She laughed, the carefree cadence foreign to her ears. When was the last time she’d laughed, really laughed, just for the heck of it?
Not while living in Canberra under Daddy’s watchful eye while he’d stood at Australia’s helm, not during her sedate two-year marriage and certainly not during her divorce last month, a divorce that had been publicly scrutinised while her name had been dragged through the mud for no other reason than she was Ava Beckett, reported society royalty, who’d supposedly got what was coming to her.
It felt good, great in fact, and by those attractive crinkles at the corners of his eyes Roman had spent a hell of a lot more time than she had laughing.
She placed her hand in his. ‘Ava. Recent quitter of boring financier job. Clumsy oaf and danger to others poolside.’
His fingers closed over hers, his grip firm and solid, and another little shiver of awareness slithered through her.
‘Well, then, with your clumsiness and my paramedic skills, we’re a match made in heaven.’
He squeezed her hand and released it when she grimaced.
‘Tell me those lines don’t usually work for you.’
He leaned closer and she bit her lip at the sudden onslaught of masculinity temptingly within reach. ‘You tell me?’
Sotto voce, combined with a wink, had her laughing again.
‘So when you’re not rescuing clumsy damsels in distress and jumping off bridges with an elastic rope tied to your ankles, where do you live?’
For the first time since she’d met him a shadow shifted in the rich depths of his eyes before he blinked and the resident twinkle was back.
‘I’m based in London at the moment.’
She caught a hint of hesitancy, a slight stiffening in his shoulders before his smile caught her off guard again, dazzling in its sexiness.
‘Boring financier job, huh? Lucky you quit.’
‘Yeah, real lucky.’
She wanted to act blasé, as if she could walk out on a solid job and live a carefree life traipsing around the planet. Instead, she did what had been ingrained from a young age: told the truth.
‘Actually, I have no idea what I’m going to do next.’
‘Easy. What’s your dream job?’
His eyes crinkled in amusement, making her want to smile along with him. Nothing fazed him. Then again, the guy jumped off tall buildings for a living—losing a job would be small fry.
‘Dream job?’
She’d given up on dreams a long time ago, around the time her life fell under the control of others.
‘Yeah, what are you passionate about? Number crunching in another capacity?’
‘Hell no!’
He laughed at her vehemence. ‘If not numbers, maybe words? What about using your numbers experience and using words to get your expertise across, maybe something like statistics lecturer or maths teacher?’
‘Couldn’t think of anything worse.’
Standing up in a room full of strangers watching her every move? No way. Too reminiscent of her past.
He tapped his bottom lip, thinking, while she focused on that lip. ‘Words … hey, what about writing?’
Her heart skipped a beat at his suggestion. Writing had once been a dream, a dream ripped asunder by the practicalities and expectations of being the prime minister’s daughter. She hadn’t written a word since Year Twelve English Lit, had turned her back on scrawling in her daily journals around the same time.
Ironically, when she’d been the brunt of the media’s smear campaign recently she’d wish she could report the facts and not the drivel printed. It had sparked a vague idea about writing again, perhaps using her experience to freelance, to be an interviewer famed for her integrity rather than headline grabbing.
Maybe it’d be fun to try again, but could she make a living from it? And who would hire her, an ex-financier who’d been publicly flayed for no other crime than bearing the Beckett name?
‘Take here, for instance, you’d have loads to write about.’
He snapped his fingers. ‘Let’s see. Melbourne’s newest hip hotel has a resident poolside attendant that incapacitates guests then resuscitates them with a little mouth-to-mouth—’
‘I kissed you,’ she blurted, mortified when his gaze flicked to her lips before meeting hers again, filled with heat and longing that took her breath away.
‘Yes, you did, and I can’t tell you how impressed I am.’
Enjoying his lighthearted flirtation more than she could’ve imagined, she screwed up her eyes, pretending to think.
‘With my technique? My impulsiveness? My—’
‘All of it.’
This time his gaze started at her lips and swept over her and, while he couldn’t see much beneath the voluminous grey robe, the smoulder told her he remembered every curve.
‘You know I don’t usually go around kissing strangers, right?’
‘We’re not strangers any more.’
He caressed her cheek, his finger starting at her temple and slowly stroking downwards towards her jaw, lingering under her chin to tip it up and when she looked into his eyes her temperature spiked.
Raw passion, the type of passion she’d read about in romance novels she’d hidden beneath her mattress as a teenager, a passion she secretly craved yet had never experienced, a passion she didn’t believe in.
Until now.
For Roman didn’t have to touch her to make her weak-kneed and hot. He didn’t have to sweet-talk her or use lines or do anything other than look at her.
When those darker-than-chocolate eyes looked at her, really looked at her, every female cell in her body snapped to attention, a subliminal reaction she had no hope of controlling. Totally, irrationally crazy.
Increasingly flustered under his burning stare, she aimed for flippant.
‘You should be safe from my randomly-lip-locking-strangers affliction, now we’re properly introduced and all.’
‘Pity.’
His thumb brushed her lower lip before his hand dropped away along with her belly and she floundered for a safe change of topic. There were only so many flirty comments and loaded stares a novice could handle.
‘Are you here on business?’
‘Of sorts.’
‘Sounds cryptic.’
He shrugged, the action emphasising the tension in his shoulders. ‘Time for new challenges so here I am.’
‘Trying to find a higher mountain to jump off than the ones you’ve already conquered around the world?’
‘Something like that.’
His smile didn’t reach his eyes and she wondered why he was really here.
‘What about you?’
‘Me?’
‘Are you up for new challenges? The writing idea?’
He’d subtly moved the focus back onto her. Interesting, as most of the guys in the social circles she’d moved in loved to talk about themselves but Roman seemed strangely reticent to discuss anything beyond here and now.
‘Is it something you could go for?’
If he only knew. She’d loved writing as a kid, had