Page 29 of Awakened in Her Enemy's Palazzo

She lifted the painful foot off the ground.

He sighed and looked exasperated and bored at the same time. ‘Then getting the sand out would seem like a solution.’

Childishly, she wanted to refuse. But his suggestion, even if it was couched as an order, made common sense.

‘You don’t have to wait,’ she said as she lowered herself onto a large smooth rock, taking care not to crush the alpine plant with its spikes of orange flowers that was crawling over it. ‘I’ll catch you up.’

She added a silent postscript—Not!

She was curling up her leg to loosen the buckle across her foot when he dropped into a casual squat beside her. She felt a flare of alarm as his dark face came level with her own and thought,What do you not understand about ‘I’ll catch you up’?

How, she wondered, casting him a look through her lashes, could anyone look so elegant when they had to be squelching?

After a moment she reacted to his imperative gesture and his look of impatience and extended her foot, reluctance etched into her face and the action.

She sat immobile, breathing shallowly as he took the sandal by the heel and drew it over her narrow foot. Dropping it, he held her foot, turning it lightly from side to side, seeing the red inflamed area under the crusting of damp and drying sand.

The clicking sound of his tongue suggested to Grace that he thought she had done it on purpose, just to irritate him, but nothing could have been more gentle or clinical than his touch as he brushed the sand away, exposing a small blister below the protrusion of her ankle and a wider reddened area on the pale blue veined skin.

His job was done, but he didn’t release her foot, and neither did Grace withdraw it. She was experiencing a strange, not-quite-there, drugged dreamy sensation as his long square-tipped fingers moved over the delicate bones of her foot almost as though he was memorising them.

Grace’s breath came in short, shallow, staccato gasps. She was unable to see his face so she stared at the top of his dark head. The sun was already starting to dry the glossy raven strands, but she felt sure that had she sunk her hands into the abundant growth it would have been wet against his scalp.

She wouldn’t, obviously.

Her flexing fingertips didn’t seem to hear the message. She had actually half extended her hand when he dropped her foot abruptly and sank back on his heels, grabbing her sandal and handing it to her.

As if released from a spell, Grace started to breathe again, the heat that had expanded in her belly putting colour in her pale cheeks.

She snatched the sandal from his hand, reacting to some inbuilt protective instinct and taking care not to make contact with his fingers.

‘I have some plasters in my room...fast healing for blisters,’ she babbled inanely as she thrust her foot back into her sandal. And then, in case he thought she was asking him to help, she added far too brightly, ‘I’m quite a dab hand with plasters...medical training and all...’

She was addressing her flow of words to her feet and not the man beside her.

She began to struggle to her feet, pretending she had not seen the hand extended to her, which was quickly dropped as its owner stood back to watch her.

Stubborn, hard-headed little witch.

‘I hope you are not expecting me to carry you?’ he said.

His hooded gaze slid down her slim, supple curves, moulded by saturated clothing, and he made the mistake of allowing the memory of how she had felt warm and soft in his arms to surface and taunt him.

Seven and a half stone wet and encrusted with sand... An image formed in his head of removing not just the sand on her slender foot but from her entire body...the smooth supple expanses and the secret crevices.

He dropped his hand and rose abruptly to his feet. He knew there was no water available that would cool the heat that hardened his body.

‘I think I’ll manage,’ she said, addressing her dry retort to the left side of shoulder.

But somehow she encountered his eyes, dark and—

The expression in them and the damped-down heat in their darkness made her stomach muscles quiver violently.

It was not one of the search parties that Marta had sent out that found them but Marta herself, and she listened to the story of the grotto delivered by Theo with an expression of horror on her face.

Grace stood passively listening to the interchange and shot him a fulminating glare. He might have played down his own heroism, but he had definitely played up her helplessness and stupidity.

The older woman looked white with shock as she took Grace’s arm, and Grace experienced a spasm of guilt.

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