‘Sand-boarding on Stockton sand dunes?’
‘Stockton Beach is on the northern side of the harbour. It goes on for...oh, I don’t know...miles and miles, and some of the sand dunes are thirty metres tall.’ She pointed to the picture of the beach on the front of the brochure and then opened it up. Her hand accidentally brushed against his and the brochure wobbled dangerously. She set it on the table and pulled her hands back, did what she could to dispel the darts of awareness that coursed through her. ‘See? They have the most amazing sand dunes.’
‘The guys would love this,’ Dominic breathed.
‘So would the girls.’
His eyes rested on her for a long moment. It made things inside her heat up. ‘I, uh... And there’s a fabulous cruise up-river to the historic town of Morpeth which sounds like fun, too.’
But Dominic didn’t glance at the brochure she held out to him. He pursed his lips and continued to survey her. Eventually she couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘What?’ She found it impossible to keep the defensiveness out of her voice.
He shook himself. ‘Sorry. I was just wondering...’
‘What?’
He settled his back against the sofa, legs stretched out in front of him. His broad shoulders against the dainty lines of the sofa made a compelling image.
She swallowed. Good Lord! Was everything in this apartment designed to make her think about sex? ‘What were you wondering about?’
‘Why this hotel means so much to you. I know you want your father to love the hotel, I know you want it to be a fitting tribute to your mother, but I can’t help feeling there’s more.’
‘Oh.’ She stared down at her hands.
‘You don’t have to tell me, of course. I was just wondering, that’s all.’
His voice was gentle. She remembered how he’d built sandcastles with her last Sunday and found she didn’t have the heart to deny him an answer. ‘I’m a bit ashamed.’ She glanced up. ‘And I’m afraid you won’t think well of me.’
Or, she amended silently, that he would think even worse of her.
‘Try me.’
She sat back on her heels. ‘The hotel’s success is so important to me because I want to make Papa proud of me.’
‘Bella, your father adores you.’
‘He loves me, yes, but it is not the same as making him proud of me. I’ve only recently realised how my inability to settle on a career has disappointed him—hurt him, even.’
‘Bella, I—’
‘No, please don’t make excuses for me or for him. I know for a fact that he blames himself for indulging me too much after Mama died.’
Dominic dragged a hand back through his hair.
‘You see, Mama was the glue that bound us together. Papa and I are so very alike—both fiery and stubborn—but Mama was calm and serene and she kept us on an even keel.’
‘Fifteen must’ve been a difficult age to lose your mother.’
She glanced up. ‘I think nine would’ve been worse.’ Dominic had lost his mother so young. At least she’d had another six years of wonderful memories to store up before her mother had been snatched away.
‘We’re talking about you,’ he reminded her. ‘Not me.’
He smiled and some of the heaviness left her. ‘It took me a long time to get over her death. I’d never realised how much she helped me to find my way until she wasn’t there any more.’
‘So.’ He frowned as if reassessing something. ‘You lost your way?’
‘Big time,’ she sighed. ‘After school I bounced around from one thing to the next, but nothing seemed to stick.’
‘What changed?’
‘My aunt and uncle in Italy took me in hand and set me to work in their restaurant.’
‘And you found that you liked it?’
‘I loved it! But when I returned home I found that Papa no longer had any faith in me.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Yes, it is, and it’s my own fault. But the solution is in my own hands, too.’ Determination gelled inside her. She straightened her spine, pushed her shoulders back. ‘If I can show him what a great job I can do with the hotel restaurant, then he’ll realise that I can be an asset to his company and then he’ll be proud of me. That’s why the hotel’s success is so important to me, Dominic. My father is a good man. My inadequacies are not his fault. I don’t want him blaming himself for them any more.’
Dominic’s eyes had turned a deep, dark blue. He shifted and leaned towards her. ‘I don’t think you are inadequate, Bella.’
He meant it. She could see the sincerity in the line of his mouth and in the way he continued to hold her gaze. It brought her absurdly close to tears. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.
‘I know I’ve been hard on you. Unfairly so, I suspect.’ He leaned closer and brushed a strand of hair back behind her ear. Her breath hitched. His hand lingered against her cheek. ‘I don’t think you will be able to help but make Marco proud of you.’
His faith in her meant a lot, but suddenly it wasn’t her father she had on her mind any more. All she could focus on was the warmth of Dominic’s hand curving against her cheek, the firm promise of lips that hovered tantalisingly near and the scent of cinnamon that dredged her senses. The ridiculous chandelier overhead steeped them in a pale pink light, bathing the man no more than a kiss-distance away in a red-gold halo. Temptation, that was what this man personified, and she wanted a taste.
‘You better stop looking at me like that, Bella.’ The hand belied his warning as it trailed a path down her cheek, her throat and then around to the back of her neck.
‘Like what?’ she murmured as his fingers moved back and forth across her nape, raising gooseflesh. She’d do whatever he asked when he touched her like that.
‘Like you want me to kiss you.’
She dragged her gaze from the delicious promise of his mouth and back to his eyes. ‘If you can tell me how to do that—’ her voice came out all breathy ‘—I’ll do my best to comply.’
He traced her bottom lip with the thumb of his free hand, sensitising the tender skin there, until with a gasp her lips parted.
‘That’s not how to do it,’ he said, his voice low, his chest starting to rise and fall to the same tempo as hers. She moistened her lips and hunger flared across his face. ‘Neither is that.’
Her pulse pounded in her ears. She stared at his mouth and knew she’d taste heaven if he kissed her. Both of his hands tightened on her face as she lifted her gaze back to his. ‘You should draw away.’ He swallowed. ‘You should frown, flash scorn from those beautiful eyes of yours and press your lips together. You should—’
‘No.’ She shook her head. She should stay here and beg him with her body to kiss her until he gave her what she craved.
‘Bella...’
‘Dominic, please,’ she whispered, her hands lifting to tangle in the silky strands of his hair and to pull him down to her aching, starving mouth.
With a groan, he tilted her head back and his lips claimed hers.
CHAPTER NINE
DOMINIC’S kiss devastated her. It stole her breath and it stole her mind. It left her clinging to him and drowning in an ocean of sensation.
As his lips plundered hers, pleasured hers, she came to life. His heat, his passion, became her heat and her passion. She’d known instinctively that he’d taste delicious, but she hadn’t known that his kiss would encompass everything rich, divine and addictive. He tasted better than the most extravagant three-course meal she’d ever had. He tasted better even than the twelve-course degustation menu she’d once sampled.
He tasted better than chocolate mud cake.
As she found her balance again, she half lay across his lap and she tasted him as thoroughly and completely as he had her, attempting to define and name his very essence, to stamp it on her memory and her soul.
A groan broke from him and he wrenched his mouth from hers but, as the realisation filtered into her fogged mind that she must be cru
shing him with her less-than-lightweight body, he proceeded to press kisses against her neck that made her bones weak and her blood dizzy with need. She sagged against him.
His hands travelled down her body, curving around her hips to haul her closer. ‘You are divine,’ he murmured, his teeth gently tugging on the soft lobe of her ear. ‘You have driven me wild from the first moment I saw you.’
She pulled back, but his eyes showed no guile, only the heat of passion. ‘I’m—I’m too curvy,’ she hiccupped.
‘You’re perfect,’ he growled, then groaned when she slid one hand in between the buttons of his shirt to caress the hot skin of his chest.
He twined her hair around his hand, tugged her mouth back down to his and she fell into him.
Bella didn’t know how much time passed. All she was aware of was lying full-length beside Dominic, lost at sea, drunk on his kisses. And then a sharp pain made her gasp.
Dominic swore. They shot upright, both clutching adjacent legs. Not too far away Minky glared and swished her tail. She batted her toy mouse and meowed.
‘The rotten cat attacked us!’ Bella glared back at Minky. ‘I swear, I don’t know how Mel puts up with you.’
‘Yeah, well, the rotten cat has more sense than either of us.’
Her heart sank at the cold hardness that had crept into Dominic’s voice. Without looking at him, she adjusted her clothes and then moved away. She couldn’t prevent herself from desperately hoping he’d pull her back into the circle of his arms again and whisper reassurance into her ear.
He didn’t.
Of course he wouldn’t.
She took one look at his face and scooted right away from him, banging an elbow against the coffee table as she leapt to her feet. He shot a hand out to steady her but she batted it away and retreated to her love seat on the other side of the room. With a curse, Dominic shot to his feet and stalked over to the dining table.
She folded her arms, swallowed back the lump in her throat and finally dared to look him full in the face. ‘That—’ she waved a hand to the space between the sofa and coffee table, the space where they’d sprawled out full-length, kissing
‘—may well have been a mistake.’
‘There’s no two ways about it. It was undeniably a mistake.’
‘But is it really necessary for you to now look at me as if I’m poison?’
He scratched a hand back through his hair and eyed her warily. ‘For God’s sake, Bella, you’re a bloody virgin!’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ She surveyed him for a moment and then leapt up, shaking. ‘Oh, for pity’s sake, I have an intact hymen—it doesn’t mean I’ve had a frontal lobotomy! We kissed. Big deal. It sure as heck doesn’t mean I’ve started to plan the wedding.’
He couldn’t seriously believe she was gullible enough to read anything into that kiss, surely? She blew out a breath and hoped her stunned disbelief was written all over her face. ‘We kissed, but it doesn’t change anything. I still know you’re a commitment-phobic freak.’
He leapt to his feet, too. ‘Just because I don’t want to get married, that doesn’t make me a freak!’
‘And being a virgin doesn’t make me one either!’
He stared at her for a moment, scratched a hand back through his hair and then nodded. ‘Point taken.’
And then there was silence, an awful, nerve-shredding silence. All Bella could think of was what she and Dominic could be doing right at that very moment if Minky wasn’t the devil’s own cat. She knew she should pick the cat up and hug her, thank her, but a treacherous, untrustworthy part of her wished they hadn’t been interrupted and that right now they were...
She snapped the thought off and glanced at Dominic. He was staring at the spot where they’d kissed and she could see the same thoughts spinning through his mind. The same hungry ‘what if?’
Argh! ‘Coffee!’
Dominic jumped and shook himself. ‘Good idea.’
He held the kitchen door open for her and touched a hand to the small of her back as she eased past. She jumped and then rounded on him. ‘No touching!’
A slow grin hooked up one side of his mouth. ‘Why, Bella...’
The rest of his sentence choked off when Bella reached up a hand to cup his face. ‘Are you saying I’m the only one that touching affects?’
He reached up and pulled her hand from his face, pushed it back down to her side and then let it go as if it burned him. ‘No,’ he ground out.
‘Then no touching,’ she ground back. She took a step away. ‘It’ll be safer that way. I have no desire to tease you, Dominic. Do you mean to—?’
‘No!’ He broke in before she could finish.
Who was she trying to kid? His very presence teased her, taunted her, filled her with longing. ‘I don’t know what to call it, but there’s a thing between us.’
‘Chemistry?’
‘Exactly.’ She swallowed. ‘And it seems foolhardy to...to...’
‘Test its limits?’
‘Yes. Especially as there’s an element of the forbidden that makes it all the more...’
She glanced up at him, waiting for him to supply an appropriate word. He shrugged instead.
‘Intense,’ she supplied for herself.
‘Forbidden?’
Coffee; she was supposed to be making coffee. It’d be easier talking about forbidden things if she didn’t have to look at Dominic while she was doing it. ‘You’re my boss. I’m your boss’s daughter.’
‘Complicated,’ he agreed.
She ground coffee beans; the scent filled the kitchen. ‘And I have no intention of sleeping my way to the top. This job is important to me, but it’s not that important.’
He folded his arms and leant a hip against a kitchen bench on the other side of the room. ‘I would never let sex interfere with any business decision I made.’
‘Puh-leeze.’ She mirrored his position and rolled her eyes. ‘Are you saying that if we were sleeping together, and I threatened to withhold sex until I got my way on something, that wouldn’t influence you?’ She snorted in disbelief.
‘If you threatened to withhold sex to try to win some concession in the workplace, I would do my damnedest to make you change your mind. I would set out to seduce you and I’d play dirty.’
They stared at each other, both breathing fast. Images hit her hot and hard. Somewhere along the way they’d edged closer together. They sprang apart. ‘Well, it’s a moot point,’ Bella choked out.
‘You have to stop saying stuff like that—if we were sleeping together. Hell! It’s—’
‘You’re right,’ she broke in, not wanting him to spell it out. ‘Here.’ She pushed a mug of coffee towards him.
‘Thanks.’
Neither one of them moved. The kitchen with its cold, clinical lines seemed the safest room in the apartment. Unlike the rest of the apartment, its form was purely functional.
‘Why are you a virgin, anyway?’
She had to close her eyes against the frustration that stretched through his voice.
‘Sorry,’ he ground out a moment later.
She nursed her mug between both hands. She couldn’t look at him; he was just too tempting. ‘If I told you why, you’d only scoff.’
He set his mug down and bent at the waist to rest his hands on his knees. He straightened. ‘I promise not to scoff.’
She stared at him and then shrugged. Fine. She was about to plant some seriously scary pictures in his mind, which would probably be for the best. She slid up to sit on the bench; he did the same on the bench opposite.
‘I’m thinking it’s not because you haven’t had the opportunity.’
She laughed at his wry tone and the knowing twist to his mouth. ‘No, Marco hasn’t kept me locked in either a convent or an ivory tower.’
The blue of Dominic’s eyes sparked. ‘I suspect he knows that would’ve had the opposite effect.’
That made her laugh too, because she suspected he might be right.
He didn’t say anything more while she gathered her thoughts and, unlike the silence that had descended around them in the living room, this one didn’t prickle and burn. She was grateful for that.
‘Unlike you, Dominic,’ she finally said, ‘I had the best role models for love and marriage that a person could have. Mama and Papa loved each other deeply. They adored one another.’ She glanced across at him and his eyes reflected the nightlights outside the window. ‘It was...nice. And I always knew that eventually that’s what I wanted, too.’
He pursed his lips. ‘How old are you—twenty-five?’ At her nod he continued. ‘Are you trying to tell me that in twenty-five years you have never considered yourself in love?’
‘It’s true. I haven’t.’ He blinked and she hitched up her chin. ‘Have you?’
‘Well, no, but I’ve never believed in love.’
‘Oh, Dominic.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘My life would be so dreary and grey if I believed love didn’t exist.’
His head snapped back. She gulped. ‘Not that I’m saying your point of view isn’t valid. It’s just...’ She swallowed. ‘It’s just not for me.’
‘That was always taken as a given, Bella.’
But his voice was hard and she found she had to swallow again. ‘I spent a lot of time with my mother towards the end. Because we knew she was going to die we had the opportunity to say things we may not have had a chance to say if circumstances had been different. Losing her was terribly hard, but I have some wonderful memories of her from that time.’
‘Did your mother make you promise to save yourself for marriage?’
She stared at him in shock and then threw her head back and laughed. ‘You obviously think my parents terribly medieval. I think that would’ve had much the same effect as Marco’s ivory tower, don’t you?’
He sat back.
‘We did talk about sex, though. She wanted me to keep safe and avoid an unplanned pregnancy. She made me promise to practise safe sex, but nothing more.’
‘So, why?’ He lifted his hands in the air.
She was quiet for a moment. ‘One day we were just reminiscing and she told me how happy she and Papa had always been.’ She glanced up. ‘Did you know they met here in Newcastle?’
Bella's Impossible Boss Page 10
