expensive fallout.
He shifted, stared briefly out of the window then back at her. Her gaze was calm, interested but without fuss and fanfare—curious but not overly so.
‘My father had a habit of repeating his mistakes,’ Art told her heavily. ‘He was always quick to get involved, only to regret his involvement but then, just when he’d managed to free himself from one woman, he would repeat the cycle all over again. Your mother had her way of coping with losing her husband...’ His mouth twisted into a crooked smile. ‘My father coped in a slightly different way.’
‘But in a way that would have equally damaging consequences... We certainly didn’t strike jackpot when it came to childhood experiences, did we?’ She shot him a rueful smile and reached out, almost impulsively, to rest her hand on his.
The warmth of her hand zapped through him like a powerful electric charge, tightening his groin and sending a heavy, pounding ache between his thighs.
With relief, he recognised that the taxi was pulling up outside her house.
He was in urgent need of a cold shower. Maybe even a cold bath. Blocks of ice would have to play a part. Anything to cool the onset of his ardour.
‘All experience,’ he said neutrally, pushing open his door and glancing back at her over his shoulder in a gesture that implied an end to the conversation, ‘is good experience, in my opinion. But I’m very glad you enjoyed the evening.’
He all but sprinted to the front door. She fumbled with the front door key and he relieved her of it, acutely aware of the brush of her skin against his.
‘I don’t usually drink as much as I did tonight,’ Rose apologised with a little breathy laugh, stepping past him into the hall. ‘I’m beginning to think that I should get out more, live a little...’
‘All work and no play... You know the saying...’
* * *
For a few moments they both stood in the semi-darkened hallway, staring at one another in taut silence, and the breath caught in her throat because she could see the lick of desire in his eyes, a sexual speculation that set her ablaze with frantic desire because it mirrored her own.
‘Right, well...’ Rose was the first to break the lengthening silence. ‘Thanks again for a brilliant evening...’ She began turning away but then felt his hand circle her arm and she stilled, heart racing, pulse racing—everything racing.
‘Rose...’
With one foot planted firmly in the comfort zone of common sense and the other dangling precariously and recklessly over the edge of a precipice, Rose looked at him, holding herself rigid with tension.
‘It would be madness.’ Arturo looked away, looked back to her, looked away again, restless and uncomfortable in his own skin and yet powerless to relieve either discomfort.
‘What?’ Rose whispered.
‘You know what. This. Us. Taking this any further.’
For a few seconds she didn’t say anything, then eventually she murmured, briefly breaking their electrifying eye contact, ‘I agree.’
‘You can’t even begin to understand the complications...’
‘Do I need to?’
‘Explain.’
‘We’re not anticipating a relationship.’ She tilted her chin at a defiant angle. Sex for the sake of sex? She’d never contemplated that. The urgent demands of lust, the taste of a passion that was powerful enough to make a nonsense of her principles...well, those were things that had never blotted her horizon. ‘We don’t have to think about all the complications or all the reasons why it wouldn’t make sense for us to...to...’ She reddened and caught his eye.
‘Make wild, passionate love until we just can’t any longer?’
‘You’re just passing through...’
‘Sure that doesn’t bother you? Because I won’t be staying. A week, tops, and I’ll be gone and that’ll be the last you’ll ever see of me.’
‘You wouldn’t be curious to see where the protest you joined will end up?’
‘I know where it’ll end up.’ He clearly didn’t want to talk about that. He raised his arm to stroke her cheek with the back of his hand, a light, feathery touch that made her sigh and close her eyes.
‘Let’s go upstairs,’ she breathed unevenly, her eyes fluttering open to gaze at his impossibly handsome face. She stepped back and took his hand. If this was wrong, then why did it feel so right? Before hitting the stairs, she kicked her shoes off and then padded up ahead of him, still holding his hand, glancing back over her shoulder twice, wishing that she knew what was going through his head.
She shyly pushed open her bedroom door and stepped in, ignoring the overhead light in favour of the lamp by her bed, which cast an immediate mellow glow through the room.
It was a large square room, with high ceilings and both picture rails and dado rails.
Arturo had not been in it before. He looked around briefly and then grinned. ‘I didn’t take you for having such a sense of drama...’
Rose laughed, walked towards him and linked her arms around his waist. ‘I’m sensible when it comes to pretty much everything but—’ she looked at the dreamy four-poster king-sized bed with floaty curtains and dark, soft-as-silk bed linen ‘—I used to dream of having a four-poster bed when I was a kid.’
‘Was that when you were waiting for your mother to reappear?’ Art murmured, burying his face into her hair and breathing in the sweet smell of the floral shampoo she used.
‘How did you guess?’
* * *
‘I’m tuned in like that.’ A memory came from nowhere to knock him for six—a memory of his mother leaning over him, smiling, with a book in one hand. Had she just read him a story? Was she about to? She was dressed up, going out for the evening.
He clenched his jaw as the vivid image faded. ‘Enough talk,’ he growled, edging them both towards the bed. Rose giggled as her knees hit the mattress and she toppled backwards, taking him with her, although he niftily deflected the bulk of his weight from landing directly on her. But he remained where he was, flat on his back next to her.
‘The canopy has stars,’ he commented, amused, and he heard the grin in her voice when she replied.
‘That’s the hidden romantic in me.’
Art turned his head to look at her and she did likewise.
‘You don’t have to worry,’ she said flatly, before he could jump in with another warning lecture on his nomadic tendencies—warning her off the temptation to look for more involvement than was on the table.
‘Worry about what?’
‘I may have the occasional romantic lapse, but I’m pretty level-headed when it comes to men, and latching onto a good-looking
