So she found herself recounting the one painful event in her life she’d sworn never to revisit again. ‘Not once they found out I was pregnant by a man whose last name I didn’t even know. Both my mother and father came from broken homes. They were estranged from their parents by the time I grew up. I know they hadn’t planned on getting married, but they did because my mother fell pregnant with me. When I in turn got pregnant, the confirmation that the apple truly didn’t fall far from the tree was too much for them to stomach.’ The words fell from her lips in sharp bursts, the pain she’d smothered away in her heart rising to stab her once again.
She chanced a glance at Romeo and saw that he had frozen, his face a taut, forbidding mask.
‘So they severed ties with you?’ he asked in a chilling voice.
‘Not exactly. But they had views on how to bring up Lucca that I didn’t welcome.’
‘What views?’
‘They wanted me to put him in the care of nannies to start, and then boarding school when he was four—’
Romeo’s curse stemmed the flow of her narrative. ‘So he wouldn’t get in the way of your career?’ he bit out.
‘Yes,’ she replied, her throat painful with the admission that no matter what she achieved, she wouldn’t be worthy in her parents’ eyes.
His breath hissed out in pure rage. ‘Madonna mia,’ he sliced out, his nostrils flaring as he struggled to control himself. ‘Did you consider it?’ he asked with a narrow-eyed stare.
‘No. I gave up my job, enrolled in a gourmet cooking course, then moved to Ranelagh to open the restaurant.’
A morose silence fell over the table, their half-eaten meal growing cold as the sharp cries of cicadas pierced the night.
‘This wasn’t how I planned this evening unfolding,’ Romeo said several minutes later after he’d refilled her glass.
Maisie laughed self-deprecatingly, that buzz in her veins somehow making the pain throbbing in her chest sharper. She was sure it was light-headedness that made her enquire breezily, ‘So how had you planned this evening going, then?’
He didn’t answer for a long time. Then he stood, tall, imposing, breathtaking. ‘Come, we’ll walk on the beach for a while.’ He grabbed his glass and the half-finished bottle in one hand and held out his other. ‘Let the night air wash away unpalatable memories.’
Maisie knew she ought to refuse, that the alcohol swirling through her bloodstream would inhibit any rational decisions she needed to make.
And yet she found herself sliding her hand into his, rising to her feet and discarding her shoes when he instructed her to.
The walk to the beach was lazy, the sultry night air and soft ukulele-threaded music emerging from hidden speakers seeming to slow everything down to a heavy, sensual, irresistible tempo.
He let go of her hand when they reached the sand, filled their glasses with the last of the champagne, then walked a few feet away to dispose of the bottle.
Toes curling in the warm sand, she strolled to the water’s edge, laughing softly when the cool water splashed over her feet.
For a single moment, Maisie dared to wonder how it would be to be in this place with the man of her dreams under different circumstances; if she’d been on a real honeymoon, not a desperate attempt to thwart a wizened old thug’s threats.
The path her parents had set her on as a child hadn’t left much room for dreaming. She’d been too busy trying to earn their love, to make herself worthy of their acceptance, to entertain such flights of fancy.
But she was a grown woman now, and surely there was nothing wrong with letting her imagination run wild for a few minutes, in letting her senses be overwhelmed by this beautiful place, this breathtaking man beside her?
She drained her second glass and didn’t protest when Romeo took it away, then returned to stand behind her. Her breath shuddered out when he slid his hands over her shoulders and started a gentle massage of the tension-knotted muscles.
‘What are you doing, Romeo?’ she asked shakily after several minutes, when she started to melt beneath the warm kneading.
‘You’re tense. Why?’
‘Probably because you’re touching me.’
‘You were tense before I touched you. Did I do something to make you this way?’
She released a single bark of laughter. ‘The whole world doesn’t revolve around you, Romeo.’
‘Perhaps not, but if there’s a problem going on with you it needs to be addressed, do you not agree?’ He turned her around, looked into her face and frowned. ‘Are you bored? Do you require more challenges?’
‘No, I’m finding the lessons with Chef Sylvain illuminating and Mahina is teaching me a few Tongan recipes that will come in handy when I return to Ranelagh.’
His mouth compressed but he nodded. ‘But you’re not happy. Don’t deny it.’
She tried to step out of his hypnotising sphere, but he held her by the elbows.
‘This afternoon you thought you knew what ailed me.’
His gaze sharpened, then he gave a wry smile. ‘Maybe it was my own need talking.’
‘What...what need?’
‘The need that claws beneath my skin, threatens to eat me alive...’
She made a barely audible sound when he pulled the clip from her hair and the heavy knot tumbled over her shoulders. Strong fingers slid through her hair in slow, sensual caresses. Maisie realised her dream was sliding dangerously into a yearning for reality that would be hard to push back in a bottle should she set it free.
But still she stayed, moaning softly when his mouth brushed the sensitive and tender spot below her ear. Light kisses traced along her jaw, down her neck to the pulse hammering at her throat. Desire pounded her, making her limbs heavy and the need to maintain that distance she’d been struggling to achieve melt away.
He spun her into his arms, and she gasped at the voracious hunger stamped on his face.
‘Romeo...’
His kiss stopped whatever feeble attempt she’d been scrambling for to save herself from the unstoppable freight train of sexual fury that hurtled towards her. But as he took control of her mouth, control of her body, Maisie knew she would welcome being taken over, being flattened by the sheer force of his hunger, as long as it satisfied hers.
And it would.
From searing memory, she knew Romeo was an unselfish lover. If anything, he achieved a deeper level of arousal by piling on her pleasure, taking her to the very brink of sexual release and burning with her as they both fell.
He would give her everything her body desperately craved. And more.
But what happened next? What of tomorrow?
The questions began like small, icy kernels at the back of her mind. Then loomed, snowballed, until she pushed at his chest, desperate to free herself of this illusion.
‘Stop!’
He raised his head immediately but didn’t release her. ‘You want me. Don’t bother denying it,’ he lashed out at her, his body vibrating with the tension that would surely explode at any moment.
His gaze dropped to her lips when she licked them, savouring the taste of him to pathetically add to her collection of memories.
‘Yes, I do. But I won’t let you use me to scratch an itch that only stems out of being thrown together more than anything