never experienced a moment of self-doubt in his life!
‘I’ll call if I feel in danger, Tim.’
And what will I do if I feel in danger? Sam thought as she drew a deep breath. She already felt in danger—of losing her mind if nothing else.
This is what I wanted, she reminded herself. But suddenly being alone with Cesare Brunelli no longer seemed so desirable.
‘Hold on, Tim,’ Cesare ordered, and Tim paused. ‘What does she look like?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Is she a blue-eyed blonde, a brown-eyed brunette…?’
Cesare already knew that her face was level with his heart, he knew that her figure was correspondingly petite and the skin that covered those delicious slight curves was smooth and silky. It was a shock for him to recognise how often during the intervening weeks he had thought of the face he had traced with his fingers, the face with the small, determined chin, tip-tilted nose and wide, lush mouth. His musing had been frustrated by the inability to put a colour to her eyes or to know the shade of the long silky tresses he had speared his fingers into and smoothed from her brow.
‘She has deep blue eyes—very blue—and auburn hair,’ Tim said, without looking to check the details. He then looked embarrassed and threw Sam a self-conscious and apologetic look. ‘Sorry.’
Sam shook her head. ‘It isn’t you who has no manners.’ Neither did he have an aura of raw sexuality that made it impossible for a person to relax in his company.
The pointed comment drew a hastily cut-off chuckle from Tim, who then quickly vanished.
The door closed with a click and she took a deep breath. ‘I’m…’
Cesare tilted his head to one side. Red hair explained the temper and meshed perfectly with his mental image. ‘I know who you are, cara. You seem to have made quite an impression on Timothy,’ he stated, not looking entirely pleased by this observation. ‘So a blue-eyed redhead…?’
‘I hardly think the colour of my eyes is relevant.’
‘Possibly, but as we are on such intimate terms… Now, I don’t think we were ever formally introduced…Sam…?’
To his mind a boy’s name was entirely inappropriate for the most feminine woman he had ever encountered.
‘How did you know that it was me?’ She shook her head and directed her wary gaze at his face. ‘You couldn’t, you can’t…’ Unless…?
She took a stumbling step backwards as he began to cross the room towards her, moving with confidence as he negotiated his route past several obstacles including a chair that stood in his way.
If she hadn’t known already it would never have crossed her mind that he was blind.
Maybe he wasn’t any longer?
His next mocking words revealed he had read her thoughts.
‘I may be blind, cara, but I’m not stupid.’
But I am, she thought as she stared at his mouth and thought about it on her skin… She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself protectively. She was glad that he could not see the giveaway action.
‘Then how?’
‘Your voice is very distinctive.’ Low and smoky with a sexy little rasp. The muscles along his taut jaw tightened as his resentment stirred. Like an annoying tune, he hadn’t been able to get that husky sound out of his head.
Or her.
Sam’s fingers clenched and she said quickly, ‘A lot of people have a Scottish accent.’
But only one had that voice.
Cesare had not doubted for one second that this was the woman who had spent that night in Scotland with him. ‘And your perfume…’
He swallowed hard, causing a visible wave of contraction beneath the brown skin of his throat. His nostrils flared as his body responded to the warm floral female scent in his nostrils.
‘I don’t use perfume,’ she protested hoarsely.
He had stopped close enough so that all she had to do was reach out and she could touch him, and she felt an almost overwhelming compulsion to do just that.
This was crazy! She hadn’t come here to revisit this insanity, Sam thought as she gulped and tried to tear her eyes from his beautiful face. She failed—the man was totally compelling.
‘And now the mystery woman has a name…’ The indentation between his eyebrows deepened. ‘Sam…?’
The way he wrapped his tongue around her name sent an illicit shiver down her spine.
‘Samantha, but everyone calls me Sam.’
‘I prefer Samantha.’
Sam was wondering how to respond to that when without warning he stretched out his hand. She closed her eyes and swayed as the sensitive tips of his long brown fingers trailed slowly down the curve of her cheek.
‘So you are real. I was beginning to wonder, but for the scratches on my back I might have decided you were a figment of my imagination.’
The hot, mortified colour flew to Sam’s cheeks as she lowered her gaze, unable to maintain eye contact even though he couldn’t see her.
‘Look, I expect you’re wondering why I’m here.’ She’d started to wonder much the same thing herself… This was something that could have been done at a distance—clinically.
But then you wouldn’t have seen him, pointed out the sly voice in her head, and isn’t that what you really wanted…?
Cesare shook his head. ‘No, I assume you want something. I’d like to flatter myself and think it is my body, but…’
A choking sound escaped Sam’s throat. ‘You’re really not that fantastic,’ she told him as the erotic images playing in her head stood witness to her whopper of a lie.
‘That’s not what you said at the time… “Perfect, utterly perfect” were words mentioned several times, I think, and you also appeared to have a very high opinion of my abilities in bed.’
‘If you were any sort of a gentleman you wouldn’t have brought that up.’
‘I’m not.’
She shook her head. ‘Not what?’
Her stomach muscles clenched as the corners of his lips lifted in a slow predatory smile. ‘A gentleman, cara, not in any sense of the word, but then it wasn’t my beautiful manners that made you jump into bed with me, was it?’
‘I can’t believe I ever felt sorry for you!’ she gasped, glaring at him.
His head went back as though she had struck him. With nostrils flared and a thin white line etched around the sculpted outline of his lips, he retorted in a voice edged with ice, ‘So you slept with me because you felt sorry for me?’
Sam’s brow puckered into a frown as she returned to a mystery she had still not fully resolved to her own satisfaction. ‘I really don’t know why I did it—I’m always so sensible.’ She gave a perplexed shake of her head and sighed. ‘I knew what I was doing, I knew it was crazy, but it was as if…’
As he listened to her faltering response the hostility drained from Cesare’s expression. ‘You just had to in the same way you had to take your next breath.’
Sam looked up, amazed to hear her own feelings so simply but accurately expressed. ‘Exactly like that!’ Then, realising what she had just admitted and to whom she had admitted it, she blushed to the roots of her hair and added defensively, ‘I don’t feel sorry for you any more.’
The wolflike smile that revealed