laugh tickled her overstretched nerve-endings; it was a deep, throaty sound and she imagined his voice would be husky like that when he was driven by other emotions. A charge of awareness surprised her and she felt her nipples strain hard against the fabric of her bra.
His eyes dropped to them and his lips flickered in a droll smile of sardonic appreciation. ‘Go and get changed, Cressida,’ he said, dismissing her.
It was on the tip of her tongue to challenge him, Or what? when he replied, ‘Before it’s too late.’
Too late? A frisson of awareness pulsed through her, teasing her spine and making her shiver.
She took the bag from him and moved quickly down the hallway towards the bedroom he’d marked as hers.
Too late for what?
Her mind pushed away the most obvious reading of the statement—that there was some inevitability that they were running from. It was a silly interpretation, no doubt fuelled by her propensity to read far too many romance novels.
She kept her head ducked until she reached the door he’d indicated would lead to her own accommodation.
Her first assessment had been right.
There was a small bed, a bookshelf, and a hat rack near a high, small window that had geraniums in a window box, creeping halfway up the glass in an enthusiastic display of clustered red.
There was a mirror too, and she caught her reflection and moaned audibly. She looked... She might as well be naked. The fabric of her dress had turned a dark green and it hugged her tightly, moulding her breasts, her stomach, her bottom, and clinging in a V to her womanhood.
Her fingers shook as she went to remove it quickly, stripping it off her shoulders and pushing it from her body. The sight of her bra and G-string wasn’t any better. Angrily she discarded them, until she was naked, still wet, but not caring.
Her phone was in the side pocket of her bag and she lifted it out. The picture of her and Jack smiled at her when she activated it, and for a moment she felt her stomach swoop in relief. He would be okay. She’d made sure of it. This week was a small price to pay for his safety. What the hell had he been thinking?
She swiped her phone to life and flicked up the emails.
An error message appeared. With a frown, she realised there was no internet. No signal whatsoever, in fact.
A grim sense of being completely and utterly alone with Rio Mastrangelo sent a shiver down her spine.
How could Cressida do this to her? The more Tilly thought about it, the more convinced she was that Cressida had lied. But why? What could be so important that she’d orchestrate this deception? She obviously hadn’t wanted to risk Tilly saying no—which she would have, had she known about this tiny shack and the drop-dead gorgeous billionaire only a wall away. Damn her!
Well, this would be the end of it. Once she got back to London she’d tell Cressida that their arrangement was at an end.
She ripped at the zip of the bag, pulling it roughly and lifting out another dress. But it was low at the front, and she didn’t want to wear anything that might feed into the idea Rio had of her.
Cressida Wyndham, with her fake breasts, ready smile and casual attitude to life in general and sex specifically, would have been working out how to seduce the ruthless tycoon... But Tilly wanted no part of the man.
Did she?
‘ARE YOU HUNGRY?’
He didn’t look up as she entered; Tilly hadn’t even realised he’d heard her.
‘Not really.’
She paused inside the doorframe, studying him surreptitiously from behind hooded eyes. She caught the moment he lifted his head, saw his eyes running over her figure, his face giving nothing away. She’d have loved to pull on a baggy shirt and jeans, but she’d only packed frothy dresses and bikinis. She’d chosen the most conservative of the dresses—a dark blue linen that fell to her knees.
Wary of distracting him when he was in the middle of working, she gnawed on her lip for a moment. Then, ‘My phone doesn’t work here.’
That caught his attention. He flicked a brief glance at her. ‘No. There’s no cell tower. No infrastructure of any nature.’
She nodded, but one side of her mouth quirked downwards at the corner. ‘What do you do in an emergency?’
‘What kind of emergency?’ he prompted curiously.
‘Um...any kind. A band of marauding pirates storming the beach, or any angry flock of seagulls pecking their way across the sand...’
His smile was unexpected—and so was its effect. Her tummy filled with frantic butterflies; her skin dotted with goosebumps.
‘You don’t think I could defend you against a band of pirates?’
She arched a brow. ‘I think you have an inflated sense of your physical abilities.’
He arched a brow. ‘A theory I’m willing to disprove at any time,’ he promised darkly.
And now the butterflies went into overdrive, fluttering down to her knees and making them wobbly.
‘I’m serious,’ she said, the words stiffened by disapproval. ‘What if there’s a fire, or you break your leg or something?’
‘I have a satellite phone.’ He shrugged.
‘But what about emails?’
‘I can connect to it for internet access,’ he said. ‘It’s slow as hell, but it gets the job done.’
‘Electricity? Water?’
‘Generator. Tank.’
Her mind was busy processing that. ‘Whoever built this really wanted to be off the grid.’
‘Not a lot of options on a deserted island,’ he pointed out, with a pragmatism that annoyed her.
‘I don’t know... It seems like a post-apocalyptic bolthole.’
Or the perfect love-nest for a cheat and liar, Rio amended silently. How many women had Piero brought here over the years? Whispering sweet nothings about Prim’amore, promising a future he had no intention of providing.
‘Do you need to use the phone?’ he asked belatedly, drawing his attention back to her original query.
Fantasies of calling Cressida and unloading on her were clouds Tilly would never catch. Of course she could do no such thing. Besides, Cressida had said she was ‘going to ground’ until the wedding—that she didn’t want to be seen or heard by anyone for the week, and that included turning her cell phone off.
Tilly shook her head, a distracted smile
