she lied. Summoning her last reserves of strength, she hoisted it up to brandish it at him.
‘Now coil it up,’ he instructed, pointing to where she should place it when she’d done so.
‘Okay.’ She could do this. Quite honestly, she enjoyed the feel of the rough rope beneath her fingers—and enjoyed the look of grudging admiration on Ethan’s face even more. But she needed to even the playing field. Ethan was dressed appropriately for taking a powerboat down the river. She was dressed, but barely. ‘Do you have a jumper, or something I could borrow?’
Ethan made a humming sound as he looked her over. ‘I see your point.’
Savannah felt heat rise to her cheeks and depart southwards.
‘I’ll see what I can do for you,’ Ethan offered, brushing past her on his way across the deck. ‘I must have an old shirt stowed here somewhere …’
Her nipples responded with indecent eagerness to this brief contact with him, just as a fresh flurry of car horns started up on shore. Who could blame the drivers? Savannah thought. The sight of a decidedly scruffy girl in an ill-fitting evening dress onboard a fabulous powerboat in the middle of the afternoon with a clearly influential man of some considerable means would naturally cause a sensation in Rome. But why couldn’t Ethan notice her?
‘What’s wrong?’ he said when he straightened up, and then his stare swept the line of traffic. One steely look from him was all it took for the cars to speed up again. ‘Will this do?’ he said, turning back to Savannah. He thrust a scrunched-up nondescript bundle at her.
The shirt was maybe twenty sizes too large, Savannah saw as she shook it out, but in the absence of anything else to wear she’d have to go with it. Plus it held the faint but unmistakeable scent of Ethan’s cologne. ‘It’s absolutely perfect. Thank you.’ Slipping it on, she realised it brushed her calves, but at least she was decent. She pulled the shirt close and, inhaling Ethan’s scent deeply, gave a smile of true contentment, the first she’d unleashed that day.
He was stunned by the sight of Savannah wearing his shirt. She looked … adorable. She looked, in fact, as he imagined she might look if they had just been to bed together. Her hair was mostly hanging loose now, and the make-up she’d worn for her appearance on the pitch was smudged, which made her eyes seem huge in her heart-shaped face, and her lips appeared bruised as if he’d kissed them for hours. His shirt drowned her, of course, but knowing what was underneath didn’t help his equilibrium any. Hard to believe he had looked at her properly, critically, for the first time just a few moments ago when she’d asked for the shirt. Nothing on earth would have induced him to stare at her out on the pitch where she’d been at such a disadvantage. But now? Now he couldn’t take his eyes off her fuller figure.
Savannah tensed guiltily as unexpectedly Ethan’s gaze warmed. What was he thinking—that she was a fat mess? A nuisance? As sophisticated as a sheep? Before her imagination could take her any further, she took her seat. ‘I’m on it,’ she assured Ethan when he glanced at the harness.
She couldn’t do the darn thing up. And now Ethan was giving her the type of superior male appraisal that got right up her nose.
‘I don’t seem to have the knack,’ she admitted with frustration. Maybe because her hands were shaking with nerves at being in such close proximity to Ethan.
‘Would you like me to fasten it for you?’ Ethan offered with studied politeness.
As he leaned over to secure the catch for her, Savannah felt like she was playing with fire. Ethan’s hair was so thick and glossy she longed to run her fingers through it. And he smelled so good. His touch was so sure, and so … disappointingly fast. She looked down. The clasp was securely fastened. ‘Is that it?’
‘Would you like there to be something more?’
As he asked the question Savannah thought Ethan’s stare to be disturbingly direct. ‘No, thank you,’ she told him primly, turning away on the pretence of tossing her tangled hair out of her eyes. But even as she was doing that Ethan was lifting his overlarge shirt onto her shoulders from where it had slipped.
‘Are you sure you’re warm enough?’ he asked gruffly. ‘Only it can be cold out on the river.’
Or hot to sizzling. ‘I’ll be fine, thank you.’ Each tiny hair on the back of her neck had stood to attention at his touch, and it was a real effort not to notice that Ethan had the sexiest mouth she had ever seen. She would have to make sure she stared unswervingly ahead for the rest of the boat ride.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘NOW what are you doing?’ Ethan demanded. He had just opened up the throttle, and as the boat surged forward it pitched and yawed; Savannah had chosen that very moment to shed her harness, which forced him to throttle back.
‘I’m calling my parents.’
‘Calling your—?’ He was lost for words. ‘Not now!’ he roared back at her above the scream of the boat’s engine.
‘They’ll be worried about me.’
This was a concept so alien to him it took him a moment to respond. ‘Sit down, Savannah, and buckle up.’ He spoke with far more restraint than he felt and, after congratulating himself on that restraint, he conceded in the loud voice needed to crest the engines, ‘You can speak to them later.’
She reluctantly agreed, but he detected anxiety in her tone. He also detected the same desire to protect Savannah he’d felt out on the pitch, except now it had grown. His intention to remain distant and aloof, because she was young and innocent and he was not, was dead in the water. There was too much feminine warmth too close. ‘I’ll speak to them,’ he said, wanting to reassure her.
Savannah was right, he conceded, her parents must be worried about her, having seen everything unfold on television. ‘You can speak to them after I do,’ he said. ‘But for now sit down.’ And on this there could be no compromise.
Even Savannah couldn’t defy that tone of voice, and he made sure she was securely fastened in before picking up speed again. It amused him to see she had pushed back the sleeves on his overly large shirt and pulled it tightly around her legs, as if she felt the need to hide every bit of naked flesh from him. He supposed he could see her point of view. They were diametrically opposed on the gender scale. He was all man and she was a distraction. Fixing his attention to the river, he thrust the throttles forward.
‘This is wonderful!’ she exclaimed excitedly as the powerboat picked up speed and the prow lifted from the water.
It pleased him to see her looking so relaxed, and he even allowed himself a small smile as he remembered her jibe about opposing thumbs. There was a lot more to Ms Ross than the circumstance of their first meeting might have led him to suppose.
What exactly that might be was for some other man to discover, though, because this was strictly a taxi service to get Savannah out of harm’s way as fast as he could.
Oh, yes, it was, he argued with his unusually quarrelsome inner voice.
She was only here because she had no other option, Savannah reassured herself as the powerboat zoomed along the river. She was glad she’d been able to catch the rope and prove to Ethan she wasn’t completely helpless—after the debacle at the stadium she certainly needed something to go right, but she
