Page 25 of Awakened in Her Enemy's Palazzo

She could hardly come over all Victorian virgin and tell him to avert his eyes. The man had just saved her life and, while the drenched clothes were revealing, they were less so than a bikini. Besides, he was hardly going to be overcome with lust.

Maybe that’s your problem?

Almost stumbling as she caught herself in the insane thought that shewantedhim to lust after her, she threw herself onto the sand.

Theo watched as she took a couple of steps before falling full-length onto the sand, arms and legs outstretched. For a split second he thought she’d collapsed. And then she turned her head to reveal a cheek coated with sand and began to move her supple limbs.

‘A sand angel!’ she cried, flipping over and repeating the process on her back, her laughing face turned to the sky.

‘How much salt water did you swallow?’ he asked, amused despite himself.

Her joy was contagious.

She pulled herself into a sitting position, sand-coated knees drawn up to her chin, and started to dust off the wet sand that adhered to her face, only managing to deposit more from her sand-encrusted hands.

‘I’m celebrating being alive,’ she said, conscious as she stared up at the impossibly tall man standing there that she must have looked...did still look...ridiculous.

No man should be able to look both authoritative and breathtakingly handsome in soggy clothes, with water literally dripping off his lean body, but Theo managed the impossible. She thought despairingly that he looked as sexy as a dark fallen angel...or even Lucifer himself.

‘I was being spontaneous.’

She lowered her eyes and gave a self-conscious half-shrug before reaching for her discarded shirt. The action dislodged her phone from its resting place, and it fell to the sand a couple of feet away. She took a couple of squelchy steps and picked it up, nursing it against her chest as she turned to face him and found his eyes on her, the expression in their dark depths impenetrable.

To fill the lengthening uncomfortable silence and drown out the thundering sound of her heartbeat, Grace rushed into speech.

‘Lucky I left it here or it would have been ruined.’

She winced at the chirpy sound of her own voice, but felt a rush of relief when he veiled his eyes.

In Theo’s experience, people who always looked on the bright side, even when there wasn’t one, fell into two camps: the unintelligent and the irritating.

The former he could forgive. The latter...

Grace was not unintelligent, and despite this he found himself fighting off a smile.

‘Oh, yes, that shows great foresight,’ he drawled. ‘If you’re going to drown yourself, the number one thing to remember is to protect your mobile devices.’

Grace scowled, but clearly her heart wasn’t in it as she fixed him with her big blue stare.

‘I know you probably don’t want to make a big thing of it, but you did save my life.’

‘By all means make a big thing of it,’ encouraged Theo, who usually very much disliked the idea of gushing gratitude. ‘I’m gutted you’re not telling me I’m your hero.’

‘I’m grateful, but let’s not go overboard...’ She paused, her soft lips quivering slightly, as she brushed more of the drying sand from her upper arms.

Her brush with death was clearly too recent for her to keep up the facade of flippancy. Despite the sun that was beating down, he could see that her skin beneath the layer of sand was marbled with goosebumps.

‘Can you walk?’ he asked, his brusqueness disguising an inconvenient stab of concern as he looked down at her.

Utterly mortified by the fact that she must be coming across like some swooning Victorian maiden in a melodrama, who fell at the hero’s feet in every scene, Grace lifted her chin.

‘Of course I can walk,’ she retorted coolly, proving the fact by taking a firm step away from him—too firm for her ankle, but she kept the wince inside.

Her action hadn’t taken her clear of his personal raw male, mind-numbing zone, but it was an improvement.

‘I don’t make a habit of—’

Coming across as a total incapable fool.

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