She reached for her glass, but the clamp of his hand over hers stopped her. Actually, it did more than stop her—it made her skin suddenly feel as if it had developed a million new nerve endings she hadn’t realised existed. It made her glance down at his olive fingers which contrasted against the paleness of her own hand and to think how perfect their entwined flesh appeared. Dizzily, she lifted her gaze to his.
‘Don’t,’ he said softly. ‘A woman blushing is a rare and delightful sight and men like it. So don’t hide it and don’t be ashamed. And—just for the record—if you drink more alcohol to try to hide your embarrassment, you’re only going to make it worse.’
‘So you’re an expert on blushing as well as being an authority on female conversation?’ she said, aware that his hand was still lying on top of hers and that it was making her long for the kind of things she knew she was never going to get. But she made no attempt to move her own from underneath and wondered if he’d noticed.
‘I’m an expert on a lot of things.’
‘But not modesty, I suspect?’
‘No,’ he conceded. ‘Modesty isn’t my strong point.’
The silence which fell between them was broken by the sound of screaming on the other side of the terminal and Willow glanced across to see a child bashing his little fists against his mother’s thighs. But the mother was completely ignoring him as she chatted on her cell phone and the little boy’s hysteria grew and grew. Just talk to him, thought Willow fiercely, wondering why some people even bothered having children. Why they treated the gift of birth so lightly.
But then she noticed that Blue Eyes was glancing at his watch and suddenly she realised she was missing her opportunity to prolong this conversation for as long as possible. Because wouldn’t it be great to go home with the feeling of having broken out of her perpetual shyness for once? To be able to answer the inevitable question, So, any men in your life these days, Willow? with something other than a bright, false smile while she tried to make light of her essentially lonely life, before changing the subject.
So ask him his name. Stop being so tongue-tied and awkward.
‘What’s your name?’ asked Willow, almost as if it was an afterthought—but she forced herself to pull her hand away from his. To break that delicious contact before he did.
‘Dante.’
‘Just Dante?’ she questioned when he didn’t elaborate further.
‘Di Sione,’ he added, and Willow wondered if she’d imagined the faint note of reluctance as he told her.
Dante took a sip of his beer and waited. The world was small, yes—but it was also fractured. There were whole groups of people who lived parallel existences to him and it was possible that this well-spoken young Englishwoman who blushed like a maiden aunt wouldn’t have heard of his notorious family. She’d probably never slept with his twin brother or bumped into any of his other screwed-up siblings along the way. His heart grew cold as he thought about his twin, but he pushed the feeling away with a ruthlessness which came easily to him. And still he waited, in case the soft grey eyes of his companion suddenly widened in recognition. But they didn’t. She was just looking at him in a way which made him want to lean over and kiss her.
‘I’m trying to imagine what you’re expecting my response to be,’ she said, a smile nudging the edges of her lips. ‘So I’m not going to do the obvious thing of asking if your name is Italian when clearly it is. I’m just going to remark on what a lovely name it is. And it is. Di Sione. It makes me think of blue seas and terracotta roofs and those dark cypress trees which don’t seem to grow anywhere else in the world except in Italy,’ she said, her grey eyes filling with mischief. ‘There. Is that a satisfactory response—or was it predictable?’
There was a heartbeat of a pause before Dante answered. She was so unexpected, he thought. Like finding a shaded space in the middle of a sizzling courtyard. Like running cool water over your hot and dirty hands and seeing all the grime trickle away. ‘No, not especially predictable,’ he said. ‘But not satisfactory either.’
He leaned forward and as he did he could smell the tang of salt on her skin and wondered if she’d been swimming earlier that morning. He wondered what her body looked like beneath that all-enveloping shawl. What that blond hair would look like if it fell down over her bare skin. ‘The only satisfactory response I can think of right now is that I think you should lean forward and part your lips so that I can kiss you.’
Willow stared at him—shocked—as she felt the whisper of something unfamiliar sliding over her skin. Something which beckoned her with a tantalising finger. And before she had time to consider the wisdom of her action, she did exactly as he suggested. She extended her neck by a fraction and slowly parted her lips so that he could lean in to kiss her. She felt the brush of his mouth against hers as the tip of his tongue edged its way over her lips.
Was it the champagne she’d drunk, or just some bone-deep yearning which made her open her mouth a little wider? Or just the feeling of someone who’d been locked away from normal stuff for so long that she wanted to break free. She wanted to toss aside convention and not be treated like some delicate flower, as she had been all her life. She didn’t want to be Willow Hamilton right then. She wanted the famous fairy godmother to blast into the Caribbean airport in a cloud of glitter and to wave her wand and transform her, just as Willow had been transforming models for the past week.
She wanted her hair to stream like buttery silk down her back and for her skin to be instantly tanned, shown to advantage by some feminine yet sexy little dress whose apparent simplicity would be confounded by its astronomical price tag. She wanted her feet to be crammed into sky-high stilettos which still wouldn’t be enough to allow her to see eye to eye with this spectacular man, if they were both standing. But she didn’t want to be standing—and she didn’t want to be sitting on a bar stool either. She wanted to be lying on a big bed wearing very sexy underwear and for those olive fingers to be touching her flesh again—only this time in far more intimate spots as he slowly unclothed her.
All those thoughts rushed through her mind in just the time it took for her own tongue to flicker against his and Willow’s eyes suddenly snapped open—less in horror at the public spectacle she was making of herself with a man she’d only just met than with the realisation of what was echoing over the loudspeaker. It took a full five seconds before her befuddled brain could take in what the robotic voice was actually saying, and when it did, her heart sank.
‘That’s me. They’re calling my flight,’ she said breathlessly, reluctantly drawing her mouth away from his, still hypnotised by the blazing blue of his eyes. With an effort she got off the stool, registering the momentary weakness of her knees as she automatically patted her shoulder bag to check her passport and purse. She screwed up her face, trying to act like what had happened was no big deal. Trying to pretend that her breasts weren’t tingling beneath her pashmina and that she kissed total strangers in airports every day of the week. Trying not to hope that he’d spring to his feet and tell her he didn’t want her to go. But he didn’t.
‘Oh, heck,’ she croaked. ‘It’s the last call. I can’t believe I didn’t hear it.’
‘I think we both know very well why you didn’t hear it,’ he drawled.
But although his eyes glinted, Willow sensed that already he was mentally taking his leave of her and she told herself it was better this way. He was just a gorgeous man she’d flirted with at the airport—and there was no reason why she couldn’t do this kind of thing in the future, if she wanted to. It could be the springboard to a new and exciting life if she let it. That is, if she walked away now with her dignity and dreams intact. Better that than the inevitable alternative. The fumbled exchange of business cards and the insincere promises