Holiday With The Mystery Italian. Ellie Darkins

‘What the hell? Did someone just push you?’ She spun around, looking for a fight. Nice deflection, he thought, wondering why she was so angry at herself.

      ‘Leave it, Amber.’

      There had been a time when he’d have chased anyone trying to push him around—literally or metaphorically—and shown him just how much damage a bloke with a spinal-cord injury was capable of inflicting with his fists. It just so happened that when you used a wheelchair you were at the perfect height for one or two particularly vulnerable targets. But he’d long accepted that some people would act like idiots around him. He could either let the anger consume him, as it had sometimes threatened, or he could learn to rise above it. To be the bigger man and show the world what he was capable of with his medals rather than with his fists and fury.

      He glanced up at the flight information screen and realised that they had no time to pick a fight anyway. There wasn’t even time to head back to the lounge and meet Ayisha and the cameraman—they’d have to hope that they would make their own way there without them.

      ‘Come on,’ he said to Amber, his resolve cracking for a second and brushing his hand against her hip. ‘They’re calling our flight.’

      * * *

      As the car swung into the driveway of the villa Amber caught her breath. The low-slung walls of the building were rendered in white, which in the late afternoon sun seemed to glow a warm orange. Three sides of the building wrapped around a central swimming pool, with expansive glazing, so every part of the house had a view of the water. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, Amber could see straight through the building, through more windows, to the clear blue-green of the Mediterranean. She stopped as she was climbing out of the car for a moment, stalled by the beauty of Mauro’s home.

      Somehow, even though Ayisha had told her to expect luxury, she’d been expecting the sort of villa she and her ex, Ian, had stayed in during happier times; the sort with slightly noisy plumbing and grass growing between uneven paving stones in the garden. This—this was something else.

      Imagine being able to call this your own, she thought, her mind wandering back to her bedsit in a grimy part of London. She was grateful to have a roof over her head at all, but to think that this was real life for Mauro, not a week of playing house... Their lives couldn’t be more materially different. It was bad enough that he was a millionaire, successful in every aspect of his life, whereas she was just holding onto her job by a thread. They had to rub it in her face with this beautiful house as well. Not that he was going to be interested in her, with her bargain basement clothes and her grubby flat. Not that she wanted him to be.

      She turned to look at Mauro.

      ‘This is beautiful.’

      ‘Thanks,’ he said with a nonchalant shrug. ‘Come on, I’ll show you around.’

      She wasn’t sure why, but somehow she found the idea that they were staying in his house more unsettling than if the production company had hired somewhere neutral. As if it handed him a massive advantage over her. And that wasn’t the only thing unsettling her. There was the memory, too, of what had happened in the airport. The way that she had sat in his lap, hypnotised by his mouth. The slight smile tugging at the corner of his lips, the way his tongue had moistened them, readying them to meet her own.

      If they’d not been interrupted...

      But thank God they had, and she didn’t have to think about how that sentence could end.

      As Mauro gave her a guided tour of the property, she was blown away by the sheer luxury of the place. The gleaming chrome of the coffee machine, the soft, supple leather of the sofas, the expansive cotton and silks on the beds. Every now and then a detail caught her eye—a handrail, a switch to lower a kitchen counter, a tile underfoot that felt particularly grippy—that made her realise all the subtle adaptations that had been made to the villa in order for it to function perfectly as Mauro’s home. A million miles away from the clunky white bars and red strings she’d seen in the disabled loos at work.

      ‘And I thought you might like this room.’

      He opened the door into one of the guest suites and Amber caught her breath at the view of the ocean from the wall of windows. The water stretched green-blue as far as she could see. The view drew her in, closer to the windows until her fingertips were resting lightly on the glass. There was nothing between her and the horizon. No one but a handful of fishermen in their brightly coloured boats between her and the edge of the world. Mauro crossed the room and pressed a button on the side wall, upon which the glass doors concertinaed until the whole wall was gone and there was just a few hundred feet of terrace and sand between the bed and the ocean.

      ‘Mauro, it’s incredible.’ Amber’s voice caught in her throat, and she cursed herself. She didn’t even understand why she was feeling so emotional. Perhaps it was the fact that she’d lost her home, that she didn’t even have that West London shoebox to her name any more. Perhaps it was the knowledge that all of this had come from Mauro’s many successes, when she was barely keeping a job using the one talent that she had. Maybe it was the fact that she’d spent the last eight hours on edge, desperately trying to keep her hands to herself, her libido in check, and her thoughts from wandering to Mauro.

      At least he seemed to be shying away from the issue as well. Since that moment in the airport they’d both been studiously well-behaved. It all added up to exhaustion, physical and emotional.

      ‘I was going to offer you dinner. My housekeeper will have left something in the fridge, or I can arrange something to be brought in.’ He took another look at her. ‘Or I can let you crash and see you at breakfast?’

      She knew the relief on her face had shown when he gave her a concerned smile.

      ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ He showed her how the controls for the window wall worked and let her know that he’d be in the pool if she needed anything.

      Once he was gone she sat heavily on the bed, still in awe of the understated splendour of Mauro’s home. If she had been unsure before about whether she wanted to succumb to Mauro’s advances, this had been the wake-up call she had needed. Their homes couldn’t be more different, their lives couldn’t be more different. She absolutely would not get involved with him.