'This is sensational,' he breathed appreciatively. 'What is it called?'
'Somerset apple cake.'
'You're an incredible cook.'
'I started learning when I was four. Baking skills are a matter of pride
in a farming community,' Holly told him with a rueful grin, light
playing on her animated face as she sat cross-legged on the bed, clad in
a colourful silk sarong. 'But to tell you the truth, Mum was really
grooming me for the neighbour's son. She thought Robert was wonderful
but I just didn't fancy him-'
'Did he fancy you?' His beautiful mouth slanted with vibrant amusement
at the term.
'Well, just then I think he fancied anything female,' Holly confided,
heart lurching predictably in receipt of that glorious smile of his. 'He
was dating one of my mates when I left home and his parents didn't
approve because she was a real townie.'
The phone by the bed buzzed and Rio answered it. She listened to him
talk in Italian and just watched him while she melted into a hopeless
puddle of love and longing. They had been married for exactly twenty-one
days and already she could not imagine existing without him, could not
even accept that she could have lived for twenty years on the same
planet without being aware that the love of her life was breathing the
same air. For that was what he was:
ojo, this male who had become so impossibly precious and important to
her every waking hour.
He was just...perfect. Entertaining, clever, caring. He spoilt her like
mad. He was always buying her loads of stuff she didn't need,
introducing her to fantastic new experiences and somehow making every
single day seem special. She had learned to water-ski, snorkel and sail.
He was also fantastic with kids. Timothy was enslaved, and adoring Rio
seemed to be good for Timothy because her son was much more confident.
And a restaurant menu would never terrify her again because they ate out
most evenings and she was familiar with most of the terms now and quite
happy to ask if she came across anything she didn't understand. She had
also finally had her ears pierced, but her nerve had almost failed her
at the last minute and only a fear of embarrassing Rio had got her
through it.
Nobody was perfect, her more sane self cautioned, so she worked hard at
coming up with a flaw or two. Rio didn't need much sleep. He was
incredibly active, but good diet and lots of exercise had increased her
own energy. He was naturally dominant, but when he had been teaching her
to water-ski that had been welcome because the first time she sank below
the waves she would have given up if he hadn't bullied her into repeated
efforts. She had ended up having a fabulous time, she reflected forgivingly.
Indeed, every morning she woke up in Rio's arms she felt as if she had
won the jackpot. All her insecurity had evaporated. No man had ever
treated her so well and no man had ever wanted her to the degree that
Rio appeared to want her. Face warming, she scanned his bold, bronzed
profile and the long, sexy, indolent slump of his lean, hard, muscular
frame. There was something very reassuring about a bloke who could not
keep his hands off her for longer than a couple of hours, she thought
with a secretive
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smile. Obviously, he was pretty highly sexed, but he made her feel as
though she was irresistible. The strong attraction between them was
anything but one-sided. Was it any wonder that she was blissfully happy
and more madly in love than ever?
So what if he didn't love her? There was time enough for that to come.
He did do romantic stuff. He gave her surprise presents and held her
hand and seemed truly fascinated by every mundane aspect of her previous
existence. And in three long weeks they had not had a single argument.
She didn't count screaming at him when he told her to get back on the
water-skis and not act like a baby. Or that time he had dragged her out
of bed before dawn to go fishing and cheerfully told her that she ought
to stand up for herself more often. And when she had done so five
minutes later he hadn't liked it at all.
'You're coming with me,' he had delivered in full command mode.
And much later, when she had been even more bored out of her mind than
she had expected to be on that stupid boat, she had asked him why it had
been so important that she join him.
'I just like you around,' Rio had murmured in some surprise that she
should need to ask.
Only then had it occurred to her that a bloke who had been twenty-four
hours a day in her company but who could still demand the twenty-fifth
hour, figuratively speaking, was paying her quite a compliment.
Rio slung the phone aside with an impatient sigh. 'Business is intruding
even before we fly home tomorrow. My mother's at the Priory and
expecting to meet you but I'm afraid that I have to head for New York
more or less immediately.'
'Oh...' Her heart sank at the prospect of the parting
ahead, and then she scolded herself for being too possessive.
'I know it's far from ideal but I really don't think another
raincheck would be acceptable. Do you think you could handle meeting her
on your own?' Rio reached for her with the unquestioning self-assurance
of a male aware that his attentions were always welcome, his question
clearly rhetorical.
Seated on the edge of the bed, he set Holly down on her feet between his
long, hair-roughened thighs while he proceeded to ease loose the knot on
her sarong. At that moment, with her heart racing, he could have asked
her to walk into a fire and she would have gone in blind faith. She
trembled, reacting to the tiny flame already igniting deep in her
pelvis, the delicious wave of anticipation already currenting through
her. No matter how often he made love to her, it was always the same.
'I ache just looking at you...' Rio confided thickly as the sarong
dropped to the floor and his appreciative appraisal settled on pouting
breasts crowned by straining pink nipples.
'Me too...' She felt wanton, breathless, entirely in the grip of
quivering excitement.
He touched her, toyed with her aching flesh and stripped off her bikini
briefs to run a seeking hand down to the damp welcome already awaiting
him. By the time he tipped her back on the bed she was a willing
sacrifice. Straightening, he peeled off his T-shirt and shed his chinos,
revealing the awesome thrust of his virile shaft. Liquid longing filled
her and she pushed away an instinctive shame at her own powerful
response to his bold masculinity. He laced long, indolent fingers into
her hair, drawing her up, encouraging her to caress him with her mouth,
an exercise that she had
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been stunned to discover raised her own level of arousal to an almost
embarrassing degree.
'You're so incredibly sensual...' Rio breathed in a roughened growl of
male satisfaction. 'I'll have to drag myself away from you tomorrow.
You're turning me into a sex addict, cara.'
Ce
rtainly it wasn't very long before he tumbled her back on the bed with
a groan of raw impatience and sank into her hard and fast and without
ceremony, sending her excitement racing to such a peak that a strangled
cry of joy was wrenched from her. And then there was nothing for her but
the relentless rhythm of his lean, hard body over and inside hers and
the intense pleasure that sent her rocketing to an ecstatic height with
his name on her lips.
'Sex with you is...' Rio mused reflectively in the aftermath, making her
tense a little, for she would have much preferred him to use a less
earthy term and she was unsettled by the rather disconcerted light in
his dark-as-midnight eyes, '...absolutely sensational, bella mia.'
'Good,' Holly mumbled, both arms wrapped round him tight as she revelled
in the lean finger stroking her cheekbone and the kiss he dropped on her
brow. She was far too sensitive, she told herself. So Rio didn't talk
about his emotions, but could she consider that unusual? Even the day
her own father had cried over her being pregnant the older man had
uttered few words. Her male schoolmates had been more given to
off-colour jokes and clumsy flirtation, and Jeff had never really talked
about anything but himself.
'Go to sleep...' Rio urged lazily. 'We have a very early start in the
morning.'
During the flight the next day, Rio was fully occupied with his laptop.
Bored with watching the films on offer, Holly went to check on Timothy,
but he was sound asleep and their nanny was catnapping too. With a smile
at the
picture they made, Holly returned to the main cabin and decided to
entertain herself with the pile of glossy magazines which she had seen
Sarah absorbed in earlier.
She leafed through the pages, pausing to admire the fabulous fashion,
only to be bemused by the belated acknowledgement that she could now
probably afford to buy anything she liked, courtesy of her incredibly
generous husband. Shooting his darkly handsome profile at the other end
of the cabin a tender lingering scrutiny, she settled down to read.
A full-page shot of a vaguely familiar beautiful blonde wearing the
ultimate in country casuals caught her attention and she scanned the
name below. Of course, she had known that face! It was Chrissie Kent,
the model who had become a household name after doing an entertaining
series of luxury car advertisements on television a couple of years
earlier. Holly admired the handsome pair of springer spaniels seated at
Chrissie's feet and thought that the model must be a genuinely nice
person if she made time for pets in her jet-set existence. She then
turned to the opposite page, only to be confronted by a far more
familiar face.
Billionaire Italian tycoon, Saverio Lombardi, escorting his fiancée at
the Cannes Film Festival.
A fevered pulse beginning to thump like mad at what felt like the foot
of her convulsing throat, Holly read and re-read that single line and
then fixedly studied the picture of Rio and Chrissie Kent together.
Perspiration beaded Holly's short upper lip. She was in shock, so much
shock that she just sat there for a long time. Rio had been engaged to
Chrissie Kent?
Christabel...of course, Christabel. The woman was incredibly beautiful,
pale blonde hair falling waterfall-straight
126
either side of her stunning face. Her fantastic figure was sheathed in a
daring cerise-pin satin gown slit to the thigh and so tight that only
one in a million women could have got away with it. She even had legs
that went on and on and on to the most abnormal but flattering length.
Tummy unsettled by the revelation that had burst like a bombshell upon
her, Holly began to read the article and turned the page, only to see
Christabel seated on a silk-upholstered sofa in the town house where she
herself had once dared to sit. Without warning, Holly also remembered
how she had posed and clowned for Rio while she paraded designer fashion
and pretended to be a model. Instantly she wanted to jump out of his jet
without a parachute. Instantly she felt humiliated beyond belief.
But what shook her most of all was that the magazine was not that old an
issue. Only six weeks ago Rio had still been engaged and had still been
committed to a summer wedding with another woman. Like a bloodhound on
the scent, Holly began to leaf frantically through the remaining
magazines in search of further information. But when she found the facts
that she had believed she wanted in a weekly magazine of much more
humble origin, she wished that she had missed seeing it.
The issue which announced the sudden 'shock' break-up of Rio and
Christabel had come on sale only a week after Holly had first met Rio,
and indeed also featured a small grainy photo of her own wedding and
steps with huge scared eyes, hanging on to Rio with an extreme lack of
cool. Wild curly hair was blowing round her in a messy tangle. She
looked a total fright. She looked like the bride of Frankenstein...
127
'You've been very quiet,' Rio told Holly in the limo that collected them
from the airport to ferry them home to the town house. 'Are you feeling
all right?'
'I'm fine.' Even to Holly's own ears, her voice sounded strained, but a
more expansive response was impossible with Sarah and Timothy seated
beside them.
In any case, Holly still had no idea what she planned to say to Rio when
she did finally get him alone. She was still mentally reeling, her mind
awash with a crazy cascade of ever more confused thoughts. The anger
surging higher and higher inside her was no help to her concentration.
Behind the anger lurked pain and fear and a terrifying sense of
betrayal. Without the smallest warning, her confidence in what she had
believed to be a happy marriage had been smashed to pieces. It seemed
that their relationship was built on the proverbial shifting sands
rather than on firm foundations.
Faced with such unpalatable and humiliating facts, what else was she to
think? Rio had bedded her within days of breaking up with one of the
most beautiful women in the world. Christabel Kent was an icon, every
male fantasy combined, but, worst of all, she was ten times closer to
being Rio's equal in looks, sophistication and importance than Holly
could ever hope to be. Indeed, Christabel was exactly the kind of female
that men like Rio Lombardi did marry: a trophy wife, famous in her own
right.
Common sense told Holly that Rio had married her on the rebound, and
that was very bad news, she thought
128
wretchedly. Rio could not have been thinking straight when he swept her
off to bed on a passionate impulse. Nor could he have seriously
considered what he was doing when he then insisted that he wanted her to
marry him.
Only now was Holly recalling Ezio Farretti's prophetic warnings. 'He's
just not himself right now and you don't want to get your feelin
gs
hurt.' Older and wiser, and knowing the situation as Holly had not, Ezio
had recognised the high risk factors at play. Holly's vulnerability,
Rio's volatile temperament and simple proximity had been a dangerous
combination.
After all, Rio must have been with Christabel for quite some time and
breaking up with her must have been traumatic, Holly reasoned painfully.
Hence Rio's short temper, his need for a distraction, his sudden
startling susceptibility to a youthful redhead incapable of concealing
her starry-eyed admiration. In the normal way of things, Holly reckoned
that Rio would barely have noticed that she was alive.
'I'll be heading back to the airport in a couple of hours,' Rio reminded
her as they entered the town house. 'I'm going for a shower.'
Before she could follow him she was held back by their nanny, who needed
to discuss arrangements for the weekend off she was about to take.
Agreeing that Sarah could depart that afternoon, Holly then hurried off
in Rio's wake.
He was in their bedroom, already half-undressed, his shirt hanging
loose, a bronzed, energising slice of muscular, hair-roughened chest on
view, his potent and entirely natural sex appeal pronounced. Holly came
to a halt just inside the door, her heartbeat accelerating, her mouth
running dry, no matter how hard she tried not to react to him. He was so
gorgeous, from the crown of his proud, dark head to the soles of his
bare brown feet, and she loved him as she had
never known she could love anybody. But what she had learnt from those