She rubbed her eyes. Maybe it was best to leave it a couple of days before telling him. She didn’t think she could handle any more rebukes that day. But Felipe was bound to tell him...
She could scream. What a mess she’d made of things.
Had she really? She’d gone to Caballeros to get the Governor’s agreement and had achieved it. The hospital would be built. And she understood the foundation had paid bribes in the past. She just needed to speak to Alberto and discuss how it could be done without endangering the foundation. Or her career.
Knowing her emotions were too charged to think clearly enough to make any further calls, she selected a bottle of white wine from the fully stocked bar, poured herself a large glass and took it into the bathroom so she could have a long soak in the enormous jetted bath.
It was too late to change hotels now. She might as well enjoy it for tonight and see about getting them moved to a cheaper hotel in the morning.
But instead of relaxing like she so wanted, her mind refused to switch off. Everywhere she looked, from the gold taps to the marble flooring, increased her worry. This hotel was too much.
With a sigh, she got out and dried herself, dressed quickly and put a call through to reception.
‘Can you tell me what room Felipe Lorenzi’s staying in, please?’ she asked. ‘We’re under the same booking but I can’t remember his number.’ She crossed her fingers as she gave the little fib.
When the number was relayed she gave a little start. ‘Room fourteen?’ she confirmed.
That was right next to hers.
Her heart hammering for no reason at all, Francesca decided to just go for it and slipped out of her room to knock on the one next door.
He answered on the second knock, opening the door a crack. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘Can I come in for a minute?’ she asked, matching his frosty tone. All she could see of him was the shadow of his face.
He paused before answering. ‘I’m about to take a shower.’
‘I want to change hotels.’
‘Why?’
‘A hotel like this is expensive.’
‘The cost of the hotel does not concern you.’
‘It does. People work hard to raise funds for Pieta’s foundation and give generously to it.’
‘Do they give generously to pay bribes?’
‘That’s a necessity,’ she protested. ‘I know I went about it in the wrong way but you know as well as I that we wouldn’t get permission to build the hospital without it. It isn’t right to waste the funds on something as frivolous as a luxury hotel. Somewhere like where James and Seb are staying would be far more appropriate.’
The little of his face she could see darkened and when he replied it was in clipped tones. ‘The foundation isn’t paying.’
That alarmed her. ‘Then who is? I can’t afford it on my salary and I can’t—’
‘You’re not paying either,’ he cut in impatiently.
‘Who is footing it?’ It came to her in an instant. ‘Daniele! He loves flashing his money and—’
‘Was there anything else you wanted to discuss?’ Felipe cut in again, not making any attempt to hide his irritation. ‘Only I’m standing here without any clothes on and would like to take my shower, so if you don’t mind...’
Francesca was unable to halt the mental image of him naked shooting like a spring lamb into her mind.
Oh, dear heavens...
He was naked.
‘Was there anything else?’ he repeated curtly.
He was naked.
‘No.’
‘Then I’ll see you on Monday.’
Francesca stood before his closed door for a long time, her hand at her throat, her pulse beating like a hummingbird’s wings beneath her fingers.
* * *
Felipe shaved his neck and trimmed his beard for the first time in three weeks.
It was guilt, he knew, that made his concentration waver enough for him to nick himself with the razor.
Guilt had been rising in him since he’d dismissed Francesca from the door of his suite.
He’d never had such problems with a client before and he’d had many clients and jobs that had been a hundred times harder to manage than Francesca and this particular job. His last job in the forces had been a thousand times harder.
No, this was him. Like it or not, he damned well was attracted to her and somehow he had to find a way to manage it without letting it affect their working relationship. It already was affecting it. Affecting him.
He expected his clients to obey him and his men without question. It was in the terms of any contract. Clients signed it knowing their lives were being placed in his hands. His clients, though, were, on the whole, heads of international organisations and other VIPs, the only common denominator between them being that they were travelling somewhere dangerous.
He had drilled it into his men that they were only employed for protection. They were not advisors or aides. Their client’s business was not theirs.
The risks Francesca was taking by agreeing to pay the bribe were none of his concern and she was correct that Pieta himself had paid them, although with far more discretion than she’d employed. Felipe had turned a blind eye to much worse before and had no doubt he would turn a blind eye to much worse in the future.
He couldn’t fathom why it angered him so much to see her taking the kind of risks that had never concerned him from anyone else.
She’d turned up at his door while he’d been buck naked, her long hair damp, her beautiful face free from make-up, a long blue summer dress on with her pretty toes peeking out at the bottom and a hint of cleavage showing...
He’d become aroused just looking at her. He’d had to grip the door handle with one hand and press the wall tightly with the other to stop himself pulling her into his room and throwing her onto the bed.
This had only fired the anger already coursing through him.
After he’d closed the door he’d stood there for too long, not moving, just trying to quell his arousal, trying to ignore that her suite was adjacent to his.
A day off from her would be a blessing, especially as their time together had been extended to a whole week. He had to remember she was grieving and that grief made people act in wayward ways. She needed his help and support, not his condemnation and anger.
But God alone knew how he was going to cope with a week of her company without either throttling her or bedding her.
* * *
The early morning was so bright that one peek through the curtains lifted a little of the despondency in Francesca’s heart. The hotel’s ground staff were already up and about, weeding and watering the abundant blooming flowers, hosing the pathways, many yawning.
She yawned in sympathy but didn’t consider going back to bed. More sleep was the last thing she wanted. Sleep brought dreams and the ones she’d had during the night were still horribly vivid. Pieta had been sitting at the small kitchen table in her apartment in Pisa. She’d made him a coffee and laughed as she’d told him she’d thought he’d died. He’d laughed too and said it had been a misunderstanding. And then he’d stopped laughing and said he knew the truth about how she’d reacted when told he’d died.
She’d awoken muttering into her sopping wet pillow that she was sorry, sorry, sorry, over and over.
For some reason Felipe had been in the background of those dreams too.
She wiped fresh tears away with the palm of her hand.
She needed to get a grip on herself and get her head back to where it had been before she’d fallen asleep with her face buried in the thick file Alberto had given her before she’d left Pisa. She’d sat on the huge bed to re-read it, determined that from now on all her actions would be above board. She would be prepared f
or any situation that came her way. She would not do anything else that could jeopardise her career or Pieta’s foundation.
After dressing she made her way to the main hotel restaurant, where she was the first to be seated for breakfast. She didn’t want to be on her own. She’d ordered room service the night before and stayed in her suite. Now she craved company.
There was no company to be found here, though. All the other guests were still sleeping. Even if they’d been up she would still have been alone. This wasn’t a hotel for the solo traveller.
There was one other solo traveller staying here too, she reminded herself glumly, but he didn’t want her company. He didn’t even like her, that much was patently obvious.
And she didn’t like him. The less she had to do with Felipe Lorenzi the happier she’d be and today she didn’t have to deal with him at all.
She managed to avoid him until early afternoon.
She’d returned to her suite to start calling the names of the officials she’d need to meet for the hospital development. Half the numbers were either wrong or their phone lines had been disconnected by the hurricane. The others were, as Felipe had predicted, taking a day of rest and had no wish to speak to her, telling her to call back tomorrow. Only the Blue Train Aid Agency, the only aid agency to be up and running in Caballeros, had been available to talk. The worker she spoke to, Eva Bergen, had been full of enthusiasm for the project and readily agreed to meet her the next day. Eva’s experience in the country would be tremendously useful and Francesca ended the call feeling much better about everything. So much better that she decided to buy a swimsuit from one of the hotel’s exclusive boutiques and go for a swim.
There were four pools to choose from. Opting for the huge rectangular one, she swam a few laps then settled on a sun lounger with her book, shades on to keep the glare of the sun from her eyes.
But she couldn’t settle. The words on the page blurred into a mass as she found her thoughts constantly drifting, not to the forthcoming week and everything it entailed but to her protector. In truth he’d been in her thoughts constantly.
She was glad of the book, though, when she spotted the tall figure in the tight black swim-shorts walk to the other side of the pool to where she lay, a towel slung over his shoulder.
If she wasn’t already on hyper-alert to any sign of him she would still have noticed him. She doubted there was a woman poolside whose eye he didn’t catch, young and old alike.
Quickly she raised her book so it covered her face, hoping it was enough to hide her.
Please don’t let him see her.
The next time she faced him she wanted to be fully dressed and feeling confident in herself, not wearing a two-piece swimsuit that would put her at a further disadvantage.
Like it or not, she was stuck with him for the coming week and had no idea how she was going to get through it without slapping his arrogant, handsome face.
Pretending to be engrossed in her novel, she couldn’t resist a surreptitious glance and found him at the edge of the pool, testing the temperature of the water with his toes.
Even with the distance between them his muscular beauty made her breath catch in her throat. All thoughts of hiding disappeared as she drank in the magnificence Felipe’s clothing had only hinted at.
His darkly tanned skin gleamed under the bright afternoon sun, his chest broad and muscular, a light smattering of hair across the pecs thickening the lower they went over an abdomen she just knew would be hard to the touch.
With a grace that belied his size and muscularity, he dived in.
She heard the distinct sound of a woman sucking in a breath. It took a few beats to realise the sound had come from her.
His arms powered him to the far side then he rolled in the water and swam fluidly back.
Back and forth he went, streaking through the pool as if he’d been born to water, born to swim.
She couldn’t tear her eyes from him. It was as if she’d been hypnotised.
She lost count of how many laps he swam before hauling himself out.
The ache that had steadily formed while she’d watched turned into a throb to see water drip from his body and she almost forgot she was trying to hide from him.
Shoving her book back over her face, she closed her eyes and took some long breaths in an attempt to get her heart rate back to one that didn’t make her fear it would beat out of her chest.
Only when she opened her eyes again did she notice she was holding her book upside down. When she next peeked over it, Felipe had gone.
* * *
Fifty laps of the swimming pool and Felipe still felt wired.
Eight years in the forces had taught him to snatch sleep wherever he could. He’d slept without any problem leaning against jagged rocks, under prickly shrubs, in trenches of mud, with gun fire ringing in the distance, yet put him in a four-poster bed in a sweet-scented suite for a power nap and sleep remained stubborn. It had been stubborn all night.
It was that damned woman in the suite next door who was the cause of it.
He’d spent the morning working out tactics for the next few days, sending his plans over to James and Seb and his men situated on Caballeros.
He would feel better if he knew what those men who’d followed them had wanted but they’d proved harder to find than sleep.
Two more of his men were, at that moment, en route to Caballeros. When he returned there with Francesca in the morning there would be eyes and ears everywhere, keeping watch. Keeping her safe.
Felipe rubbed his eyes, sighed and swung his legs off the bed.
The guilt at his anger towards her had grown and his self-chastisement with it.
Control and discipline were the two most important elements needed for his job. He’d learned both in the forces and had carried it through to his business. He demanded the men he employed have the same qualities. When danger was rife, keeping a cool head was a necessity even when, as he’d learned to his bitter cost, it wasn’t always enough.
He’d lost that cool head with Francesca.
He’d overstepped the mark. He would have to apologise. That had been his intention before he’d left his suite for a swim. He would do his fifty laps then seek her out and apologise.
She’d been at the poolside. He’d seen her the moment he’d stepped onto the tiles surrounding the pool, spotting her as she pulled a book over her face, pretending not to have seen him.
He’d swum his lengths with more vigour than usual, pounding the water as if the strokes could sweep away the image of Francesca on a recliner wearing nothing but a tiny pale yellow bikini.
Dios, she had curves that could make a man weep.
He’d sensed her watching his every stroke.
When he’d finished, he hadn’t been able to resist another look while he’d dried himself. She’d been holding her book over her face again.
With the tell-tale tingles of arousal curling through his loins, he’d beaten a hasty retreat back to his suite and taken a cool shower.
Apologising could wait.
He couldn’t entertain the thought of knocking on her suite door. That would be putting temptation in his path when he needed to divert around it.
It was standard practice to sleep in the adjacent room to the client. He’d arranged with the hotel manager to beef up the hotel’s already tight security, the memory of the black Mondeo that had followed them hovering in the background of his mind a constant presence. Here, in this hotel, Francesca was safe. But not safe enough for him to contemplate changing suites to one on the other side of the complex, even though his every sinew strained to run.
Not wanting to be stuck with his own morose company and already bored with room service, he donned a pair of smart black chinos and a grey shirt, and decided to check out one of the hotel’s many
restaurants.
There were half a dozen eateries to choose from. The only one that appealed was the Mediterranean Restaurant and Bar, which seemed the most informal of them and promised live music.
If he could have chosen anywhere he would have found an American diner and eaten the largest burger on the menu but he didn’t want to drive. He wanted to surround himself with people, eat and then sleep.
The restaurant was busy. A bar covered one wall while a small stage and dance area was set up on the wall opposite.
A waiter led him to an available table and as they went through the room Felipe spotted a lone figure sitting at a table tucked away in the corner, reading a menu.
His heart managed to sink and leap at the same moment, and in that same moment Francesca gazed absently around the room and found him. There was one quick blink before she put her head back down.
He rubbed the back of his neck. At the pool it had been easy for them both to pretend they hadn’t see each other but now there was no avoiding her.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘DO YOU WANT some company?’ Felipe asked when he reached her. She wore a pretty floral dress with tiny straps. He caught a glimpse of thigh.
Francesca eyed him warily then gave a small nod.
He took the chair the waiter held out for him and sat down, noting the tall multi-coloured cocktail glass with an umbrella and straw in it. ‘What are you drinking?’
‘Tequila Sunrise. Do you want one?’
‘I’ll stick to beer. Have you ordered?’
‘I’m still making my mind up.’
The waiter scuttled off to get Felipe’s beer.
Opening his menu, he watched Francesca studiously read hers, her teeth gnawing at her bottom lip.
‘Have you had a good day?’ he asked conversationally.
She shrugged but didn’t look at him, reaching for her drink with a hand that shook. ‘I’ve had worse.’ She took a long drink through the straw.
‘This isn’t an easy time for you,’ he observed, knowing it to be an understatement. She’d buried her brother only a few days before.
Her shoulders rose in another shrug and to his horror he watched her blink frantically in an attempt to hold back glistening tears.
Protecting His Defiant Innocent Page 5
