‘Are you married?’ she asked impulsively.
‘No.’ Felipe moved his arm away from her touch and drained the last of his beer.
Her touch had felt too good for comfort.
‘Have you ever been married?’
‘No.’
‘Ever come close to getting married?’
‘No.’
‘Do you have a girlfriend?’
He sighed. His love life was not a discussion he wanted with Francesca.
He should have gone to bed a long time ago.
‘No. There’s no room in my life for a relationship.’
‘No room in your life? What a strange thing to say.’
Their Irish coffees were laid before them. Francesca popped two sugar cubes into hers and gave it a vigorous stir.
‘That spoils it,’ he reproached. ‘See? You’ve mixed the cream into it.’
‘I need the sweetness.’
She would taste sweet. His weak-willed imagination that couldn’t stop picturing her in that damned bikini was certain of it.
‘Why is there no room for you to have a relationship? Do you need a bigger house?’
He almost laughed at the wink she finished her question with. As the evening had progressed she’d relaxed, her antagonism towards him now but a memory. Francesca had proven to be fun company, far removed from the spoilt brat he’d assumed her to be.
He had to keep reminding himself that she was his client—a grieving, vulnerable client—and that he needed to keep his guard up. This wasn’t a date. It wouldn’t end with a nightcap in one of their suites followed by...
He refused to allow his mind to wander any further.
‘It’s my life as a whole. When my job with you is over I’m going back to the Middle East and then on to Russia. I run a business with three hundred employees. It takes a lot of management.’
‘Why does that stop you having a relationship?’
‘I doubt there’s a woman out there who would be happy with a man she went months at a time without seeing and weeks without any communication at all.’
‘Natasha and Pieta often went months without seeing each other,’ she pointed out. ‘It didn’t do them any harm and they were together for years.’
That’s what she thought.
But Felipe wouldn’t say anything negative about her brother when his coffin had only just been lowered into the ground. One day the truth he suspected—and he had no proof, only a gut instinct—about her brother would come out as the truth always did. He just hoped she was in the right mental space to cope with it when it did.
‘Pieta was a very different man to me and when I disappear it’s usually into danger. My business comes first. It has to. My men are deployed to the world’s most dangerous hotspots where situations are fluid. Every eventuality has to be catered for. A call can come in at any time for an evacuation.’
‘What if something were to go wrong with one of the jobs while you’re here dining with me?’ she asked reasonably.
He held his phone up. ‘This is a satellite phone. It’s standard military issue. All my men have one. They allow us to communicate with each other wherever we are in the world and the encryption means no one can hack them.’
‘So if one of your clients or men were to get into trouble right now, you’d sort it all out sitting here with me?’
‘My headquarters are manned twenty-four seven. There are protocols in place for every eventuality. But if anything untoward were to happen I’d be kept informed throughout.’ Situations happened all the time. It was the nature of the job. People needed his protection for very good reasons and they hired his firm because they were guaranteed the best. In the ten years since he’d formed the firm, no client had ever come to harm.
‘But if anything were to happen right now, you wouldn’t personally be involved with solving it,’ she persisted. ‘So if you have the staff in place to keep everything running during your absences, there’s nothing to stop you having a relationship.’
‘I’m only ever absent from headquarters when I’m on a job. Being the boss means having all the responsibility if anything goes wrong.’ He would not allow anything to go wrong.
Her eyes narrowed then began to dance. ‘You sound like a man making excuses. Has a woman broken your heart?’
‘No woman has ever got close.’ And no woman ever would. During his army career he’d been happy to play the field—many women loved a man in uniform. He’d watched friends and colleagues settle down and seen the pressure starting families had had on them, how it could affect their focus and priorities, and had decided to wait until he left the forces before finding someone to settle down with. Then his unit had been flown in to handle a hostage situation, his life had gone to hell and thoughts of a family destroyed with it. He was better off on his own. Solitude was what he’d grown up with, what he was used to. Safer.
He thought of Sergio. He thought of Sergio’s wife and unborn child. He thought about the hostages they’d been trying to save, half of whom hadn’t made it out alive. Sergio hadn’t made it out alive either, a memory that still had the power to sear him. His child was now a healthy nine-year-old growing up with a father he would only see in photographs.
Francesca didn’t say anything, just stared at him with those beguiling light brown eyes that seemed to drink him in...
Without warning, she got to her feet, her face breaking into a beaming smile. ‘I love this song! Let’s dance.’
The jazz band had finished their set and now a DJ was playing to the full crowd.
‘I don’t dance.’
‘Then I shall dance on my own.’ And with that she finished her coffee and glided to the dance floor, her shoulders and hips swaying to the music he vaguely recognised, her long ebony hair shimmering in the lights.
Without an ounce of self-consciousness, Francesca threw her arms in the air and began to dance. The joy on her face must have been infectious because a couple of women hurried onto the floor to join her, the three of them immediately dancing and singing together as if they’d known each other for years.
He should leave her on the dance floor and go to bed. He wasn’t her babysitter. His protection of her did not involve making sure she was safely tucked up at night. Judging by the animation on her face and in her body she’d found her second wind and wouldn’t be going to bed any time soon.
Felipe sighed and signalled to a passing waiter for another beer.
He couldn’t leave her.
And neither could he take his eyes from her.
He accepted his beer with a nod of thanks.
He sipped it slowly, watching her dance.
How could someone be so uninhibited? Did it come naturally to her or was it something she’d forced herself to be? He suspected it was the former, that this woman on the dance floor was the closest to the real Francesca he’d seen in their short time together.
It felt as if he’d been in her company for weeks.
She kept glancing at him, sometimes overtly, beckoning him with a finger to join her, to which he always shook his head.
Hell would freeze over before he’d dance with anyone, let alone Francesca Pellegrini. Watching her move and imagining her body flush against his own was enough torture to inflict on himself.
And