Page 22 of Bound By The Italian’s 'I Do'

‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather not spoil this beautiful day by talking about it.’ Not with him, the cause of it all. Not when she was unlikely to be able to get through a conversation about it without breaking character and screaming and hurling anything she could get her hands on at him. It was hard enough maintaining the high-society character as things stood, what with all the awful, awful,wonderfulfeelings he’d let loose in her body. She’d deliberately seated herself on a separate sofa to him but the tempest happening inside her was as acute as if she’d curled herself on his lap. God help her, he didn’t need to actually touch her for her to want him. All he had to do was look at her, and for the first time, she felt a pang of sympathy for all the women who’d fallen under his spell before her. She’d assumed for years that all they wanted of him was his money and the glamour of his lifestyle but as she was learning, there was far more to him than that. What chance had those women had? No wonder Gianni had a litany of broken hearts strewn in his wake.

After a long beat, he said, ‘I respect that, but if you’re worried about her not being able to contact you then we can get in touch with the rehab facility and give them my number to reach you on.’

Issy hated the pang that ripped through her chest and belly at this sincerely delivered offer. Her mother was in rehab because of him! She shook her head. ‘It’s fine. They can call my sister if there’s a problem. It’s Amelia I’m more concerned about not being able to reach me—I can’t remember her phone number or email address off the top of my head.’

‘Amelia is your sister?’

‘Yes.’ Mentally kicking herself for mentioning Amelia by name, Issy shifted in her seat and quickly changed the subject, moving the conversation along to the next phase of keeping Gianni distracted and preferably uncommunicable while Amelia made the final moves in the Seymore sisters’ destruction of the Rossi cousins, casually saying, ‘As we’re too far from the nearest island to dock before night falls, I thought we could anchor at sea tonight.’

His eyes flickered at the change of subject before a slow smile spread across his far too gorgeous face. ‘Is that an invitation for me to spend the night with you?’

‘It’s an invitation for you to spend the night on the yacht. Not necessarily with me.’ Never, never, never. No matter how badly she burned for him.

A gleam formed. ‘Playing hard to get?’

‘Nothing good ever comes easy,’ she riposted sweetly, thinking she didn’t need to just play hard to get but needed to build a fortress of concrete to make herself immune to him.

He raised the short crystal glass filled with an amber liquid that she hadn’t noticed him holding, probably because she was too mesmerised by his face. ‘That’s a truth I will gladly drink to.’

‘So what do you say?’ Issy asked after he’d taken a sip. She wished she had a drink. It was easier to play seductress with a prop in her hand.

‘About me staying the night here?’

She nodded. If he said no then she’d move to plan B and order the captain to fake engine problems. ‘All the cabins are made up.’

‘As you just said we’re too far from anywhere to dock tonight, that suggests I don’t actually have a choice about staying on board,’ he pointed out.

‘You can always swim.’

His strong throat extended as he laughed. How she hated the way the sound of it rang like balm in her ears and hated the way it enlivened his face, amplifying his heartbreaking handsomeness. ‘I’m a strong swimmer but as we’ve already determined, I’m no superhero.’

‘You could steal one of the Jet Skis.’ That would work. If she was lucky, he might fall off. But even as she thought that a nibble of panic chewed at her heart at the prospect of him falling into open waters without even a life jacket for safety, and she quickly scrubbed it from her mind.

He pretended to mull this over. ‘Hmm... Escaping on a Jet Ski or spending the night with the most beautiful woman in the Caribbean... That’s a hard choice.’

‘Spending the night on board ayachtwith, not necessarily inbedwith,’ she reiterated.

He sighed mockingly. ‘It’s the hope that always kills, but even so, that’s hope enough for me.’

‘You’ll stay?’

The gleam in his eyes turned up a notch and lasered straight into her pelvis. ‘Trust me,bella. I’m not going anywhere.’

‘Nice cabin,’ Gianni commented as he stepped through the door Issy had opened for him on the sleeping deck. He’d wondered which cabin she would put him in. He’d bet she’d been tempted to put him in the smallest. Not that any of the cabins were small by any reasonable judgement. Gianni loved to party and took his duties as host seriously. The last thing he wanted was for any of his guests to feel slighted by being given inferior accommodation. The irony that his first night on his new yacht would be spent in the third-best cabin—the master suite was locked and Issy had claimed the second-best for her own—did not escape him. Still, it was spacious and had a perfectly respectable king-size bed. Gianni usually slept in an emperor bed, but this would do for one night. He turned his gaze from the cabin to the woman hovering at the foot of the doorway.

‘The en suite is filled with toiletries and there’s robes in the wardrobe you can use,’ she said. For once, she seemed to be avoiding his eye. She’d dodged the elevator that would have taken them to the deck, skipping up the stairs ahead of him and then heading straight to the cabin. He knew perfectly well Issy was doing her best to stay out of arm’s reach of him and knew perfectly well why. When she’d set off on her mission to destroy him she hadn’t factored that she would actually want him, that she wouldn’t have to fake desire for him. It must be killing her. Great. Let her suffer, trapped in the web of her own making.

He had to give her kudos though for the slick way she’d engineered for him to spend the night and admire how she’d made promises that weren’t promises at all. The promise of what could come...but only maybe.

Did she really think she could hold out against the scorching chemistry between them for the duration of however long she intended to entrap him for?

‘I’m going to get ready for dinner,’ she added. ‘I’ll see you in an hour.’

Before she could run away, he pulled his polo shirt off and dropped it on the floor. She hesitated, her gaze fluttering over his chest before rising to meet his stare.

Poor Issy. She had no idea how expressive her eyes were, how her desire rang out from them. If she knew, she’d wear her shades permanently.

He stepped over to her. Linking his fingers through hers, he gently pulled her hands above her head and trapped her against the wall. Her breathing shortened. That delicious colour he was coming to get such a thrill at provoking stained her cheeks.

---