blood had drained from Maddie’s face; the life had almost seemed to leave her body.
How had she let that happen? How had she been so careless? So trusting, just like her mother!
It wasn’t like they’d planned it. She’d swum topless in a private spa with him one time when they were holidaying in Mexico, and on one other occasion, she’d been getting changed, having had a few champagnes, and had been laughingly pretending to do a provocative little dance. He’d filmed it, also laughing. In the morning, she’d asked him to delete the footage and he’d promised her he had.
But he’d lied. He’d lied, and he’d proven himself to be the lowest of the low.
Before Brock, she’d sworn she’d be careful. Way more careful than her mother. She’d never looked for ‘spark’, or anything like it, because it could—from what she’d observed as a child—rob a woman of all her sense. All her loyalty and responsibility.
So, she’d gone carefully with him, getting to know him for a long time before sleeping with him, before starting to imagine a real, solid future. He’d said all the right things, he’d played the part of the perfect boyfriend in all the ways that mattered, and she’d believed him.
But she’d been wrong. Which only served to prove that men couldn’t be trusted. No man, no matter how he seemed.
Rocco wasn’t any different. At least she knew that from the start. She was under no illusions about him, and his character. It should be easy to protect herself, given the circumstances. Besides, this was about work. Sure, Rocco might have been responsible for getting her this job, but it was up to Maddie to do the work, and to do it so brilliantly, she couldn’t help but secure more work as a result. The budget at her disposal was truly eye-watering; she couldn’t wait to dive into it, scouring local markets for flowers, and working with the wedding planner on whatever the couple chose.
“Hello? Earth to Maddie?”
She blinked at Rocco, who was looking at her with a quizzical expression. And no wonder. She was standing like a statue, partially dressed. Her cheeks flamed. “Hi.”
“You were miles away, cara.”
“Yeah.” She bit into her lip, her brows knitting together.
“Something wrong?”
