Harlequin Presents--July 2021--Box Set 1 of 2

by Natalie Anderson

  Not so now.

  Fate clearly had other ideas for this evening.

  ‘What do you mean, gone?’ he asked, the unease that had faded with every passing second now slamming back into him with a vengeance.

  ‘Exactly that,’ she said, her face white, the green eyes that met his wide and troubled. ‘My passport, my keys, my money, my phone. Everything. Practically my whole life. Gone.’

  ‘How?’ he said sharply. ‘When?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She ran her hands through her hair, a deep frown creasing her forehead. ‘But someone bumped into my chair earlier, while we were eating. I thought they were drunk. It could have happened then.’

  Rico inwardly tensed, stunned disbelief ricocheting through him as the impact of her words registered. Someone had knocked into her? How the hell had he not noticed that? He, who’d once lived on the streets and still slept with one eye open. Who had razor-sharp instincts and missed nothing. He shouldn’t have allowed himself to be distracted by her focus on him, dannazione. He shouldn’t have been so determined to get through the evening as quickly as possible, to the extent that nothing else mattered.

  ‘Do you remember what they looked like?’ he asked, not liking one little bit the apparent dulling of the wits he’d relied on from the age of twelve.

  ‘Not really. I barely caught a glimpse of him. Or her.’

  ‘No CCTV out here.’

  ‘No... Damn...’ She took a deep breath and grimaced. ‘Look, I really hate having to ask, but could I use your phone? I need to find somewhere else to stay.’

  The reality of her situation—and his—hit him then and his jaw tightened minutely. The only hotels available were no doubt less than salubrious and who knew how long it would take to find a vacancy? He knew what it was like to spend the night on the streets, cold and alone and afraid, and he wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Venice was labyrinthine and not all of it was pretty enough to end up on a postcard.

  He couldn’t abandon her, no matter how much he might wish to. Carla was here because of the challenge he’d issued and she was stuck because he’d allowed himself to be distracted and had lowered his guard. There was only one solution, and it didn’t appeal in the slightest, but this was the price he had to pay for both his impulsivity and his carelessness.

  ‘You’d better come home with me.’

  Carla went very still, her gaze jerking to his, the horror he saw there and on her face suggesting she was as keen on the idea as he was. ‘Oh, no, I really don’t think that’s necessary.’

  ‘You’ll be perfectly safe.’

  She shook her head, her blonde hair shimmering beneath the twinkling lights distracting him for a moment. ‘That’s not it.’

  ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘I don’t much like being dependent on anyone,’ she said with a slight jut of her chin.

  No, well, he could identify with that. ‘I don’t much like having anyone dependent on me, but we don’t have a choice.’

  She stiffened and something flashed in the depths of her eyes. ‘I always have a choice.’

  ‘As I said, it’s high season. Everywhere decent will be full. There are areas of Venice you do not want to find yourself in, however briefly. It’s nearly midnight and you must be wiped out. I know I am.’ The exertions of today were taking their toll and his muscles were beginning to ache, so perhaps it was just as well he’d decided against seducing her, not that that was remotely relevant right now. ‘But you’re right. It is your choice. Here.’

  Fishing his phone out of his jacket pocket, he put it on the table and pushed it towards her. For several long moments Carla just stared at it warily, as if it might be about to bite, and then she sighed and nudged it back towards him, her shoulders falling as she gave a brief nod.

  ‘All right,’ she said, looking impossibly weary and dejected, the smile she was trying to muster up weak. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Things will look better in the morning,’ he said, not having a clue why he felt the need to reassure her but for some reason really disliking the way the fight had drained from her.

  ‘Of course they will.’

  ‘Do you have a suitcase?’

  ‘In the cloakroom.’

  ‘Andiamo.’

  * * *

  While from the centre of his boat Rico navigated the canals that were a lot less busy than they’d been earlier, Carla sat at the back and used his phone to cancel her bank cards and her passport. Her phone had face recognition but she cancelled that too, just in case.

  She was too preoccupied to take any notice of the tall, dark buildings as they slid quietly past, thinning out until they were far behind them. She wasn’t in the mood to luxuriate in the inky depths of the night that enveloped her as they crossed the lagoon and the cool, fresh breeze that caressed her face, or admire Rico’s skill and ease at the tiller of a vintage boat that was all beautiful varnished wood and sleek lines. She lacked the energy and enthusiasm to request a tour of his home, which she was sure would be huge and airy, based on the little of it she did see. She certainly didn’t have time to contemplate the implications of having her most important material possessions stolen, practically from beneath her nose.

  That, thanks to jet lag, came at three a.m.

  Upon disembarkation at the jetty to which he’d tied the boat, Rico had grabbed her overnight bag and then alighted. He’d held out his hand to help her off, releasing her as soon as she’d done so, and headed up a path with an instruction to follow him tossed over his shoulder. Too battered by shock and weariness and the sizzling effect of his brief yet electrifying touch to do anything else, Carla had complied.

  Once inside the house, he’d led her through a dimly lit but spacious hall, up a set of wide stone stairs and shown her to a guest suite that was probably the size of her entire flat. He’d then bade her a curt goodnight before turning on his heel and disappearing. She’d instantly flopped onto the bed and crashed out almost the minute her head hit the pillow.

  Now, two hours later, she was wide awake, hot and sweaty, the sheets twisted around her from all the tossing and turning she’d been doing in a futile attempt to get back to sleep.

  With a sigh of frustration, Carla disentangled herself and got up. She crossed the room, opened the doors that gave onto one of two balconies and stepped out into the darkness in the hope that cool night air might blast away the thumping of her head and quell the sick feeling that had started in the restaurant and had now spread into every cell of her body.

  But the breeze that carried a welcome freshness and a hint of salt was no panacea for the churning of her stomach. The distant cries of seagulls couldn’t drown out the rapid drum of her heartbeat. No distantly beautiful view of perhaps the world’s most romantic city could sugar-coat the reality of her situation.

  She was stranded, her plans derailed and her certainty about what she’d been doing shaken, her freedom and independence snatched away along with everything else. She was trapped, firstly by her arrogant assumption that the plan which seemed like such a good idea at lunchtime would work and secondly by her own stupidity.

  How could she have let it happen? she wondered, swallowing down the wave of nausea rolling up her throat as she gazed across the lagoon at the odd sparkling light of the city far away. She knew how important her phone and her passport were and she knew the risks associated with leaving a handbag hanging on the back of a chair in a public space. As she’d so blithely and loftily told him, she’d travelled a lot.

  Yet she’d been so thrown by Rico’s effect on her, she’d failed to deploy her common sense. She hadn’t given the security of her things a moment’s thought at any point during dinner. She’d been reckless and unthinking and, worst of all, breathtakingly stupid, and as a result she was now entirely at the mercy of a man once again.

  This time, the situation might be wholly her fault and not at
all like the one in which she’d found herself as a teenager, but the emotions were all too familiar—the helplessness and the confusion, the vulnerability and the stripping away of her agency and her identity.

  It had taken her months to rid herself of the chill that was rippling through her now, the self-doubt she could feel beginning to creep in and the tightness in her chest. She didn’t like feeling this way when it wasn’t who she was any more, and she hated even more the disturbing memories it invoked of a time when she’d been so naïve, so foolish.

  Nor did she like being here, wherever here actually was, but Rico had been right—there hadn’t been an alternative. It had occurred to her as she’d sat there staring at his phone, and burning up with regret and anger that she hadn’t taken better care of hers, that she couldn’t strike out on her own. She had no money and no ID. No hotel would take her in, even if she had managed to locate the details of the one she’d booked. She’d had to accept his offer, however nasty the taste it left in her mouth, however sick it made her feel.

  But her enforced dependence on him wouldn’t be for long, she assured herself, determinedly pushing the feelings and the memories away and pulling herself together. In the morning—well, later on, seeing as how it was already morning—she’d file a police report and investigate getting a new passport. She’d look at moving her flight and contact Georgie to ask her to get her locks changed, just to be on the safe side. She’d email her boss and let her know she wouldn’t be in on Monday. Once she’d figured out how to get hold of some money she’d buy a phone and a few more clothes and then she’d find herself a hotel to stay in. Despite it being high season, surely the city would be less busy during the week than at the weekend.

  She might be stranded but she would not be a victim, she told herself firmly as she gave her upper arms a quick rub before turning and heading back inside. Not again. Never again. She had resources. Somehow she would get herself out of this mess.

  She needn’t be troubled by her host. He’d hardly know she was here. She had plenty of things to be getting on with and presumably he did too. In the unlikely event their paths did cross, however, she’d be on her guard. She’d be polite but distant and think of some other way to encourage contact with Finn. She had no intention of giving up. Just because this plan had backfired badly didn’t mean another would.

  The one thing she definitely wouldn’t be doing, she thought, climbing into bed and punching her pillow into shape, was indulging the attraction she felt for Rico, which just wouldn’t seem to go away. She’d made that mistake with him once already and look what had become of it. Whatever else happened, she would not be making it again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  IT WAS NEARING lunchtime when Carla finally emerged, not that Rico, who was in the kitchen throwing together something to eat, had been watching the clock.

  In fact, he’d spent most of the morning ploughing up and down the pool in an effort to soothe and exercise his aching muscles. Despite taking painkillers that had knocked him out pretty much instantly, he hadn’t slept well. For most of the night he’d thrashed about, his dreams filled with disjointed montages of his life on the streets as an adolescent, triggered by his continuing incredulity that he hadn’t noticed the theft of Carla’s handbag, the kind of dreams—or nightmares—that he hadn’t had for years.

  He wasn’t in the best of moods and his acute awareness of his unexpected house guest wasn’t helping. He didn’t have people to stay. He didn’t have people in his life full stop. He didn’t want them and he certainly didn’t need them. He might have thought he had once upon a time, and he might have thought he’d found the loyalty and family and sense of belonging he craved in the gang he’d joined when he was twelve, but he hadn’t. The moment those hopes and expectations had been crushed was the moment he’d realised that he was on his own, and that the only person he could truly count on was himself.

  All he needed to survive now was his isolation and his solitude, and he went to great lengths to protect them. It was the main reason he lived on an island in the lagoon instead of the sestieri. The fewer neighbours the better. He didn’t want people nosing about in his business. Even his housekeeper, who came three times a week, went home at the end of each day she was there. Should he feel the need to entertain, he did so in the city.

  This particular property of his might extend to fifty hectares, but Carla being in even a tiny part of it felt like a violation of his space, a further threat to his peace of mind, which was already in some turmoil. Her constant but unwelcome presence in his thoughts was frustrating. As if his dreams about his youth hadn’t been disturbing enough on their own, up she’d popped in a number of them, teasing him with the spikiness that he found perversely attractive and tempting him to behave in a way that might be worth suffering a few aches and pains for.

  Everything about the whole situation that he now found himself in was immensely irritating, and the realisation he’d come to mid-swim an hour ago made it additionally so. One unforeseen consequence of his reluctant chivalry was that if he wanted Carla gone, and gone fast, which he did, he’d have to be the one to facilitate it. Overnight, the private nature of his island, which he’d always considered a definite positive, had become a serious negative. She had things to do that could only be done in the city and he’d have to take her, which, he was forced to acknowledge with a grind of his teeth, was perhaps another example of acting in haste and repenting at leisure.

  But he badly wanted his life back to the trouble-free, easy way it had been before he’d met Carla, before he’d seen the photo of Finn, before even the accident, and if that meant accompanying her every step of the way as she set about reclaiming what had been taken from her, to make sure she actually had the wherewithal to leave, then so be it.

  He could resist the temptation she posed, he assured himself grimly, aware of a sudden shift in the air and bracing himself before turning to find her standing in the doorway, wearing a yellow sundress and flip-flops, looking like sunshine, her hair wet from the shower he would not be imagining her in ever. He could retain his grip on his control and shut down his response to her. If he ruthlessly stuck to the plan and deployed his usual devil-may-care approach to life, the one that had been strangely absent during the last twenty-four hours, everything would be fine.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ he said, fixing a lazy smile to his face and sounding pleasingly unmoved by her appearance.

  ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you.’

  Far too late for that. ‘You aren’t. Come in.’

  ‘I had no idea of the time,’ she said, sliding her gaze to the clock on the wall above his head and giving a faint grimace as she stepped forward. ‘I’m still recovering from my trip to Hong Kong, jet lag is a bitch.’

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘That would be great, thank you.’

  She came to a stop on the other side of the vast kitchen island unit and hopped up onto a stool. Resolutely not noticing how the movement tightened her dress around her chest, Rico turned his attention to taking a pot off the stove and poured the contents into a tiny espresso mug, which he then handed to her across the expanse of marble.

  ‘Milk? Sugar?’

  ‘No, thanks.’ She took a sip and closed her eyes, while he watched her smile in satisfaction and for a moment forgot his name. ‘Oh, that is good,’ she said, which instantly had him imagining her breathing that exact same thing into his ear as he held her tight and moved inside her.

  ‘Help yourself to brunch,’ he muttered, with a quick cough to clear the hint of hoarseness from his voice and the unacceptably vivid image from his head.

  ‘You cooked?’

  ‘I can.’ And well. Once upon a time, he’d sworn he would never go hungry again and he hadn’t. ‘However, today I merely assembled.’

  Getting a ruthless grip on the imagination that had never troubled him before, Rico turned to the section of counter top whe
re he’d been working and set about transferring plates of prosciutto and salami, mozzarella and Gorgonzola, and bowls of artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes and olives to the island. With ciabatta and focaccia, in hindsight, it was rather a lot for two people but, ‘I didn’t know what you’d like.’

  ‘I like it all,’ she said with an apologetic wince as her stomach rumbled loudly. ‘It looks delicious.’

  She looked delicious, was the thought that shot into his head before he could stop it, and he wanted to devour her. ‘Take a plate.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She did as he’d suggested and began filling it, only to pause a moment later. ‘You know...’ she said, then stopped.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She gave her head a quick shake, as if to clear it, and said instead, ‘Thank you for putting me up last night.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘I’ll be out of your hair just as soon as I can.’

  The sooner the better, because what if, contrary to his expectations, he couldn’t keep a lid on the attraction that instead of fading only seemed to be getting worse? What if he succumbed and lowered his defences and she went in for the kill? It didn’t bear thinking about. ‘I will help.’

  ‘I can manage,’ she said, flashing him a smile of her own, one that didn’t quite reach her eyes and gave him the impression it was about as genuine as his.

  ‘I don’t doubt it.’

  ‘So that’s settled, then.’

  If only. ‘Not quite.’

  Her green gaze narrowed slightly. ‘How so?’

  ‘Do you have any idea where you actually are?’ he asked, thinking obviously not, judging by the faint frown that appeared on her forehead.

  ‘Enlighten me.’

  ‘Isola Santa Margherita.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘My island.’

  She lowered the spoon she’d been using to her plate and stared at him. ‘Your island.’