‘The presence of a gold coin from Syracuse on board means we can say that they had already visited Sicily and sold their cargo. So now we know that the cargo down there is Sicilian, not Greek—it was going back to Corinth to be sold there. You understand?’
‘I understand.’
‘But I can’t prove any of this unless I have that coin. It’s not enough for me to say I just saw a Syracusan coin in the wreck. I need to have it to prove—’
‘I’ll sell it to you for a kiss.’
Isobel’s sermon froze in her throat. ‘What?’
‘If this is so important to you, that’s a very small price to pay.’ His perfect white teeth flashed in a grin. ‘Sicilians also say that no woman can kiss like a woman with red hair and green eyes.’
‘My hair is not red!’
‘Do you want the coin or not?’
‘I—’
He reached out and brushed the heavy, wet ropes of hair away from her cheek. The same hand, surprisingly gentle for all its strength, then slid round to cup the back of her neck and drew her face forward to his.
To her eternal shame, she did not start struggling until after his warm, velvety mouth closed on hers.
And by then she was wrapped in the irresistible power of those muscular arms, which held her close and drew her tight against his naked chest. And the warm hand that held the back of her neck made it impossible for her to turn her mouth away while he kissed her…
And kissed her…
The first kiss was soft and assessing, as though he were getting the taste of her, smelling her skin, gauging the smoothness of her lips. She had the fleeting thought that expertise like this must have been gleaned at the expense of a hundred women in a hundred taverns along this rocky Sicilian coast.
He smelled warm, masculine, of the sea. His body was all male, living muscles swelling against her slim body as he enfolded her further into his embrace, the second kiss deepening as his lips caressed hers, pressing against her mouth.
In fact…
In fact, she was to recall later, by some weird chemistry of the female mind, it was not until she started to kiss him in return that she also started to struggle.
And that was what she was doing now, kissing him passionately and yet fighting him all the way. Her nails digging into those powerful shoulders, her knees trying to thrust at his groin, even as her mouth opened to his like a flower in the sun, and her eyes closed in ecstasy.
His hard, flat belly pressed to hers, the crisp curls caressing her skin.
Isobel’s heart was pounding wildly, her breath rushing hotly, mingling with his. The inside of her chest felt as though it were filled with some molten metal; her legs were boneless; her mind was whirling with emotions. Fury that he should do this to her. Resentment that her hormones should respond so vehemently to such an indignity. Relief that this brigand had just proved Michael Wilensky wrong. Imperious and sarcastic she might be, but an iceberg who had never responded to a man she was not.
Not any more.
And he kept kissing her, until his erotic mastery was so intense that, although he had not touched her breasts or anywhere else, she felt that swelling, rapturous pressure in her womb that only came when…
She shuddered violently in his arms, her emotions peaking almost unbearably inside her, holding her on a pinnacle of suspense for a long eternity until her body sagged in his arms like a released rag doll.
‘Mmm,’ he purred, releasing her at last, ‘the legend was right.’
In a hot blur, she saw that he was smiling at her, holding out one hand. Her fingers trembled as she took the coin from him. It was warm and heavy. She clutched it weakly.
Did he have any idea what he had just done to her?
Any idea?
‘You—’
She ran out of words after that first pronoun. ‘Sorry I took more than one kiss,’ he said in that husky, accented voice. ‘But it wasn’t breach of contract. There is actually a whole amphora of coins down there.’
‘Amphora…?’ she said weakly.
‘I don’t know what you would call it. Some kind of ancient pot. Full of coins.’ He gave her that dazzling smile. ‘Plenty more where that came from, siren lady.’
‘But—where?’
‘You’ll find them where I left a marker.’ He rose to his feet, a magnificent, bearded creature from some ancient myth, smiling down at her with knowing eyes. The black Neoprene clung to his thighs, revealing the swelling, male muscles of his body. ‘I will see you again.’
‘Oh, no, you won’t,’ she said, dragging her dignity back together again. ‘Unless it’s in a criminal courtroom!’
‘Nobody has committed any crime,’ he said softly. ‘Arrivederci.’
And now she could tell why he was so anxious to leave: the purring of an outboard motor could be heard threading its way between the rocks towards them. It was the others in the dive boat, coming to see why she was taking so long.
‘Don’t come back!’ was her parting shot.
He slipped into the water like a dolphin, leaving her with a final memory of a broad back and tight buttocks. Then he was gone.
Isobel sat clutching her coin, hot and cold flushes chasing one another across her skin as she waited for the other archaeologists to arrive.
The coin told her she was triumphant. So why on earth did she feel as though she had just been conquered?
CHAPTER TWO
FOR her pains, she had to endure a morning of merciless ribbing about her ‘encounter with Poseidon’.
None of the others had actually seen her mystery man, not even Antonio Zaccaria, their Sicilian liaison with the Beni Culturali, who normally saw everything. The boat, piled with diving gear, had rounded the little cape just after her Poseidon had vanished beneath the waves.
By their grins she could tell that they suspected she had had some kind of daydream, inspired by finding the beautiful gold coin—she did not tell them about the kiss—until David Franks and Theo Makarios strapped on scuba gear and went down, and found the floating marker attached to the pot of coins.
They were still talking about it late in the afternoon as they crowded around the workbench that they had set up in the vaults of the Palazzo Mandalà.
‘It’s a fantastic collection!’ Theo exclaimed, bright brown eyes alight with pleasure. He was carefully rinsing the coins with his ‘magic formula’ liquid cleaner. He was the coin expert among them, his lean fingers expertly sorting through the mass of metal discs, many of which had been welded together by corrosion. ‘Mostly bronze, and so corroded by the sea water that it’ll take weeks to separate and identify
