It jetted towards her eyes and the shock made her handbag slip from her fingers. She was aware of her gondolier shouting something furiously, and when she opened her eyes again she could see the zigzag of foam left in the wake of a small speedboat.
And the man with the dark hair.
He was standing on the shore right next to her, holding his hand out, and despite the look of icy anger on his face some instinct made her take it, losing herself immediately in the warmth of his firm grasp.
‘Why the hell can’t people control the machines they’re supposed to be in charge of?’ he said, in a voice as coolly beautiful as his face. He gave a brief, hard stare at the retreating spray of the boat, then narrowed his eyes as he looked down at the shivering woman whose fingernails were gripping painfully into the palm of his hand. Her face was so white that it looked almost translucent, and he felt a strange kick to his heart. ‘You are English?’
Up close, he was even more devastating. Breathtakingly so. Awareness shimmered over her skin like fingertips. ‘Y-y-yes, I am,’ she replied, from between chattering teeth. ‘How c-c-could you tell?’
He carried on holding her hand until he was certain that she was grounded. ‘Because pale women with freckles and strawberry-blonde hair look quintessentially English, that’s why,’ he answered slowly as he allowed his eyes to drift irresistibly over her. ‘And you’re soaking.’
Sabrina looked down at herself, and saw that he wasn’t exaggerating. She was wet right through—her T-shirt stained with dirty lagoon water, the pinpoint thrust of her nipples emphasising her plummeting body temperature as much as the chattering of her teeth.
‘Not to mention freezing.’ He swallowed as he followed the direction of her eyes, tempted to make a flippant joke about wet T-shirt competitions, then deciding against it. Not his scene to make remarks like that to a complete stranger.
Sabrina suddenly realised what was missing. ‘Oh, my goodness—I’ve dropped my handbag!’ she wailed.
‘Where?’
‘In the w-water. And it’s got my purse in it!’
He went to peer over the edge of the lagoon, but the dark waters had claimed it.
‘Don’t!’ Sabrina called, terrified that he would just disappear again, exit from her life for ever.
He turned round with a look of mystification. ‘Don’t what?’
‘D-don’t t-t-try and retrieve it!’
‘You think I’m about to dive into the canal to hunt around for your handbag?’ He smiled again. ‘Princess, I’m not that much of a hero!’ But the smile died on his lips as he saw that the edges of her mouth were turning a very pale blue. ‘You know,’ he observed slowly, unable to look away from the ice-blue dazzle of her eyes, ‘you’re really going to have to get out of those wet clothes before you catch pneumonia!’
The intimacy of his remark drove every sane response clean out of her mind. Sabrina opened her mouth, then chattered it shut again.
Guy frowned. He couldn’t believe he’d said that. Crass, or what? ‘Where are you staying?’
‘M-m-miles away.’ Naturally. Rooms this close to St Mark’s Square tended to be beyond the reach of anyone other than your average millionaire.
Guy’s mouth hardened as he read the unconscious appeal in her eyes. Pity she hadn’t mentioned that before the gondola had sped away. If the driver hadn’t been flirting with her quite so outrageously, then he might have been able to warn her about the speedboat in time. And the least he could have done to recompense would have been to give her a free ride back to her hotel.
Which left it up to him.
He had achieved what he had set out to do in Venice—had purchased a superb Italian old master for one of his more demanding clients. The price he had bartered had been better than expected and his client would be pleased.
He had planned a quiet day. Playing knight in shining armour hadn’t been top of his agenda. But responsibility was etched deep into Guy’s personality. He looked down into her heart-shaped face, and felt his heart kick-start again. She really was very beautiful…‘You can’t possibly travel home in that state, but you can clean up at my hotel if you like—it’s just around the corner.’
‘Your hotel?’ Sabrina swallowed, guiltily remembering the way she had been unable to tear her eyes away from him on the lagoon. She’d been certain that he hadn’t seen her—but what if he had? And what if he’d then imagined that she was the kind of woman who allowed herself to be picked up in the most casual manner possible and taken back for a so-called siesta? ‘I don’t even know you—and I’m not in the habit of going back to strange men’s hotel rooms!’
Guy’s eyes glittered with unconcealed irritation. He was offering to do her a favour—did she really think that he was after something else? Desperate enough to make a pass at someone he didn’t even know?
He supposed that he could have shrugged and said fine and walked away, but something about her defensive stance struck at his conscience. He forced his mouth into a smile. ‘Then how about I introduce myself so I’m no longer a stranger?’ He held his hand out. ‘Guy Masters,’ he said softly.
Something in the way he said it struck at Sabrina’s heart like a hammer blow, as though she had been waiting all her life to hear just that name spoken aloud. She felt his hand still warming her frozen fingers, his grey eyes sending their icy light across her face, and tiptoes of some unknown emotion began to tingle their way up her spine. ‘S-Sabrina Cooper,’ she stumbled.
‘Well, you’ll be quite safe with me, Sabrina Cooper,’ he assured her gravely. ‘The alternative, of course, is that you travel halfway across Venice looking like that. It’s up to you—I’m only offering to help. Take it or leave it.’
His grey eyes didn’t stray from her face, which only seemed to reinforce where he wasn’t looking. And he didn’t really want to spell it out. That wet T-shirt did spectacularly draw the eye. Even if the sopping fabric was stretched over a pair of breasts which could in no way be described as voluptuous. On the contrary, he thought, they were small and neat and deliciously cuppable. She wouldn’t be safe travelling back on her own, looking as beautifully sexy as she did right now.
Sabrina hesitated. Surely a man who looked like Guy Masters would have no need of ulterior motives. ‘Why are you being so…?’
‘Chivalrous?’ he prompted, a cool fire dancing in his eyes. It amused him that she hadn’t seen fit to leap at his offer. That didn’t happen a lot, not these days. He shrugged. ‘Because you’re English, and so am I, and I have an over-developed sense of responsibility which just won’t seem to go away. You’re cold and wet and you’ve lost your purse. So what else can I do? Rip the clothes from my back in order to cover you up?’
She eyed the taut torso with alarm as her imagination gave her a disturbingly realistic picture of how he would look if he did remove that snowy-white T-shirt. What on earth was the matter with her? She had come to Venice in an attempt to make some sense of the tragedy which had transformed her life. And making sense of things did not involve feeling overwhelmingly attracted to men who had a dangerous air of inaccessibility about them.
‘Er, no.’ She swallowed. ‘That won’t be necessary. I’ll take up your offer of the bathroom. It’s very…sweet of you. Thank you.’ But ‘sweet’ did not seem an appropriate word to use about Guy Masters—he was far too elementally masculine for that.
‘Come this way,’ he said, and they began to walk through the narrow, dark streets of Venice with the slicking sounds of water all around them.
Sabrina felt the weight of heavy, wet denim chafing uncomfortably against her thighs. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to get my clothes dry.’
‘Don’t worry. The hotel will think of something.’ Hotels