Page 11 of In Bed with Her Billionaire Bodyguard

Luca forced the curve of a smile to his lips in case she could see it, hoping that it would keep him on the right side of her joke. He flicked his gaze between the road and Hope’s reflection in the rear-view mirror. In the past, women had complained that he always held himself back, that refusing to share personal information made him harder to know. But years spent keeping his entire existence a secret had taken its toll.

‘I was born in Bari, but raised in Palizzi,’ he replied, startled when he realised that he’d given her the truth.

‘I’ve been to Italy many times, but not Palizzi.’

He smiled freely this time. Not many people knew of it. ‘It’s about as far south as you can get in Italy.’

‘What’s it like?’ she asked.

He knew what she wanted to hear: the tourist spiel. About its beach, the famous old medieval castle that loomed imperiously above the village from its rocky outcrop. But all he could think about was how, as a child, he’d longed to escape the quiet rurality of it all and join his mother in the fantastic adventures he was sure they’d have. He’d travel the world with her as her white knight, protecting her from anyone who would do her harm. That was what he’d told himself in the cold silence of Pietro and Alma’s house.

Whenever he could, he’d escaped to run along the shoreline, exploring the azure blue bay that reached out into the Ionian Sea. He’d felt unwanted by them, but bound to the aunt and uncle into whose care he had been entrusted. And in those early years he’d believed it was them keeping him from his mother, rather than the other way round.

Luca felt Hope’s retreat in the silence.

‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—’

‘It’s beautiful,’ he said, interrupting her apology. ‘It’s quiet, nothing like London,’ he said, trying to cling to the role of chauffeur while answering her questions with as much truth as possible. He was good at it usually—after all, he’d learned from his mother, and his mother was the best of the best. But something about Hope Harcourt was throwing him off.

‘Above the village is an old castle,’ he said, noticing how that had caught Hope’s interest in the glance he shared with her through the rear-view mirror. ‘Not that kind of castle,’ he said around a smile. ‘It was reconstructed in the mid seventeen hundreds and looks more like a military garrison than anything else.’

‘Sounds...charming,’ Hope said wryly, and Luca’s lips quirked into a half-smile.

‘It had its moments,’ he admitted.

‘Why London?’

‘I had a client who brought me with him when he came to London,’ he hedged. ‘And when he went back, I decided to stay.’

She flicked her gaze to his in the mirror as if she hadn’t quite believed him, but the moment he met her eyes he felt it—the jolt, as if he’d been zapped in the chest. It was like being gripped by fire and soothed by ice at the same time. She held his gaze for a beat too long, and this time it was Hope who looked away, leaning back against her seat and turning her attention back out of the window.

His pulse thudded sluggishly, forcing blood away from his groin and back to the brain he needed to drive. It had been so long since a woman had had such power over him. Yes, he’d been with attractive women over the years—and his last mutually beneficial no-strings relationship had only been six months before. But when he thought about it, he knew that the desire they had shared was nothing compared to the incendiary heat that had absolutely no place being between him and Hope.

An hour later he pulled up outside her apartment block and she exited the car with a ‘Goodnight,’ and a quiet, ‘See you in the morning.’

He waited until the lift doors closed on her, watching him watch her.

He shook his head and pulled the car back out into the night. His own apartment was barely three minutes and two streets away. He guided the car into the underground garage and pulled into the reserved parking space as he thought about what Hope had been through today.

He made his way up to his penthouse apartment and poured himself a drink, all the while unable to shake the feeling of her eyes on him, watching him as he drove, as he waited for her with the car. Having spent a lot of his professional life watching other people, he’d never once realised how intimate it was. Intrusive? Absolutely. But with Hope it was something else.

He took the tumbler of ice and whisky out onto the balcony, the slap of the cold, wintry night air enough to cut through the hazy hangover from her attention.

This.This was what it was about, Luca reminded himself as he looked out across the London skyline. This was what was at stake. Expanding his company, ensuring its global viability. He wanted a piece of it. And the key to making that was keeping his hands off Hope Harcourt.

CHAPTER THREE

HOPEWOKEBATTLINGa headache. As the day of the nominations had drawn closer, she had felt sure that Simon had done this on purpose—engineered the nominations to happen on the anniversary of her parents’ death. That he had waited for Nate to be away, that he had waited until no one was there to stop him. Tension and anger made her headache worse and no amount of running on the treadmill would help.

She missed Nate so acutely that morning and was torn between wanting to reach out to him and not wanting to bother him. He needed rest, he needed to get better, and he wouldn’t do that if he thought for one minute she needed him. He’d always tried to protect her. Too much sometimes. But he at least understood her grief. She could usually share that with him, but not today.

Hope shook her head at herself. There was too much in her head, she needed to compartmentalise. She put thoughts of her parents gently aside until she returned home that evening. Right now, she needed to think of today—her meeting with Kinara and the nominations.

She pulled the oversized, soft as silk, black scarf from the hanger and looped it around her neck, over the cream cashmere rollneck long-sleeve top she wore tucked into black houndstooth wool wide-legged trousers. She grabbed her bag, slipped into her coat, left her apartment and waited for the lift to arrive, trying not to count the ways that Harcourts had already been damaged by Simon’s penny-pinching and the CEO’s laziness. Because Harcourts wasn’t just a job to her. It was a legacy. Her parents’ legacy. She wondered who would put themselves forward, but all she could see was her cousin. And if Simon became CEO...

The lift doors slid open and whisked her down to the ground floor.

You can’t sit on the fence any more, Hope. If you want it, do something about it.

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