“It’s not that bad, is it? It doesn’t hurt.” She ran light fingers over the indents while her rib cage expanded and her body relaxed into softer lines. “I’m fine,” she dismissed on a long, easy sigh. “It was just a little tight.”
“A little?” Appalled, he traced each mark, ensuring they were superficial enough to fade.
Her spine made a subtle arch under his touch. Goose bumps rose across her flexing shoulder blades. Her reaction was so immediate and honest it sent a sexual zing through him, enticing him to slow his stroking into a deliberate caress. He recalled that her skin tasted exactly as smooth and creamy as it looked. The desire to bend and press kisses to her neck and shoulder until she moaned with need nearly overtook him.
He forced himself to stand so he couldn’t touch her, mind reeling at how close a call that was. His body was shaking and his blood sizzling. “Why would you wear something so dangerous?” he charged.
“Dangerous?” she repeated with a gurgle of humor. She rolled onto her back, hugging the loose front of the dress to breasts that remained invitingly plump against the amethyst edging. “Since when are gowns deadly?”
Her smile invited him to join her in laughing at absurdity. Part of him wanted to let it happen. When she forgot to be shy, she was quite animated and fun.
And sensual. Her eyes grew languorous as she gazed up at him. Her color was flowing back in a warm glow.
“Shoes are regular serial killers, but dresses are harmless,” she teased.
He couldn’t help the twitch of humor at the corner of his mouth. “I’ve seen dresses short enough to take a man down. Whiplash is a common occurrence.”
Her smile grew. “I nearly died of embarrassment in a bathing suit once. True story.”
“I would say nothing is safe, but that’s probably riskiest of all.”
He’d taken it too far, his voice lowering to an intimate tone as he pictured her naked. The irrepressible attraction between them rose like a ring of spitting fire, urging him to move closer to her. It took everything in him not to lower onto her and do exactly what he’d done the last time he’d been alone with her. They’d been completely naked, nothing between them, nothing.
And it had been so wrong.
He curled his hands into fists, refusing to let himself absorb the implications. “This isn’t funny, Lauren. None of this is the least bit funny.”
Her mouth flinched in startled hurt at his return to recrimination. She threw her arm over her eyes to block him out and started to say, “I know, I’m s—” but flattened her lips to stop herself. “I was nervous, so I didn’t eat. That’s why I fainted.”
“That was stupid!” His alarm for her climbed into the rafters. “I’ll order something. Are you on a special diet?” He was across the room with the hotel phone in his hand before her plea stopped him.
“Paolo, don’t. Not here. Not like this.” She lowered her arm to reveal a disturbingly unguarded expression and nodded at her state of undress. She wasn’t taking this as lightly as she seemed. “Just pour me a glass of soda. Something with sugar, but no caffeine. And maybe a banana or one of those oranges? Then I’ll go back to my room and have a proper meal sent up.”
He fetched what she’d asked for, assembling her micro-meal on the coffee table then standing by as she carefully sat up.
The intensity of his tension struck him. He watched her pour and sip with a silent will for her to consume faster, like this was anti-venom she was taking in and her survival vitally important to him. The reality was, they were acquaintances through her husband. He didn’t know her well at all and couldn’t afford to trust her no matter how attracted to him she acted or how vulnerable she seemed.
From day one she had thrown out those conflicting signals, seeming interested yet always turning to Ryan. She wasn’t the first woman to feed her ego by using one man’s attention to make another jealous, but she was the only one who had managed to both draw Paolo in and incite his green monster. Paolo refused to be treated as a plaything. It made him all the more certain she was setting him up in some way.
“You need to get back to your party,” she murmured, carrying the icy glass of soda to her temple.
“No one will miss me,” he countered, even though he was distantly aware of the same thing.
“Isabella will,” she admonished. Then, keeping her face averted, asked, “Are you going to marry her?”
He hesitated. This news of Lauren’s was more than even his lightning mind could process quickly, but he couldn’t turn his life upside down without thinking it through. It would be humiliating to believe her and discover he’d been tricked again. Best to stay the course until he had better evidence for a correction.
“It would be a good match,” he said, hammering Isabella’s top qualities for both their benefits. “Her father is at the UN, her mother works with an international aid organization. Isabella understands life on the stage of global politics. Yes, I intend to marry her.”
Lauren made a noise of acknowledgment that almost sounded like the gasp from an absorbed blow.
Her reaction inexplicably caused invisible wires to pull him tighter than his tension already had him. A pike of misgiving speared through him and he instinctively wanted to rethink everything he’d just said.
It was exactly the turmoil he wouldn’t allow her to put him through. He brushed aside the detour into self-doubt as she spoke again.
“I didn’t hear anything about love. That was the problem with your first marriage, wasn’t it?” She kept her attention on the orange she was separating into sections, holding it well away from her gown.
He stared at the top of her head, willing her to look up at him and dare to say that. At the same time, his gut twisted with guilt. It was true, he’d had very little affection for his ex, but she’d still managed to devastate him. It was one reason he was determined to pin his future on Isabella and not a woman he truly loved. To be betrayed was one thing, to love and be betrayed would be impossible to bear.
“Love is for fools,” he muttered.
With a snort of cynicism, Lauren chortled, “Ain’t that the truth.”
Hearing her echo the sentiment irritated him. The way she had turned to him in Charleston had proved to him she wasn’t as devoted to Ryan as she’d portrayed through her marriage. This was further evidence she had scorned a man who had worshipped her.
“I guess that makes Ryan a fool, marrying for love,” Paolo said scathingly.
“Are you serious?” Her amber gaze flashed up like a splash of bourbon, stinging with hot-cold. “If he loved me so much, why did he spend all his time on the other side of the world taking insane chances with his life? He married me because I was raised to wait until I had a ring on my finger and he wanted bragging rights.”
“A clever ploy on your part, seeing as his family is quite well off,” he shot back, while a flash of Ryan’s smug victor’s grin hit him square between the eyes. There could be some truth to her claim. He had another suspicion about his friend’s motives, one that was even less complimentary. They had always been competitive with each other, he and Ryan. It was usually good-natured, but there were times it had been cutthroat and Ryan had been in no doubt that Paolo found Lauren attractive.
No doubt.
“It wasn’t a ploy, it’s the truth,” Lauren bit out defensively, pulling Paolo’s thoughts from a dark place he rarely visited.
It was a place of bitterness he barely understood because he never examined it, but it filled