Page 47 of Innocent in the Sicilian’s Palazzo

‘You look lovely.’

Glowwas an acceptable response to the compliment, but the furnace that lit inside her was not.

She wafted a hand across her face and murmured an explanatory, ‘So hot.’ Before tacking on an unwise, fervent-sounding, ‘So do you—look lovely, I mean,’ as she slid into the low-slung car, grateful that she’d chosen to wear flats. She’d have definitely fallen off her heels.

The car purred silently into life. She was glad the roof was down—the breeze and the scent of pine diluted his unique male fragrance that made her awareness of him ten times worse.

‘Where are we headed?’

‘The coast, to a little place that not many tourists have discovered yet. Do you like seafood?’

‘I do.’ If the conversations stayed this simple, she could cope.

‘Then it was a good choice.’

‘I can make up time by working this evening, unless this is a working lunch?’ Sometimes you had to ask if you wanted to know.

Their eyes met briefly before he refocused on the road ahead. ‘It isn’t.’

‘So it’s a...?’

His lips twitched. ‘It’s a date... You are very persistent,cara, you know that?’

‘It’s lunch time and your text was...’ Brief and to the point, signed off with his initial. It had not involved any avowals of love—in your dreams, Anna—or even lust... She would have settled forI’m missing youor evenI’m looking forward to seeing you.

If it hadn’t been for the distractions offered by the library, he would have invaded her thoughts to the exclusion of everything else—even in the library she had found herself wanting to share a new and exciting discovery with him.

‘You can have dates at lunchtime.’ The timing was not an accident or even convenient, but candlelight and Anna might prove too potent a temptation for his willpower.

A man needed to know his own limitations and since Anna had appeared in his life Soren had been redrawing his. Possibly payback for being smug about his iron self-control?

‘You want the roof up?’ he asked, aware in the periphery of his vision of her struggle with her glossy hair while he wanted to feel it against his skin as she sat astride...

‘No, this is lovely. Sicily is very beautiful...oh!’ She bounced a little in her seat, hand still clamped to her hair. ‘I can see the sea!’

‘Next you’ll be asking me are we nearly there... Not long now. Another fifteen minutes.’

The small village consisted of a long straggle of pink-sugar-coloured houses along the shore of what appeared to be a working fishing harbour. Driving past nets strung along the sand, Soren pulled up beside a few other cars parked alongside a whitewashed building built into the stone wall of the harbour.

‘This is a beautiful spot.’

‘I hoped you’d like it.’

As they were escorted by a suited figure through the rustically decorated interior where most tables were occupied, she knew all eyes were on them, or at least on Soren, but she pretended not to notice. Soren didn’t need to pretend; he was, she realised, genuinely oblivious.

Seated at the gingham-clothed table on the wooden deck constructed over the water, Anna looked around from under the shade of a parasol that fluttered gently in the breeze.

‘Oh, they don’t seem very busy,’ she remarked, surprised at the empty tables and wondering why anyone would choose to eat inside.

‘No, they don’t,’ Soren, who had booked out the entire outdoor seating area, agreed. ‘Oops!’ he added as her elbow caught a glass.

The butterfly touch of his fingers on her wrist brought their eyes, no longer protected by tinted glass, on a collision course.

Anna heard him swear. She couldn’t have said anything to de-escalate the tension even if her throat hadn’t already closed. Her brain might have frozen, but her senses had not!

A waiter appeared, oblivious to the atmosphere, though his expression did alter slightly as he met Soren’s eyes.

Soren began to translate the menu and, though normally she would have enjoyed asking questions and making her own choice, she was seized by the sudden strong urge that this just be over with; it was a bad idea.

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