‘Oh.’ The word came out with just the right amount of disappointment, but Isabella wondered if the relief showed on her face. She also wondered who the friend was, as she quickly wiped a raindrop off her cheek.
Paulo watched the jerky little movement of her hand. She seemed nervous, he thought. Excessively nervous. Not a quality he had ever associated with Isabella. She could outshoot most men—and ride a horse with more grace than he had ever seen in another human being. He had watched her grow from child to woman—in the condensed, snap-shot way you did when you only saw someone once a year.
‘You’ll see him later. Come on—take off that wet raincoat. You’re shivering.’
She was shivering for a variety of reasons—and coldness was the least of them.
‘Th-thank you.’ She stood blinking beneath the glow of the artificial light which danced overhead, frozen by the strangeness of this new environment. And the fact that Paolo was standing next to her, still wearing next to nothing, a faint drift of lemon about him—as indolently at ease with his semi-naked state as if he had been wearing a three-piece suit.
With numb fingers, she began fumbling with the buttons of her coat and Paulo felt the strongest urge to unbutton it for her, as you would a child—except that the first lush glimpse of her T-shirted breasts reinforced the fact that she was anything but a child. And that if he didn’t put some decent clothes on in a minute…
‘I can’t believe you didn’t buy an umbrella, Bella?’ he teased, in an attempt to divert his uncomfortable thoughts. ‘Did nobody tell you that in England it rains and rains? And then it rains some more—even in summer!’
‘I thought I’d buy one when I got here, and then I…well, I forgot,’ she finished lamely, although an umbrella had been the very last thing on her mind. She had spent weeks and weeks just wearing her father down. Telling him that it was her life and her decision. And that lots of people of her age dropped out of university. She had told him that it wasn’t the end of the world, but the look on his face had told her otherwise. Isabella shivered. And he didn’t the know the half of it.
He felt the slight tremor in her body as he tugged the cuff of her jacket over her wrist and hung the garment on a peg above a radiator. ‘There. You’re dry underneath. Come into the sitting room.’
Reaction set in. He was letting her stay. Her teeth started to chatter but she clamped them shut. ‘Thank you.’
‘Need a towel for your hair?’ he asked, shooting her a quick glance. ‘Or maybe borrow a sweater?’
‘No. Honestly. I’ll be fine.’ But she didn’t feel fine. Her limbs felt stiff and icy as he led her along a wide, deep hallway and into a large, high-ceilinged room, its cool, classic lines made warmly informal by the pulsating colours he had chosen.
Isabella looked around her. It was a very Latino colour scheme.
The walls were painted a rich, burnt orange colour and deepest red and covered with vibrant pictures—there was one she instantly recognised as the work of an up-and-coming Brazilian painter. Two giant sofas were strewn with scatter cushions and a low table contained magazines and papers and a book about football. Dotted around the place were photographs of a young boy in various stages of growing up—Paulo’s son—and a black and white studio portrait of a cool, beautiful blonde, her pale shining hair held close to a little baby. And that, Isabella knew, was Elizabeth—Paulo’s wife.
‘Make yourself comfortable,’ he instructed, ‘while I get dressed and then I’ll make you some coffee—how does that sound?’
‘Coffee would be lovely,’ she replied automatically.
Paulo went back upstairs and into the bathroom to finish shaving and frowned at himself in the mirror. Something was different about her. Something. And not just that she’d put on a little weight. Something had changed. Something indefinable…And it was something more than the dramatic sexual flowering he had noticed a few short months ago. He moved the blade swiftly over the curved line of his jaw.
He had known her for ever. Their fathers had been friends—and the friendship had survived separation when Paulo’s father had eventually settled in England, the home of his new wife. Paulo had been born in Brazil, but had been brought to live in London at the age of six and his father had insisted he make an annual pilgrimage back to his homeland. It was a pilgrimage Paulo had carried on after the deaths of his parents and the birth of his own son.
Every year, just before Carnival erupted in a blaze of colour, he and Eduardo would travel to the Fernandes ranch for a couple of weeks and Paulo had seen Isabella grow up before his eyes.
He had watched with interest as the little girl had blossomed to embrace the whole spectrum of teenage behaviour. She had been stubborn and sassy and sulky, like all teenage girls. By seventeen she had begun to develop a soft, voluptuous beauty all of her own, but at seventeen she had still seemed so young. Certainly to him. Even at eighteen and nineteen she had seemed a different generation to a man who was, after all, a decade older, already widowed and with a young son of his own.
But something had happened to Isabella in her twentieth year. In the blinking of an eye, her sexuality had exploded into vibrant, throbbing life and Paulo had been touched by it; his senses had been scorched by it.
He had lifted her down from her horse and there had been a split-second of suspended movement as he held her in his arms. He had felt the indentation of her waist and the dampness of her shirt as it clung to her sweat-sheened skin. Their laughter had stilled and he had seen the suddening darkening of her pupils as she had looked into his eyes with a hunger which had matched his own.
Desire. Potent as any drug.
And his conscience had made him want no part of it.
He removed the towel from his hips, staring down at himself with flushed disbelief as he observed the first stirring of arousal. He scowled. Because that was the whole damned trouble with sexual attraction—once you’d felt it, you could never go back to how it was before. His easy, innocent relationship with Isabella had been annihilated in that one brief flash of desire. That was what was different.
His mouth twisted as he crumpled up the towel and hurled it with vicious accuracy into the linen basket, then gingerly stepped into a pair of silken boxer shorts.
Isabella wandered distractedly around the sitting room, going over in her head what she was going to say to him, forcing herself to be strong because only her strength would sustain her through this. ‘Paulo, I’m…’
No, she couldn’t come straight out with it. She would have to lead in with a casual yet suitably serious statement. No matter that deep down she felt like howling her heart out with shock and disbelief…because indulging her feelings at the moment would benefit no one. ‘Paulo, I need your help…’
She heard the jangle of cups and looked up, relieved to find that he had covered up with a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. On his chin sat a tiny, glistening bead of scarlet and it drew her attention like a magnet.
He saw the amber brilliance of her eyes as she stared at him and felt the dull pounding of his heart in response. ‘What is it?’ he asked huskily.
‘You’ve cut yourself,’ she whispered, and the bright sight of his blood seemed like a portent of what was to come.
Paulo frowned, lifting a fingertip to his chin. ‘Where?’
‘To the right. Yes. There.’
The finger brushed against the newly shaven surface and drew it away; he looked at it with a frown. Had his hand been shaking? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cut his face. ‘Right,’ he said, absently licking the