space. Adept at it? She was an expert in it, Lily acknowledged wryly. In fact if there was a degree to be had in it she would have graduated first class with honours.
‘It will soon be time for us to leave.’
The sound of Marco’s voice from directly behind her had Lily almost choking on the sip of wine she had just taken. Not because she hadn’t heard him move—she had. She was acutely aware of every single move he made. What she hadn’t been prepared for was the warmth of his breath on the nape of her neck, where it was revealed by the soft knot of her drawn back hair. Was it just because he had caught her off-guard that she had felt the shower of tiny darts that had now brought her skin out in goosebumps? Goosebumps of delicious sensual pleasure?
Lily knew that it wasn’t. She wasn’t even going to begin question how it was that a person who had turned her back on the delights of sexual pleasure should immediately be able to recognise and understand that the degree of sensuality she had just experienced spoke of a vulnerability to the man who had caused it that went far beyond the norm of casual sexual attraction. Some questions were better not asked—especially by someone like her—when they involved someone like Marco.
When a man standing in a group to her right moved, accidentally nudging her arm and causing some of her wine to spill from her glass onto her bare skin, Lily was relieved—grateful, in fact, for the small incident. It distracted her attention and Marco’s far too perceptive and sharp gaze from her earlier involuntary shudder of delight.
‘I’m so sorry,’ the man apologised, telling a passing waiter, ‘We need a dry cloth, please.’
‘There’s no need…’ Lily began to say, but the words became locked in her throat as out of nowhere, or so it seemed, Marco himself produced a white cloth, which he placed on her damp arm. He ignored her panicky, ‘I can do it myself,’ just as he ignored her attempt to move away from him. Somehow he had taken possession of both her nearly empty glass, which he had placed on the tray of a hovering waiter, and her damp arm, his hand and his fingers lean and tanned against the white starched fabric of the cloth. He had good hands, Lily acknowledged. Strong artist’s hands. Hands with a powerful male grip that could crush a woman’s resistance to their hold should he feel it necessary.
A new quiver forked through her. Not on her flesh this time, but deep within it—a swift, tightening, convulsive sensation that gripped and then relaxed, leaving a far too intimate pulse beating in its place.
Lily was perfectly familiar with the outward signs of sexual arousal. After all she had seen models mimicking them in one form or another for as long as she could remember. Bitterly she recalled how when her father had finished working she would be pushed into the small boxroom off his studio whilst he ‘played’. Her father had been of that order of photographers in a certain era who had believed that having sex with models was one of the perks of the job. No, she was no stranger to the signs and sounds of physical arousal, both real and faked, male and female, but when it came to being familiar with her own sexual arousal… That was haunted, poisoned territory that had long ago become an empty wasteland and she didn’t go there. She didn’t want to go there.
Marco was releasing her.
‘It’s time for us to go,’ he told her. ‘The traffic to the airport will be heavy at this time of the day.’
‘The airport? We’re flying to Lake Como?’
She’d assumed that they’d be driving there.
‘By helicopter. It’s much the easier way to get there,’ Marco informed her, clapping his hands for silence so that he could announce their departure.
‘I was already looking forward to introducing you to Villa Ambrosia,’ the Duchess told Lily, coming over to say goodbye to her and holding both Lily’s hands in her own as she did so, in a gesture of genuine liking and approval. ‘But now that I have met you I am looking forward to it even more. She is a delightful girl, Marco,’ she added, turning to him. ‘Look after her well, won’t you?’
Of course Lily didn’t dare look at Marco once the Duchess had left them and they were on their own. The Duchess’s comment about his looking after her wouldn’t have gone down at all well, she suspected.
The museum official who had taken her case and insisted on wheeling it for her escorted them to their waiting car. It would be very easy to get used to such a pampered way of life, Lily thought, remembering ruefully how often she had ended up with an aching back from a bulging bag holding her laptop, her camera, and assorted other necessary paraphernalia for her work.
The traffic was heavy, but the insulated interior of the luxurious saloon car protected them from the fume-clogged air outside. A glass screen separated them from the driver, and the combination of that and the soft leather of their seats made Lily feel that they were isolated together in a space that was far too intimate.
Not that there was any intimacy between the two of them. Marco had produced his cell phone the minute the chauffeur had closed the door of the car, his brief, ‘Please excuse me,’ immediately distancing him from her. Because he wanted to be distanced from her? Of course he did. He despised her. Lily knew that was true, but she also knew that—like her—he had felt the startling electric connection that had burned into life between them the first time he had touched her. A connection that neither of them wanted.
Now Marco was putting his phone down and turning towards her.
‘Just before we left the reception the Duchess asked me if there was any chance that we might be able to spend a couple of nights at her villa as her guests. You obviously made a very big impression on her.’
The stiff hostility in his voice told Lily how little he liked telling her that.
‘I’ve just been checking through our schedule. It would be possible for us to extend the tour to include a short stay with her if you wish to do so.’
So he hadn’t been distancing himself from her. He had actually been working on her behalf, or rather on behalf of their shared project, Lily was forced to admit reluctantly. She didn’t want to have to feel guilty about misjudging him, but it seemed that she was going to have to admit that she had. Just as he had misjudged her—although she suspected she would never be able to convince him of that. Not after everything that had happened between them. Not that she was going to even attempt to change his mind about her. Why should she want to?
Still, she couldn’t help but wonder what had caused such a deep-rooted loathing of what he believed she represented. Whatever it was, she couldn’t imagine him ever telling her about it. Everything about him said that he simply wasn’t the kind of man who confided in other people. He was too remote for that, too proud, Lily thought tiredly as she forced herself to respond with professional politeness.
‘It’s very generous of her to make such a kind offer. I’d love to have the opportunity to spend more time studying both the villa and her art collection.’
‘Very well, then. I’ll e-mail an acceptance of her invitation to her personal assistant.’
The chauffeur swung the car out of the static traffic and into a space he had spotted in the adjacent lane. Automatically Lily put her hand down to stop herself from sliding along the leather seat, but to her embarrassment felt only the hard, unyielding surface of Marco’s thigh.
Scarlet-faced with mortification, she snatched her hand away. Was it her imagination or were her fingertips tingling with awareness of the flesh they had accidentally touched? It was certainly her imagination that was providing her with unwanted and dangerous images of charcoal sketches of a taut male thigh. Marco’s thigh.
‘We’ll be at the airport in a few minutes.’
The calmly delivered information should have been enough to block out such images but somehow it wasn’t. Lily kept her face turned towards the car window as they approached the airport. She didn’t dare risk looking directly at Marco. Not that he could see what had been going on inside her head, of course. Thank goodness.
From