‘Is that what Linda told you?’ he queried, annoyed at being diverted by a pretty face, even for a second. Pretty? No, beautiful. Unique, he corrected before he could help himself. Amazing what happened, he thought, when joy captured your emotions.
Plainly crestfallen that he wasn’t six feet under, she nodded unhappily. ‘Last summer,’ she replied in a hoarse whisper. To his astonishment, he noticed that her hands were trembling. She swallowed, the slender line of her throat oddly vulnerable as she did so. ‘Linda sent a change of address,’ she continued. ‘That’s when she said you were dead and that she had come back to England with Lio.’
‘Linda was lying,’ he said curtly. ‘I’m very much alive. As you see.’
She stared at him hard, as if reassuring herself that he was, indeed, not a mirage. Beneath her solemn gaze, he drew himself up and stared back. Apparently she detected enough life to convince her because she gave a little shudder, almost a sexual response. Her shoulders fell in disappointment. He wondered why and was about to ask when she spoke again.
‘If I’d known you weren’t dead,’ she mumbled, her voice wobbling in distress, ‘I would have contacted you when… Oh!…’ Her hands flew to cover her mouth in alarm. ‘You know,’ she said, somewhat inaudibly, ‘that Linda herself is—?’
‘Dead. Yes.’ He brushed her apology and her tact aside with an impatient gesture. She looked shocked at his dismissal of his late wife’s death but the past was past, the present full of urgency. ‘I want to see my son. Now,’ he announced irritably.
‘Tough!’
He almost reeled back in shock. Something odd was happening here. ‘What did you say?’ he asked menacingly.
‘It’s impossible!’
With her extraordinary violet eyes flashing in challenge, she flung back her head, releasing a shower of water drops from her dripping hair. Intrigued, he noticed that tiny white flowers had been trapped in the tar-slick curls. Daisies. Very bohemian.
Her hands thumped belligerently down to her hips, drawing his gaze there. Incomparable, he thought with a start, his eyes and brain full of delicious curves. In other circumstances it would have been the body of his dreams. But he had something more important on his mind.
‘Because?’ he growled, eyes glittering with shards of white-hot fury.
She glared, as hostile as if he were the devil incarnate. ‘Because you can’t! Because I’m not going to let you!’
He froze, fearing that she’d say his son had disappeared. Drawing in a steadying breath he jerked out a husky, ‘And why the hell not?’
‘Because he’s asleep!’ she declared, defiant and ready for a pitched battle.
But her words were wonderful. The best news he could have had. Vittore’s eyes closed and his heart lurched wildly, every taut muscle unwinding as if by magic.
Lio was there! Thank you. Thank you, he thought fervently.
For a moment he couldn’t speak for emotion, but he knew he must persuade this ill-tempered vision to open the gate before she turned out to be a figment of his fevered imagination.
‘It doesn’t matter if he’s asleep or awake,’ he said shakily, his heart singing for joy. ‘I just want to see him. He’s my son!’ he cried passionately. ‘You can’t stop me. So open the gate at once!’
The curving red lips were bitten, one then the other, by the small, white teeth. Her face was a picture of misery, her entire body slumping in defeat and she shivered pathetically.
‘No. I’ve got to get dry,’ she mumbled, her eyes tragic. ‘I’m absolutely soaked—’
‘I’d noticed,’ he drawled. He wasn’t blind. His iced-over sexual responses had already made themselves known, much to his surprise. ‘Are you all right?’ he enquired, his innate thoughtfulness temporarily overriding his own agenda. ‘I heard a cry—’
‘That was me. I was startled to hear your name because you were dead. Or so I’d thought. I fell in the pool,’ she explained mournfully. ‘Swimming in a long dress when you’re exhausted isn’t the easiest activity in the world.’
There was a breathless silence while he followed her rueful glance at the dress, which seemed to have become an intimate part of her body. Every mound looked alluringly attainable.
Overcome, he pushed a hand over his forehead as his head swam with tiredness from travel, from expectation—or were those the stirrings of sexual desire?
Ruthlessly he restored some semblance of control. ‘I’ll take your word for it. I’ve never tried. So it’s my fault you’re wet?’ he queried, sounding more sardonic than he had intended.
She glared, piercing him with her pansy eyes, thick black lashes wet and spangled with tiny drops of water. He couldn’t stop the heat coursing through his veins. Maledizione! He felt shaken by her, as if he’d been hit by a truck. But of course, she was so vibrant, so alive, and his emotions were at fever pitch…
‘It certainly is!’ she retorted sharply. ‘So you’ll have to stay here while I go and change—’
‘Dio! What are you trying to do to me?’ he cried in astonishment. The thought of waiting a second longer had effectively reined in his wayward hormones. ‘This is ridiculous! Let me in now!’ he ordered indignantly.
‘No. You wait!’ she repeated in agitation.
‘The devil I will!’ he raged. ‘Surely you don’t intend to keep me hanging around out here, prowling up and down like a caged tiger, while you—’
‘I have to!’ she cried, clearly agitated. ‘I can’t risk you snatching Lio while I’m changing!’ she flung.
Vittore flinched with horror at such a barbaric idea. ‘Snatch? Why should I snatch what is mine?’ he demanded in outrage.
‘Yours? Oh, help!’ she muttered. ‘Where do I begin? I’m just protecting Lio—’
‘From his own father?’ he asked incredulously.
‘Yes!’ Her hand swept impatiently over her forehead. ‘Look—you must wait. I promise I’ll let you in as soon as I can. I’m a quick dresser. I just can’t risk…’ She fidgeted in agitation, artistic fingers twisting and writhing together. ‘There’s something you have to know—’
‘What? Why?’ he grated in helpless fury. ‘And what right do you have to deny me? Just who the devil are you?’
‘I’m Verity,’ she replied wearily. ‘Verity Fox. I was adopted by the Foxes, like Linda. I’m Lio’s guardian. Stay there. Won’t be a sec.’
With that, she spun around, untwisted her skirts impatiently and gathered them up to reveal long, tanned and bare legs, which suddenly leapt into action and took her around the back of the house again in a flash of shimmering gold and white, all topped off by that night-dark, bobbing hair.
He dragged his mind from this vision, realising he was being left to stew.
‘Come back!’ he shouted angrily. ‘Verity! Come back at once—!’
He was talking to thin air. He felt like bellowing in his frustration. A nanny or au pair would have been easier to deal with than this stunning, feisty woman with a knockout body and a mind of her own!
He pressed a hand to his forehead, feeling as if he’d been standing in the path of a hurricane. He thrummed with life, aroused by Verity’s extraordinary persona, fired too by the tantalising knowledge that his son slept peacefully a hundred metres or so away.
Patience, he told himself, trying to calm his agitated mind. Five minutes, ten, an hour…what did those minutes matter in the long run? Lio was in the house. He’d scoop him up in his arms