Page 10 of Innocent in the Sicilian’s Palazzo

It was the first genuine grin she’d seen... Oh, my God, he really was sinfully beautiful! She dropped her head and made a meal of extracting a tissue from her pocket. By the time she’d wrapped it around her oozing finger her blush had reduced by a few shades.

‘I need to clear up the—’

‘Leave that for someone else to clear,’ he snapped out in exasperation. ‘You should get that attended to.’ He caught her hand. ‘Let me see,’ he said, not looking at her finger but at her face...and Anna was looking back.

She had no idea how long the frozen-in-time heart-racing moment lasted, and it was Soren who broke it, letting her hand fall without a word.

‘Heavens, it’s just a scratch,’ she said. ‘I’m fine.’ Well, she would be once her heart slowed to near normal. ‘I don’t understand any of this—is it really possible? All the time we thought...he was confused.’

Confused like the evil old fox he was, or even if he was genuinely ill, either way Soren could think of several million reasons why Tor Rasmusson did not deserve her sympathy or her dedication.

‘Oh, poor Grandpa!’

Poor Grandpa!It took all his self-control for Soren not to inform this woman just what herpoorgrandpa was capable of, the muscles along his jaw quivering and his nostrils flaring in disgust as his narrowed gaze took in the pathetic figure in the chair.

Anna swallowed and lifted a hand to her head. ‘You made him laugh. I haven’t heard him laugh for a long time. How can he speak Icelandic? This is all so...’ She lowered her voice. ‘Can we talk...outside?’ She glanced from the sleeping figure to the open door.

Soren followed her towards the door, happy to comply; he hated to be breathing the same air as that man.

Anna’s head was spinning. She had no idea how her grandfather spoke the language of a country that up until today she had never known he had even visited. Perhaps, she speculated, it was a long time in the past, like the old music the staff played that soothed him. He still remembered things long gone with amazing clarity sometimes; it was the present that he struggled with.

Anna walked a few feet down the corridor to where a few easy chairs were set into a square bay window that looked out onto a small landscaped quadrangle.

She didn’t sit down but turned towards him. ‘Thank you for that.’

‘For what?’

‘That is the most like himself I’ve seen him in a long time... I know he speaks French and a little German butIcelandic! It never crossed my mind or anyone else that he was actually—I suppose I’d better get a phrase book.’ She began dragging a hand through her hair where the natural titian highlights in the deep dark brown caught the sun shining in through the window. ‘I know it’s a lot to ask but if you’re ever nearby...?’

He saw where she was going with this and spared her further embarrassment by cutting in coolly. ‘I do not live in this country.’

He watched as she struggled to hide her disappointment; she managed a rueful smile. ‘Of course. But now that I know...and that is down to you.’ Her smile hit his underused conscience yet again.

Recalling her snarling initial reaction, Anna wasn’t surprised by his lack of response to her heartfelt apology. He looked like a man who was in a hurry to escape and who could blame him? She felt that way sometimes. He had come to pay his respects to an old friend of his father, not to be accused of some sort of nameless crime.

She gave an embarrassed grimace; she had wanted him to leave and now she felt a strange reluctance to see him go. ‘I was so rude to you. I’m sorry...’

Soren marvelled at how easily she said the words that he struggled with, that his own grandfather had taught him to associate with weakness and failure. Personally he had always found the words empty, but when Anna Randall used them she seemed to mean it.

‘I do not melt at harsh words.’

As he pushed away the apology with a flick of his long fingers, the gesture and his deep voice suggestive of impatience, she picked up his faint accent for the first time.

‘I still don’t understand!’ she said, confusion showing in her green eyes. ‘I know Grandpa had interests abroad with the charity—he was very hands-on and totally committed.’

For a moment the temptation was there to disillusion her, tell her that the man, thesaintfigure, she was grieving for never existed.

The moment passed, not because he rose above his instincts, but because he knew that she would learn the truth soon enough.

For the moment her ignorance was bliss, if it was true. She had no inkling she would soon be at the centre of a media feeding frenzy when the story broke.

And who knew? Maybe she wasn’t the innocent she appeared. Aware that hiswantingher to be complicit in her grandfather’s crime, even though it was patently obvious she thought her grandparent was some sort of saint, was in part an effort to ease his own guilt brought a self-contemptuous sneer to his lips.

Maybe it was time she woke up to the truth. He hesitated. It might be time for her to wake up to the truth, but he found he didn’t much want to be the one personally doing the waking.

‘Iceland? So you are Icelandic...?’ She had heard it was called the land of ice and fire and the description could have fitted this man with his ice-blue eyes that could flare with flame. It was really not a stretch to see him as some sort of sexy Viking.

‘On my father’s side. I heard from a mutual acquaintance of this situation, and—’

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