nodded. He was so completely attuned to her mood and thoughts that she felt none of the hesitation or reserve she normally experienced, even with men she had known years.
The dark velvet richness of the Italian night with its scents and sighs embraced them. The gardens were formal—topiary walks and rose beds where Saffron could imagine fountains playing during the day.
The silly weakness she had experienced inside seemed to be exacerbated both by the night and Nico’s sympathy, but even so she was surprised when he suddenly stopped, turning her towards him and tilting her chin.
‘Tears?’ A handkerchief was produced and used to dry the damp stains on her cheeks. ‘May I ask why?’
‘No real reason.’ Her voice sounded shaky, but instead of feeling embarrassed she only felt an impulse to confide in him. ‘It’s just that my father and I were planning to holiday together—at our villa in southern Italy—and now he has to fly to San Francisco in the morning. It sounds silly, I know, but you see…’
‘Yes?’
She had stumbled to a halt, embarrassed, but the soft persuasion of his voice encouraged her to go on.
‘We’ve been on bad terms for some time,’ she explained simply, ‘and now we’ve found one another again, and…’
Her head drooped, long lashes fluttering down over her eyes to conceal her pain and doubt, astonished at her own confidence.
‘And you fear perhaps that he does not wish after all to be with you?’ Nico finished for her with quiet understanding.
His perspicacity shocked her. It seemed unreal that a stranger should know so much about her—see so much. It made her feel frighteningly vulnerable and yet overwhelmed with the relief of knowing that there was another human being who so perfectly understood her thoughts and feelings. The sensation was a strange one.
‘It shocks you,’ he guessed accurately, ‘that I should so easily perceive that which you keep hidden from others, but there is a special chemistry between us; surely you feel it as I do?’
Did she? Her heart started to thump painfully against her breastbone. Was that the explanation for the strange awareness and sense of familiarity almost she had felt the moment she saw Nico? Or was she simply allowing herself to be carried away by her own mood and the undoubted magic of the evening? What did she know about him, after all?
What more did she need to know? an inner voice demanded; she knew how she felt when he looked at her, how her heart turned over at the sight of his ruggedly hewn masculine features, how her body had responded to his merest touch.
‘Saffron.’ Her name left his lips on a whisper, and tension coiled nervously through her muscles. She touched her lips with the tip of her tongue, unconsciously provocative. Sensuous appreciation flared in the smoky depths of Nico’s eyes, and excitement spiralled dangerously through her. She closed her eyes instinctively, shocked by the sudden imagery of herself in Nico’s arms, his mouth moving erotically over her own, the sensuality of the pictures flooding her brain shocking her breathless.
She swayed slightly, and felt the powerful bite of his fingers on her arms.
His lips brushed lightly across one damp cheek and then the other, and then he was putting her firmly from him, despite the parted invitation of her own lips. In the moonlight, Saffron could see the deep grooves on either side of his mouth. Against her will she experienced the faint stirrings of respect and even greater liking. How easy it would have been to dismiss him if he had reacted as so many of her escorts; subconsciously she had set him a test, and she was forced to admit he had passed it. Any other man would have taken advantage of her vulnerability, both emotional and physical, but Nico had known that the moment was not right for desire to flare to life between them. It was not desire she needed from him at this moment, but compassion and tenderness, and somehow he had known it. He frightened her a little, she recognised, with the ease with which he read her. Her physical response to him alone was enough to terrify her—something she had never experienced with any other man—without the added shock of the mental rapport which seemed to have sprung up between them and which did not need to rely on words.
‘Come.’ He spoke the word gratingly as though under duress, causing her nerve endings to shiver in response. ‘We had best return before your papa sends out a search party.
‘Where is this villa you go to?’ he asked as they retraced their steps, and Saffron felt her heart soar with a joy she could never remember experiencing before.
She told him, briefly describing the area and the villa, and deliberately keeping her voice light, not forcing any invitation on him—somehow she felt they had gone beyond the need for that. She had lowered the barriers completely to him and there was no need to adopt the tricks or false pride normally expected in an exchange such as theirs.
When Nico eventually left her at her father’s side, she felt bereft, and it showed in her expression. Richard Wykeham observed her with concern.
‘It’s all right,’ she assured him, but her voice shook, and her eyes clung betrayingly to Nico’s departing back.
She didn’t see Nico again until she and her father were on the point of leaving, and then it was only the merest glimpse. He was standing at the side of an expensively fast Lancia, elbow resting on the open driver’s door as he stared into the darkness. Just for a second in the powerful beam of their own car headlights Saffron saw his expression, and the shock was like a volt of electricity—stingingly painful. His face was drawn in lines of bleak anger, bitterness grooving his mouth; he was a stranger, and although he seemed to be looking straight at her, there was no recognition in that look.
It brought home to her the fact that they were strangers and that she knew nothing about his life; nothing about whatever had brought that look of inward and bitter brooding to his face.
Saffron had been at the villa for three days. The villa and surrounding countryside were beautiful but lonely, but strangely enough it wasn’t her father who occupied most of her thoughts. It was Nico Doranti.
The couple who looked after the villa for her father were pleasant but in the main silent; neither of them was inclined to converse with her, and Saffron had decided to put her time in waiting for her father to the best use she could by topping up the tan she had got in Greece earlier in the year. She had given in to one of her friends’ pleas to join them on a yachting holiday, cruising round the Greek islands; an idyllic-sounding holiday which, unfortunately, had turned out to be something of a nightmare. It was only when she joined the cruise at Athens that Saffron had discovered that everyone was paired off in couples and that she was expected to partner Jean-Paul. Events had gone from bad to worse, culminating in an appalling scene between herself and Jean-Paul one afternoon when the yacht was lying off the island of Corfu.
All the others had gone ashore and she had been sunbathing alone—or so she thought, until Jean-Paul crept up behind her and untied the strings of her bikini top. Since she had realised she wasn’t alone her initial shocked reaction had been to whirl round, and it had been at that precise moment that a hovering photographer had seen his opportunity and snatched a picture of her from the quayside. Saffron had writhed in mortification to see it splashed all over the gossip columns days later. The grainy photograph had not shown clearly her shocked expression, but what it did show were the unmistakable curves of her breasts minus her bikini top. The usual innuendo-riddled caption had accompanied the photograph; she was holidaying with friends, including international playboy Jean-Paul Chalours, etc., etc.
Her
