she echoed and shivered again as a drip of water tumbled from her fringe and landed on her nose.
The small response made up his mind for him.
‘Then you’ll have to come back with me,’ he declared, making it a statement of fact, not a suggestion. To him it was the only answer. There was no other way.
But Emily’s blonde head tilted to one side, blue eyes studying him warily. And there was a new expression in them now. One that had suddenly reminded him that she might be just a kitten—but even the smallest cat had very sharp claws.
‘Back where?’
‘To my flat—’
He waved a hand in the direction of the far side of the seafront, vaguely indicating the general area of the small apartment he was renting for this year.
‘You can have a shower, dry your clothes…’ He saw her reaction in the way her face changed, even before she spoke. ‘No?’
‘No…’ Her voice was low but firm.
‘And why the hell not?’
He couldn’t believe she was actually backing out of this. He had been so sure that it was what she wanted too—almost as much as he did. This wasn’t the same woman that he had held in his arms. The woman he had kissed.
Silently Vito cursed the fact that he had ever stopped kissing her—ever let her go. If he had just kept her in his arms, if he had clamped his lips to hers, sealed her mouth with his and carried her off the beach and down the road to his flat, then she would have gone without a word, he knew. The woman he had kissed had melted under his touch, yielding mindlessly and immediately, and he could have kept her that way—should have kept her that way. That woman would never have hesitated, never given him that wary, assessing stare. That woman would never have said no. He knew that without a doubt.
But he had let her go. He had given her a chance to pause and think and as a result she had drawn back. Something had changed her mind, stopped her from going with what she felt and making her act instead on careful, rational thought. And the heady, burning passion that had flared between them couldn’t survive in the same atmosphere as careful, rational thought.
‘I don’t think that would be wise.’
‘Wise!’ He flung his hands in the air in a gesture of total exasperation. ‘Wise! And you think being wise matters right now?’
He’d said the wrong thing. He could see it in the way her eyes sparked, the mulish, mutinous set to that neat chin.
‘Common sense certainly does,’ she said stiffly, all trace of that warm, responsive woman disappearing under a layer of ice. ‘I know nothing about you! Not even your full name or—’
‘Corsentino,’ he inserted sharply as she drew a breath to go on. ‘Vittorio Corsentino, usually known as Vito.’
‘And is that supposed to mean something to me?’
‘No.’
He was glad to see that it didn’t. That there was no change in the expression in those soft blue eyes. There was no flicker of recognition and definitely not, grazie a Dio, any surfacing of the sort of acquisitive glint that had burned in Loretta’s eyes when she had tried to press home her claim for support for herself and her unborn child.
‘But you wanted my name.’
‘And you think that’s enough for me to let you entice me into your flat? You could be planning anything…’
‘Madre de Dio!’ Vito exploded. ‘And why should I want to do you any harm? I rescued you…’
‘You rescued me,’ Emily flung at him. ‘That doesn’t mean you own me.’
‘It does in some cultures,’ Vito shot back. ‘Save a life and it’s yours to do with as you please.’
But that was just too much, Emily admitted to herself. It sounded too ruthless, too possessive, too much like Mark’s gloatingly domineering, ‘You can’t leave me—you know you can’t. Where would you go? How would you live?’
‘Well, this isn’t one of those cultures. And I am definitely not yours in any way.’
She wouldn’t let herself think of the disappointment his reaction had created. Wouldn’t let any hint of the pain that slashed at her register as she admitted that she had brought this on herself. She had been so stupid in reacting the way she had. In kissing him the way she had. Shock did weird things to the mind—and the body—and as a result she’d given this Vito quite the wrong impression. An impression it seemed he was determined to act on, while she was equally determined not to let him.
That all sounded fine and rational inside her head, so why didn’t it quite ring true? Why couldn’t she convince herself that this was truly what she meant?
Why was there still a tiny bit of her, a weak, emotional bit of her, that fought against the sensible, rational approach? That yearned for this to be more than that—to mean more than that? A yearning that made her fight to control her voice as she continued.
‘I’m grateful to you for your help, obviously, but that’s it. There’s nothing else that need concern you.’
‘I don’t think so.’
Would the wretched man never listen? Why didn’t he just give in and walk away? She was really beginning to feel the after-effects of the fright and the icy soaking she’d endured and it was a struggle to stay on her feet, never mind argue. All she wanted was to run to her car, get in and lock the door against the world. There, she could rest her aching head on the back of the seat, close her eyes and let the world go away. That was what she had wanted when she had first arrived. To switch off and let the world go away.
It was a cruel irony that she had only come here today to be on her own—get away from the problems at home—to escape from all the fights and the arguments that had been her life for as long as she could remember. She had wanted some peace and quiet which was why she had headed towards the sea. And she had thought she’d found it.
Until Vito Corsentino had appeared on the scene.
Until he had taken her in his arms and kissed her senseless.
Exactly—senseless! He had kissed her until she had lost what little remained of her mind. Until she had reacted in the most stupid, irresponsible way possible. So Vito Corsentino had affected her as no man had done for years. So he’d woken the secret, sensual part of her that had been buried, hidden away for so long. So his kisses and his touch had left her wanting more—she wasn’t going to give in to that need. The results would be far too complicated—dangerous—destructive. She didn’t want to get tangled up with anyone—least of all a man like Vito Corsentino.
‘I want you to think so!’
She aimed to make her tone emphatic but the effort she was putting into stopping it from shaking at the same time only succeeded in making it sound harsh and brittle, colder than the waves that still broke against the shore near their feet.
‘I appreciate what you did for me, and I thank you for that, but I don’t need anything more. And I definitely don’t want to go to your flat—or anywhere with you! What I need—what I want—is for you to leave me right now. Just turn—walk away…’
For an uncomfortable, worrying second or two she thought he was going to argue further. She saw the flash of rejection in his eyes, watched that beautiful mouth harden and thin, his face losing all warmth, becoming as hard and fierce as the face of some wild hunter just as it scented its prey. But then, just as her heart quailed inside her and she struggled to find the strength to face another argument, to fight him further—to fight herself further and deny the weak, disappointed clamour of her own senses that were trying to tell her it didn’t have to be this way—he suddenly, and totally unexpectedly, gave in.
‘Fine.’
He threw up