Page 16 of The Maid Married To The Billionaire

‘I haven’t been along here before,’ Enzo admitted as buildings appeared, marking the outskirts of the town.

‘I know it well. I grew up around here,’ Skye confided, peering out of the windows and smiling at the familiarity of the street. ‘Oh, Enzo, if you’re not in a hurry, turn down there. There used to be an ice-cream shop I was last in as a teenager. I bet it’s long gone.’ She sighed apologetically.

But the ice-cream shop had turned into a small café and Skye beamed. ‘I wonder if they still do home-made ice cream.’

‘I have the feeling we’re about to find out.’

‘Do you like ice cream?’ she asked him on the pavement, enthusiasm already moving her ahead of him.

He watched her break into an animated chat with the woman behind the counter, who turned out to be the daughter of the original owners. She tasted three different flavours and picked the fudge one, groaning out loud as she savoured it. ‘That issogood!’ she carolled.

Enzo picked vanilla with a lot less animation.

‘You’re not very adventurous,’ she scolded as they got back in the car. ‘Gosh, that place brings back so many memories of my parents. It was our local shop back then and on Saturdays, we got ice cream.’

‘You must have been a very easily pleased teenager.’

‘I’m talking about when I was younger, like still a kid.’

‘Are you? You’re what...twenty-two or twenty-three? And you seem equally enthusiastic now.’ Tawny eyes rested on her with gentle mockery. ‘I’ve given women diamonds and received less appreciation. Give you an ice-cream coneand...?’

Skye giggled. ‘No, you’d have to give me more than an ice-cream cone,’ she warned him, digging into her cone with gusto, little pink tongue swirling round the sweet confection, soft pink lips savouring.

‘You’ve got it on your face now,’ Enzo complained, digging a tissue out to wipe the tip of her gently tilted nose clean, the pulse at his groin downright painful. ‘Take your time.’

‘You’ve got to eat it quickly or it melts all over your hands.’ As she licked her pink lips clean she encountered Enzo’s scorching golden gaze.‘What?’she prompted.

‘Throw out the cone and lick me instead,’ Enzo stunned her by suggesting.

‘Enzo!’she exclaimed in stark reproof.

Then she stilled as she collided with smouldering dark golden eyes. Her heart jumped inside her chest, her mouth running dry as a bone. Little tingles of awareness unlike anything she had ever felt travelled through her slender and now very tense frame.

‘Your ice cream is melting,’ Enzo warned her as she sat there frozen and staring back at him with wide lilac eyes. ‘I didn’t intend to bring you to an emergency stop. If you mess up the upholstery, I’ll throw a fit!’

‘You took me by surprise...you shocked me,’ she muttered unevenly, struggling to catch her breath, thoroughly unnerved by the sensations that had shimmied up through her taut body and then down again to a place that had ignited with a burst of warmth that mortified her to the very bone.

Enzo released his breath on a measured hiss. ‘Relax. For a moment, I was tempted. But nothing is going to happen unless you want it to. I’m attracted to you. I know I shouldn’t be but I’m not perfect, in fact it seems I’m all too human. But you are completely safe with me,piccolo mio.’

‘Maybe I don’t need to be safe...with you,’ Skye muttered uncertainly. ‘You make me feel things I didn’t expect to feel. You make me curious. I know, like you said, I shouldn’t be in these circumstances. But the truth is, I am and I’m attracted too.’

Literally trembling from her own daring in being that candid, Skye swallowed convulsively and dropped her head, ashamed of the sheer power of his draw for her. She had barely escaped alive from her last entanglement and wouldn’t dream of embarking on another.But...There was definitely ahuge‘but’ enmeshed in all her thoughts about Enzo, as if he belonged in a category all of his own. Would one kiss hurt? Men and women kissed all the time. It would hardly be a major event.

‘So...’ Enzo breathed a touch raggedly, his breathing audible. ‘What do you want to do about this?’

‘We...we could try a kiss...justone,’ she stressed, evidently fearful that more than one kiss might push him past all restraint. ‘Just to satisfy our curiosity, and we’ll probably find out it’s not worth our while.’

‘Not worth our while,’ Enzo repeated thickly, afraid that if he didn’t speak, he would laugh out loud at her naivety. One kiss.One kiss.Even as a teenager, girls had offered him a great deal more than that. And one kiss wasn’t going to do anything to tackle his raging arousal, was it? But then, he reminded himself, it wasn’t about what he wanted, it was about whatshewanted and all she could apparently envisage was a very brief, controlled experiment. It was ridiculous. He knew it was. And yet...and yet, he was as fascinated and as aroused as if she’d ripped off her clothes and propositioned him.

‘Agreed. One kiss,’ he asserted not quite levelly. ‘It won’t give me any expectations either, in case you’re worried about that possibility. I won’t be demanding anything more. But we’ll experiment somewhere else, somewhere we’re not in full view of my security team.’

‘Why do you have so much security?’ Skye asked, relaxing a little again now that touching was no longer imminent. Yet it was an effort to speak, to even think rationally because Enzo tied her up in knots to the extent that she barely recognised herself in his company. She said things to Enzo she had never dreamt of saying to any man. He blew through her defensive barriers as though they didn’t exist.

‘My father was kidnapped when he was younger than I am now. The kidnappers demanded a ransom. My father’s father refused to pay and he was tortured...for weeks,’ he completed flatly. ‘Ultimately, he was rescued but the experience broke something in him and he was never the same afterwards.’

‘Oh, my word,’ she whispered sickly.

‘That’s the only reason I have protection. I have to accept that with my wealth I will always be a target. I have my grandparents equally well protected,’ he admitted steadily. ‘Security being around all the time, however, is occasionally a pain.’

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