this far. Acknowledge that she might be telling the truth about the drugs.
She called out, ‘So, are you prepared to admit that I might be innocent after all?’
She got her wish. Luca stopped dead in his tracks and then, after a long second, slowly turned around. His eyes were so dark they looked black. He covered the space between them so fast and silently that Serena took an involuntary step backwards, hating herself for the reflexive action.
He looked infinitely dangerous, and yet perversely Serena didn’t feel scared. She felt something far more ambiguous and hotter, deep in her pelvis.
‘To be quite frank, I don’t think I even care any more whether or not you did it. The fact is that my involvement with you made things so much worse. You were enough to turn the incident into front-page news and put certainty into people’s minds about my guilt—because they all believed that you did drugs, and that I was either covering for you or dealing to you. So, innocent bystander or not—as you might have been—I still got punished.’
Serena swallowed down a sudden and very unwelcome lump in her throat. She recognised uncomfortably that the need for this man to know she was innocent was futile or worse. ‘You’ll never forgive me for it, will you?’
His jaw clenched, and just then a huge drop of water landed on her face—so large that it splashed.
Luca looked up and cursed out loud.
‘What? What is it?’ Serena asked, her tension dissolving to be replaced by a tendril of fear.
Luca looked around them and bit out, ‘Rain. Damn. I’d hoped to make the village first. We’ll have to shelter. Come on.’
Even before he’d begun striding away again the rain was starting in earnest, those huge drops cascading from the sky above the canopy. Serena hurried after him to try and keep up. Within seconds, though, it was almost impossible to see a few feet in front of her nose. Genuine panic spiked. She couldn’t see Luca any more. And then he reappeared, taking her hand, keeping her close.
The rain was majestic, awesome. Deafening. But Serena was only aware of her hand in Luca’s. He was leading them through the trees, off the path to a small clearing. The ground was slightly higher here. He let her go and she saw him unrolling a tarpaulin. Catching on quickly, she took one end and tied it off to a nearby sapling while Luca did the same on the other side, creating a shelter a few feet off the ground.
He laid out another piece of tarpaulin under the one they’d tied off and shouted over the roar of the rain, ‘Get underneath!’
Serena slipped off her pack and did so. Luca joined her seconds later. They were drenched. Steam was rising off their clothes. But they were out of the worst of the downpour. Serena was still taken aback at how quickly it had come down.
They sat like that, their breaths evening out, for long minutes. Eventually she asked, ‘How long will it last?’
Luca craned his neck to look out, his arms around his knees. He shrugged one wide shoulder. ‘Could be minutes—could be hours. Either way, we’ll have to camp out again tonight. The village is only a couple of hours away, but it’ll be getting dark soon—too risky.’
At the thought of another night in the tent with Luca, flutters gripped Serena’s abdomen. He was pulling something out of a pocket and handed her another protein bar. Serena reached for it with her palm facing up, but before she could take it Luca had grabbed her wrist and was frowning.
She was distracted by his touch for a moment—all she felt was heat—and then he was saying, ‘What are those marks? Did you get them here?’
He was inspecting her palm and pulling her other hand towards him to look at that, too. Far too belatedly Serena panicked, and tried to pull them back, but he wouldn’t let her, clearly concerned that it had happened recently.
She saw what he saw: the tiny criss-cross of old, silvery scars that laced her palms.
As if coming to that realisation, he said, ‘They’re old.’ He looked at her, stern. ‘How old?’
Serena tried to jerk her hands away but he held them fast. Her breath was choppy now, with a surge of emotion. And with anger that he was quizzing her as if she’d done something wrong.
She said reluctantly, ‘They’re twenty-two years old.’
Luca looked at her, turning towards her. ‘Deus, what are they?’
Serena was caught by his eyes. They blazed into hers, seeking out some kind of truth and justice—which she was coming to realise was integral to this man’s nature. It made him see the world in black and white, good and bad. And she was firmly in the bad category as far as he was concerned.
But just for once, Serena didn’t want to be. She felt tired. Her throat ached with repressed emotions, with all the horrific images she held within her head, known only to her and her father. And he’d done his best to eradicate them.
A very weak and rogue part of her wanted to tell Luca the truth—much like last night—in some bid to make him see that perhaps things weren’t so black and white. And even though an inner voice told her to protect herself from his derision, she heard the words spill out.
‘They’re the marks of a bamboo switch. My father favoured physical punishment.’
Luca’s hands tightened around hers and she held back a wince. His voice was low. ‘How old were you?’
Serena swallowed. ‘Five—nearly six.’
‘What the hell....?’
Luca’s eyes burned so fiercely for a moment that Serena quivered inwardly. She took advantage of the moment to pull her hands back, clasping them together, hiding the permanent stain of her father’s vindictiveness.
Serena could understand Luca’s shock. Her therapist had been shocked when she’d told her.
She shrugged. ‘He was a violent man. If I stepped out of line, or if Siena misbehaved, I’d be punished.’
‘You were a child.’
Serena looked at Luca and felt acutely exposed, recalling just how her childhood had been so spectacularly snatched away from her, by far worse than a few scars on her palms.
She noticed something then, and seized on it weakly. ‘The rain—it’s stopped.’
Luca just looked at her for a long moment, as if he hadn’t ever seen her before. It made Serena nervous and jittery.
Eventually he said, ‘We’ll make camp here. Let’s set it up.’
Serena scrambled inelegantly out from under their makeshift shelter. The jungle around them was steaming from the onslaught of precipitation. It was unbearably humid...and uncomfortably sultry.
As she watched, Luca uncoiled himself, and for a moment Serena was mesmerised by his sheer masculine grace. He looked at her too quickly for her to look away.
He frowned. ‘What is it?’
Serena swallowed as heat climbed up her chest. She
