Page 7 of Expecting His Billion-Dollar Scandal
Cordelia watched as he hit the deck as confidently as she had. When he suggested he sail the boat, she found herself instantly agreeing because something inside her trusted his expertise, which was contrary to everything she had been brought up to believe.
‘Everyone thinks they know what to do when it comes to boats,’ her father had told both her and her brother when they were young. ‘Don’t trust anyone with a throttle, a rudder, a tiller or an engine unless they can produce a captain’s licence. It’s easy to get out of your depth when it comes to handling a boat, and out at sea, that could be fatal. I’ll make sure the pair of you know exactly what to do when you get on a boat. If anyone gets on with you and asks for a go, tell them to get lost.’
She gave directions, sat back and tilted her face up to the sun.
‘Do you ever slow down?’ Luca murmured, obeying directions, enjoying the speed of the boat as it sliced through the water to the hidden bay she had told him about, enjoying even more the feel of her next to him, her body warmed from the sun, the hairs on her hands white-blonde in the sun.
‘Only when I do this,’ she replied, eyes still closed. ‘Or when I go swimming. I slow right down when I go swimming. Especially if I go swimming at night.’
‘At night...and you don’t get scared?’
‘Of what? I know everything there is to know about the tides around here. I’d never swim if there was a hint of a current, but if the water’s calm, then there’s something about being in it when it’s dark. I can think.’
They’d arrived at the bay. It was deserted and protected by dense shrubbery and tangled trees. The sand was very white and, when they stepped out onto it, already warm from the sun.
‘What do you think about?’
Cordelia looked at him and couldn’t look away. She’d thought long and hard about what to tell him about herself and, in the end, had said very little. She was ever so slightly in awe of him. He was like a bright, tropical bird of paradise, blown in on the winds, and every time she had felt that urge to confide, she had been overcome by a surge of shyness.
‘This and that.’ She shrugged and broke eye contact to set up a little picnic area in the shade of one of the overhanging trees. When she turned round to look at him, he had divested himself of his tee shirt and was staring out at the horizon with his back to her.
Her heart sped up. He was a few inches taller than her and perfectly proportioned. Broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, lean-hipped. He’d shoved his hands into the pockets of his shorts. He’d asked her what she’d been thinking but now she wished she could see into his head, find out whathewas thinking. His life in Italy sounded idyllic. ‘Vineyards,’ he had told her, waving aside more in-depth questioning, as though working on a vineyard was something she couldn’t possibly find that interesting.
‘Grapes...’ he had shrugged, when she breathlessly asked for details ‘...that’s pretty much all there is to say on the subject of vineyards. Grapes. You either eat them or you turn them into wine. I’m involved in the latter option.’
She was still shamelessly gawping when he spun round to look at her and she reddened.
‘Tell me you’re not going to spend the day in jeans and a tee shirt,’ he encouraged with a grin. ‘Did you bring a swimsuit or do you have plans on skinny dipping?’
Cordelia made a strangled sound under her breath and hastily got rid of her jeans and tee shirt to reveal a sensible black whole piece. Skinny dipping? The thought alone brought her out in a cold sweat.
‘Ah, swimming costume. Good. It would be a sin not to try the water on a day like this.’ Luca had never seen anyone under the age of eighty in a swimsuit as sensible as the one she was wearing and yet, conversely, had never been so tempted to touch. Her legs were long and shapely, the lines of her body strong and athletic, her skin pale gold.
He averted his eyes but there was a steady pulsing in his groin that was going to prove embarrassing if he carried on giving free rein to his imagination.
Cold water had never looked so inviting. He stepped out of the khakis, down to the swimming trunks he had bought a couple of days earlier.
‘Think I need a swim,’ he gritted, baring his teeth in something he hoped would resemble a relaxed smile. ‘So hot.’ He waded straight into the ice-cold water. Felt good. Anything to douse the rise in his body temperature when he had looked at her.
He didn’t look back for five minutes and when he did, it was to find that she was striking out in his direction, in long, fluid strokes that ate up the distance between them.
She hadn’t been lying when she’d told him that she could swim like a fish. She could. And out here, in the ocean where blue yielded to black because it was so much deeper, she was in her natural element. He could see that as soon as she had caught up with him. There was real pleasure on her face and she was smiling. All the hesitancy and shyness that seemed part and parcel of her personality had disappeared. She looked as though she had barely broken a sweat swimming out to him.
‘You’re a strong swimmer,’ she told him, treading water.
‘You’re surprised because you thought I was a wimp who could barely man a boat and had to rely on being rescued by a damsel in shining armour because of his own stupidity?’
‘Something like that.’
Luca burst out laughing and cast appreciative eyes over her face. She truly had the most amazing eyes, he thought. A shade somewhere between navy blue and bright turquoise with a hint of green and, for a blonde, her lashes were lush and dark.
‘Race you back?’ Cordelia backed away in the water. The way he was looking at her...she’d caught that expression before, a fleeting glimpse of something heated anddangerous,but she had told herself that it was her imagination playing tricks on her. She lacked the sophistication to interpret those kinds of games and she didn’t trust herself to even try. It was a lot easier to pretend there was nothing there, that any wayward expression she might have glimpsed in him was all in her mind. Why would a man like Luca look at a woman like her? He was so beautiful, so exotic, so compelling while she...was a country girl who worked her fingers to the bone in the fishing business. Vineyard versus fishing. Even if all he did was pick grapes and do whatever people did to grapes when they were picked, it was still impossibly glamorous as far as she was concerned.
She didn’t wait for his response. She began swimming and all the thoughts left her head as she felt the cold water sluice against her body and the exertion of the swim heating her up until the sea was warm against her skin.
He kept pace and then increased it so that he hit the shoreline before she did.
She was laughing when she emerged from the water. Her hair was still in the braid but she tugged the elastic band off and rifled her fingers through its length so that it spread over her shoulders and down her back, reaching all the way to her waist.
