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“It’s unlikely.”
Her eyes widened. “We agreed to keep this secret…”
“We did,” he pushed up onto one elbow, a challenge in his eyes. “Do you want me to stop?”
Her face showed a thousand emotions, her eyes flitting with them as she considered that and then, to his relief, shook her head. “No,” she answered quickly, pressing her teeth into her lower lip. “Don’t stop. Just…be quiet.”
His laugh was throaty. “I will if you will.”
Her response was to start unbuttoning his pants, her fingers shaking, her need, he realized, was every bit as great as his.
CHAPTER NINE
“SO, YOU LIKE THE gardens?” he asked, some hours later, on the balcony of Maddie’s hotel room. Despite his insistence that she stay with him, she’d been equally adamant that she wouldn’t.
“I love the gardens,” she said with an enthusiastic nod. “Oh, they’re so stunning. And the fragrance, even at this time of year, it’s so heady.”
“Funny, I never really noticed.”
“You never noticed?” she demanded. “How on earth could you fail to notice? The color, the sculptures, the whole shape of the landscaping. It’s just divine.”
“It was simply…normal, for me. Besides, I was always more interested in throwing stones at the sculptures or trying to spear the fish.”
She glared at him. “Rocco, you’re kidding.”
“I’m a man, cara, and before I was a man, I was a boy. I had little interest in colors or fragrance or landscaping.”
She rolled her eyes. “Well, that’s a bit sexist, isn’t it?”
“Be that as it may, in my case, it’s the truth.”
Her heart gave a funny little tremor. She was enjoying herself. In a way that she knew to be dangerous because she was relaxing and seeing Rocco as just a nice, normal man when he was anything but.
After they’d made love in the gardens, they’d explored them together, and her enthusiasm had been impossible to mute. She’d left the house alone, in her little hire car, but she’d only been in her hotel for an hour—long enough to place orders with several of the wholesalers the wedding coordinator had mentioned, and to arrange special delivery for early the next morning—when Rocco had arrived, brandishing a bottle of champagne and a bouquet that looked to have been handpicked from the very same gardens they’d made love in. The sprigs of bougainvillea brought back memories and she found it hard not to take the gesture to heart.
Which was the very last thing she should do, obviously, because it meant nothing. Except that he was astute and knew how much she loved gardens. And it was easy for him, to boot. Easy to collect up the flowers, to wrap a ribbon around their base. and bring them to her.
They added a much-needed touch of color to the sterility of her hotel room.
“You, however, have always loved gardens,” he said, lifting the champagne bottle and refilling her glass. It was absolutely delicious—a label she didn’t recognize but was enjoying immensely.
“Yeah.” She’d told him as much, she recalled, days ago. Days? Had it really only been days? In her mind, they’d known one another much longer. Then again, she’d known of him for longer still. Known of, and hated him, she reminded herself. She instinctively recoiled from talking about herself, and her love of gardens. Besides, she was more interested in him. “So, you spent a lot of time at the villa?”
She rested her chin on her palm, studying him. “Yes.”
But it was a closed-off answer, as though he didn’t want to talk about it, either.
“What about your parents?” She asked, but gently, giving him a chance to close down the conversation, even though she wanted to understand this aspect of him.
“We spent a lot of time with my aunt and uncle.”
Her lips pulled to the side. “That’s not really an answer, but that’s okay. You don’t have to answer.”
He looked at her for a beat, his eyes probing hers, as if looking for something, or perhaps sensing something in the depths of her irises, because then he nodded slowly. “I know.” He cleared his throat and sipped his drink. “My mother died when I was eleven. My father only about five years ago, but he was absent…after her.”
Maddie’s heart lurched a little. “Eleven is a hard age to lose a parent.”
“Any age is, I imagine.”
