‘Shall we eat now?’
He spoke so softly she barely heard, and through the fog of insane need clouding her brain she registered several fleeting thoughts at once.
I want to kiss him.
I want to know more about him.
I want to spend more time with him.
Instead, she stepped away, breaking the tenuous contact between them, knowing what she wanted and what she got were usually at opposite ends of her life’s spectrum.
‘Sounds good. I’m starving,’ she said, heading for the picnic blanket they’d set up under a nearby oak tree, more than a little annoyed this man had the power to breach her emotional barriers without trying.
‘Your country is beautiful.’
Bria tore her gaze from the magnificent setting sun and turned towards Sam, as dazzled by his gorgeousness as the purple, ochre and golden dusk descending around them.
‘It is. They don’t call Australia “the lucky country” for nothing.’
An indefinable emotion flickered in the dark depths of his eyes before he smiled.
‘At this moment I am the lucky one.’
Bria returned his smile, revelling in the splendour of the moment, knowing it was too late to play coy or pretend she didn’t understand what he implied.
She’d spent the most incredible, magical day with Sam, and the sparks sizzling between them had been difficult to ignore. He hadn’t overstepped the mark once, and she’d had to physically refrain from launching herself at him several times.
How ironic she was emotionally frigid yet so responsive physically to his potent presence.
‘Are you flattering me?’
He shrugged, the simple action pulling his white polo-shirt up, and displaying a tantalising glimpse of flat, tanned stomach for an all-too-brief second.
‘I am merely stating the truth.’
‘So you’ve enjoyed today?’
His steady stare sent a ripple of awareness down her spine.
‘More than you could possibly know.’
‘I’ve had a good time too,’ she said, turning back to lean on the elaborate balustrade of the Mansion, concentrating on the view before she burned up from the inside out.
Not dating for so long had been a stupid move, if this was how she reacted to a guy after knowing him for less than two days. She never behaved like this, she usually made sure of it.
Isolating her heart, protecting her emotions, were learned responses and they’d served her just fine. No use tampering with a foolproof survival mechanism, no matter how tempting the guy.
‘It is a shame it has to end.’
She couldn’t agree more but, the sooner she put an end to her whimsical, nonsensical yearning where Sam was concerned, the better.
Instilling the right amount of regret into her voice, she said, ‘Yes, but I must prepare my presentation tonight.’
‘Your work is very important to you. I understand.’
The surprising thing was she could tell he did understand. There was no censure in his tone, no judgement, and she wished for the hundredth time that day that things could be different.
‘Would you like to walk back to the hotel now?’
She could add ‘intuitive’ to his list of already growing, impressive attributes.
Fiddling with a patch of peeling paint-work on the balustrade, she furiously marshalled her thoughts, knowing she should end this now and walk away alone.
She hated goodbyes, hated the awkwardness that accompanied them, and she knew without a doubt that saying goodbye to Sam would be harder than she could’ve thought possible when they’d first met at the airport yesterday.
‘Bria? Is something wrong?’
Sighing, she turned to face him, torn between wanting to make a run for it and prolonging their parting for as long as possible.
‘Honestly? I’ve enjoyed your company more than I expected, and I’ve always found saying goodbye difficult.’
He raised an eyebrow, the corners of his mouth curving up into a smile.
‘I think you just paid me a compliment.’
‘You bet,’ she muttered under her breath, wishing her pulse wouldn’t accelerate at the slightest glimpse of his smile, all too aware she’d never had this instant attraction to any other man before, and totally thrown by it.
‘If saying goodbye is so difficult, maybe we should agree to meet again?’
Her heart turned over in hope before plummeting. She may be in the throes of forgetting every sane reason why she usually held guys like Sam at bay, but that didn’t mean she’d lost it completely.
Keeping in contact would be futile, considering this was a flying visit to Australia for him and she had no plans to return to London any time soon.
Not to mention the unshakeable fear that her interest in him, and the incredible speed at which it had developed, could breach the finely honed defence mechanisms she’d taken a lifetime to establish.
Shaking her head, she said, ‘I don’t think that’s going to happen, so maybe it’s best we say goodbye now?’
Rather than his smile slipping, it widened into a confident grin of a guy used to getting everything he wanted.
‘I asked you yesterday if you believed in fate.’
‘And I’m pretty sure I told you what I think of it,’ Bria said, finding his philosophising strange in a man who obviously dealt in concrete deals on a daily basis.
The businessmen she liaised with were firmly rooted in facts and figures, relegating fate to the hands of those unlucky enough to lose out to their mega deals. Yet here Sam was, implying there was something more to their meeting than a chance encounter—weird.
‘Do you want to know what I think?’
Her breath hitched as he took a step closer, filling her personal space with his potent presence, drawing her towards him like metal to a magnet.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘I think we’re going to meet again. Soon.’
She chuckled at his prediction, her forced laughter a cover for the riotous nerves pulsating through her body at his proximity.
She wanted to flee.
She wanted to stay.
She didn’t know what the heck she wanted!
Sam took the decision out of her hands when he reached out and captured her face between his palms.
‘This has been a special time for me, Bria Green. And I think you feel the same way.’
She couldn’t nod, couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, and when he leaned forward and brushed his lips against hers in the barest of kisses her eyelids fluttered shut as sensation exploded like a fireball.
‘That is fate’s way of sealing our future meeting,’ he murmured, his deep voice washing over her in a sensuous wave, low, warm, intimate, and she all but melted against him.
His lips grazing hers had sent her lingering doubts of a proper goodbye up in flames and she opened her eyes, determined to imprint this man, this moment, in her mind.
However, the instant her eyes opened her resolution to make their farewell short and