Invitation from the Venetian Billionaire by Lucy King

CHAPTER FIVE

ITWASNEARINGlunchtime when Carla finally emerged, not that Rico, who was in the kitchen throwing together something to eat, had been watching the clock.

In fact, he’d spent most of the morning ploughing up and down the pool in an effort to soothe and exercise his aching muscles. Despite taking painkillers that had knocked him out pretty much instantly, he hadn’t slept well. For most of the night he’d thrashed about, his dreams filled with disjointed montages of his life on the streets as an adolescent, triggered by his continuing incredulity that he hadn’t noticed the theft of Carla’s handbag, the kind of dreams—or nightmares—that he hadn’t had for years.

He wasn’t in the best of moods and his acute awareness of his unexpected house guest wasn’t helping. He didn’t have people to stay. He didn’t have people in his life full stop. He didn’t want them and he certainly didn’t need them. He might have thought he had once upon a time, and he might have thought he’d found the loyalty and family and sense of belonging he craved in the gang he’d joined when he was twelve, but he hadn’t. The moment those hopes and expectations had been crushed was the moment he’d realised that he was on his own, and that the only person he could truly count on was himself.

All he needed to survive now was his isolation and his solitude, and he went to great lengths to protect them. It was the main reason he lived on an island in the lagoon instead of the sestieri. The fewer neighbours the better. He didn’t want people nosing about in his business. Even his housekeeper, who came three times a week, went home at the end of each day she was there. Should he feel the need to entertain, he did so in the city.

This particular property of his might extend to fifty hectares, but Carla being in even a tiny part of it felt like a violation of his space, a further threat to his peace of mind, which was already in some turmoil. Her constant but unwelcome presence in his thoughts was frustrating. As if his dreams about his youth hadn’t been disturbing enough on their own, up she’d popped in a number of them, teasing him with the spikiness that he found perversely attractive and tempting him to behave in a way that might be worth suffering a few aches and pains for.

Everything about the whole situation that he now found himself in was immensely irritating, and the realisation he’d come to mid-swim an hour ago made it additionally so. One unforeseen consequence of his reluctant chivalry was that if he wanted Carla gone, and gone fast, which he did, he’d have to be the one to facilitate it. Overnight, the private nature of his island, which he’d always considered a definite positive, had become a serious negative. She had things to do that could only be done in the city and he’d have to take her, which, he was forced to acknowledge with a grind of his teeth, was perhaps another example of acting in haste and repenting at leisure.

But he badly wanted his life back to the trouble-free, easy way it had been before he’d met Carla, before he’d seen the photo of Finn, before even the accident, and if that meant accompanying her every step of the way as she set about reclaiming what had been taken from her, to make sure she actually had the wherewithal to leave, then so be it.

He could resist the temptation she posed, he assured himself grimly, aware of a sudden shift in the air and bracing himself before turning to find her standing in the doorway, wearing a yellow sundress and flip-flops, looking like sunshine, her hair wet from the shower he would not be imagining her in ever. He could retain his grip on his control and shut down his response to her. If he ruthlessly stuck to the plan and deployed his usual devil-may-care approach to life, the one that had been strangely absent during the last twenty-four hours, everything would be fine.

‘Good afternoon,’ he said, fixing a lazy smile to his face and sounding pleasingly unmoved by her appearance.

‘I didn’t mean to disturb you.’

Far too late for that. ‘You aren’t. Come in.’

‘I had no idea of the time,’ she said, sliding her gaze to the clock on the wall above his head and giving a faint grimace as she stepped forward. ‘I’m still recovering from my trip to Hong Kong, jet lag is a bitch.’

‘Coffee?’

‘That would be great, thank you.’

She came to a stop on the other side of the vast kitchen island unit and hopped up onto a stool. Resolutely not noticing how the movement tightened her dress around her chest, Rico turned his attention to taking a pot off the stove and poured the contents into a tiny espresso mug, which he then handed to her across the expanse of marble.

‘Milk? Sugar?’

‘No, thanks.’ She took a sip and closed her eyes, while he watched her smile in satisfaction and for a moment forgot his name. ‘Oh, that is good,’ she said, which instantly had him imagining her breathing that exact same thing into his ear as he held her tight and moved inside her.

‘Help yourself to brunch,’ he muttered, with a quick cough to clear the hint of hoarseness from his voice and the unacceptably vivid image from his head.

‘You cooked?’

‘I can.’ And well. Once upon a time, he’d sworn he would never go hungry again and he hadn’t. ‘However, today I merely assembled.’

Getting a ruthless grip on the imagination that had never troubled him before, Rico turned to the section of counter top where he’d been working and set about transferring plates of prosciutto and salami, mozzarella and Gorgonzola, and bowls of artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes and olives to the island. With ciabatta and focaccia, in hindsight, it was rather a lot for two people but, ‘I didn’t know what you’d like.’

‘I like it all,’ she said with an apologetic wince as her stomach rumbled loudly. ‘It looks delicious.’

She looked delicious, was the thought that shot into his head before he could stop it, and he wanted to devour her. ‘Take a plate.’

‘Thank you.’ She did as he’d suggested and began filling it, only to pause a moment later. ‘You know...’ she said, then stopped.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ She gave her head a quick shake, as if to clear it, and said instead, ‘Thank you for putting me up last night.’

‘You’re welcome.’

‘I’ll be out of your hair just as soon as I can.’

The sooner the better, because what if, contrary to his expectations, he couldn’t keep a lid on the attraction that instead of fading only seemed to be getting worse? What if he succumbed and lowered his defences and she went in for the kill? It didn’t bear thinking about. ‘I will help.’

‘I can manage,’ she said, flashing him a smile of her own, one that didn’t quite reach her eyes and gave him the impression it was about as genuine as his.

‘I don’t doubt it.’

‘So that’s settled, then.’

If only. ‘Not quite.’

Her green gaze narrowed slightly. ‘How so?’

‘Do you have any idea where you actually are?’ he asked, thinking obviously not, judging by the faint frown that appeared on her forehead.

‘Enlighten me.’

‘Isola Santa Margherita.’

‘Which is?’

‘My island.’

She lowered the spoon she’d been using to her plate and stared at him. ‘Your island.’

‘Corretto.’

‘Neighbours?’

‘No.’

‘Access to the city?’

‘Boat.’

For a moment a shadow passed across her face and he thought he saw a shudder ripple through her but both were gone before he could be sure.

‘There are taxis, I presume?’

He gave a brief nod and reminded himself that he needed to know as much about shadows or shudders as he did about smiles that weren’t genuine, which was nothing. ‘There are, but they’re expensive and you have to book ahead. I and my boat, however, are free and entirely at your disposal.’

‘Oh, I’m sure you must have lots to be getting on with,’ she said, replacing the spoon in the bowl of olives and picking up a napkin.

‘As a matter of fact, I don’t. I’m supposed to be taking things easy.’

‘Then you don’t need to be ferrying me around.’

‘It would be my pleasure,’ he said with an easy coolness that matched hers. ‘I’ll take you anywhere you need to be.’

Quite frankly, Carla thought as she watched Rico embark on piling food onto his plate, she needed to be anywhere other than here, on a private island, cut off from the city, from people, from help. Anywhere other than having brunch with the man who’d presented her with a smorgasbord of deliciousness that had momentarily tempted her to divulge tales of the horrendous food she’d had to eat while growing up on a commune, which could well have wound up becoming a conversation about her instead of him and potentially led down a path she’d really rather not tread.

If only she hadn’t hung about in the doorway to the kitchen, transfixed by the sight of him and rooted to the spot, but had instead got a grip and made herself scarce. If only she hadn’t stood there, staring at his back, watching the muscles of his arms bunch and flex as he did whatever he was doing, struggling for breath and going weak at the knees while her temperature soared.

An effect of her still malfunctioning body clock? Probably not, but it was the excuse she’d decided upon and she was sticking to it. She was contemplating using it too as an explanation for actually considering accepting his suggestion to act as her taxi, despite her deep-seated desire to take care of herself.

Not that she really needed one.

If she applied clarity and reason to her thinking she’d see that this situation was nothing like the one it had reminded her of in the early hours of this morning. There was no malicious intent behind Rico’s offer of help. No attempt to control her actions or her thoughts. No demand for anything in return. The island might be cut off but she wasn’t. No one was stopping her from going anywhere.

She’d be better off focusing on the reality of today and not the memories of a decade ago, she told herself, adding a spoonful of artichoke hearts to her plate. Yes, she didn’t want to be indebted to him and yes, it was bad enough that he’d had to rescue her in the first place, but surely the quicker she sorted everything out, the quicker she’d be home. With his means of transport and knowledge of the city, neither of which she had, Rico would definitely speed things up. She only understood enough Italian to be able to order off a menu. He’d be able to slice through the bureaucracy in a way that she simply couldn’t.

Maybe she ought to learn to accept help without feeling as if she was somehow failing by not being able to handle things on her own. Just because she was capable didn’t mean she had to be all the time. Maybe, occasionally, it would be a good idea to let someone else take the reins, on a practical level at any rate.

And, perhaps, he’d lend her some cash?

Carla had been financially independent for years, ever since she’d realised that having her own money and plenty of it would give her choice and freedom. She paid her credit card off in full every month. The only money she borrowed was for her mortgage. But even if she asked Georgie to send her some, with no ID she wouldn’t be able to pick it up. Without her phone she couldn’t access her digital wallet. However strong her motivations, however excellent her intentions, she had to be practical.

‘OK, well, first of all,’ she said, taking a great leap in her personal development by choosing to look forward not back, ‘I need to go to the police station and report the theft of my things.’

‘We can leave as soon as you’re ready to go.’

‘I also need to get a phone.’

‘I thought you might,’ he said, one corner of his mouth kicking up in a way that did sizzling things to her stomach which she could really do without. ‘So I had this delivered this morning.’ The model he slid in her direction she knew to be the latest of its kind and worth over a thousand euros. ‘It’s yours if you want it.’

See? she told herself while struggling to get a grip on the heat that was threatening to turn her into a puddle of lust. He wasn’t trying to cut her off. Quite the opposite, in fact. ‘On loan?’

‘If you wish.’

‘I insist.’ She took a deep breath, then said, ‘And on the subject of loans... I was wondering...’

‘How much do you need?’

With a wince, she told him and he nodded. ‘Not a problem.’

‘I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.’

‘No hurry.’

There was every hurry, she thought as she popped an olive in her mouth and watched intrigued as Rico turned his attention to his own plate and began working through it with the same degree of focus he’d had last night. Because she might not disturb him any longer, but Rico, with his dark looks, cool confidence and decisiveness, certainly disturbed her. He was so attractive and so hard to resist on any number of levels. She had to take care not to let this practical help of his slide into something more dangerous where her emotions became involved and she became infatuated with him. The sooner she removed herself from his magnetising orbit and returned home, to her job, her friends, her life, the better.

But when it came to the actual police station visit itself, Carla was unexpectedly rather glad of his presence. As they approached and then pulled up at the jetty immediately in front of the entrance to the building, she welcomed the distraction provided by his proximity and solidity and didn’t even bother to resist the temptation to keep glancing over and drinking in how very good he looked in shorts that revealed the lower half of a pair of very sexy legs, a T-shirt that moulded to his muscles, and mirrored sunglasses.

The only other time she’d been anywhere near such an establishment was immediately after she’d been rescued from the seedy east London hotel she’d ended up in when she’d run away to be with the man she’d thought she’d loved. The occasion had been invasive and embarrassing and horrible, she remembered, her pulse beginning to race and her stomach churning as they alighted, and, just in front of the arch through which she and Rico had to proceed, her step faltered.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked, concern flickering in his gaze as he looked down at her.

She took a deep breath and fixed a smile to her face. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, aiming for breezy but not quite hitting it. ‘Just not a huge fan of police stations. So let’s get this over and done with, shall we?’

She went ahead of him, and stepped out of the bright sunlight and into the dark, busy station, and it wasn’t the same, obviously, but the uniforms and the noise and the musty, damp smell acted like a trigger, and recollections of being interviewed and inspected, stripped and swabbed, suddenly slammed into her head.

In an instant she was awash with memories of the confusion and discomfort she’d felt at the intrusion, along with the fury and outrage and resentment at what had been done to her by those who’d ripped her away from her one true love. She remembered how it had all been brought up again at her abuser’s trial, by which time she’d broken free of his malevolent influence and could see what had happened for the horror it really was, which had converted the resentment and fury into the shame and guilt that still faintly lingered even now, a decade later.

And today it was all too much. She was hot and she was tired. Her defences were weakened by the robbery and jet lag. She didn’t want to be reminded of her abuser and what he’d done to her and how she’d facilitated it. Yet now it was all she could think of. The naïvety and the neediness she’d felt. The hundreds of emails they’d exchanged that contained an angst-ridden outpouring of her concerns, her worries, her hopes, her dreams. The intimate photos she’d sent and the innermost thoughts she’d shared.

The memories and the emotions whirled round her head faster and faster, as if she were on some kaleidoscopic, out-of-control merry-go-round. Her heart thundered as if trying to break her ribs. Her lungs tightened, her dress clinging to her body clammily. She couldn’t breathe. Her head was swimming. Her limbs were turning to liquid. She felt as if she was about to throw up.

God, she wasn’t going to faint, was she?

No. She couldn’t be. She wasn’t the type. She was strong and capable and a survivor. Yet her knees felt weirdly weak. Sweat was trickling down her back and her blood was pounding in her ears. She was hot, so very hot, and her vision was now blurring at the edges and her head was going all prickly.

The last thing she was aware of before her legs gave way was a strong arm whipping round her waist, a hard wall of muscle into which she collided, and then there was nothing but darkness.

Rico had experienced many, many things in his thirty-one years on the planet but having someone pass out on him was not one of them.

Thank God he’d caught Carla before she fell. Given the direction in which she’d listed, she’d most likely have hit her head on the corner of the very solid-looking table to her right and that might well have put her in hospital. Instead, she’d collapsed into the relative safety of his arms.

Ignoring the screaming protest of his body, he scooped her up in all her dead weight glory and barked out a series of orders that resulted in chairs being swiftly assembled into a row.

Now was not the time to notice how soft she felt gathered up against him or how delicious she smelled. Nor was it the time to dwell on how well he knew this building, how often he’d spent the night here in these cells, having been caught earning money and later ‘running errands’ on the sestieri, a cocky and mouthy youth on the surface, a lost and petrified child beneath. Now was the time to lay her down to get her blood flowing in the right direction and procure the paperwork.

With what wasn’t his most elegant of moves Rico set Carla down, pausing only to slide the strap of her dress that had fallen down up over her shoulder and absolutely not indulging in the temptation to linger.

Dio, the things he’d done, he thought darkly as he straightened and stalked over to the desk, the small crowd in front of it taking one look at the scar at his temple and the bump in his nose and parting like the waves. Willingly at first when he’d been desperate to prove himself and fit in but then increasingly less willingly when he’d gained the respect of his bosses and been asked to take on a bigger role and more responsibility, although by that point he’d been in so deep he hadn’t been able to see a way out.

He hadn’t been anywhere near this place in years. Not since that last time, when, at the age of sixteen, he’d been charged with crimes relating to money laundering. But it might as well have been yesterday. He could still recall how terrified he’d been despite the bravado. How slowly the hours had passed while he waited for his bosses to come and bail him out. How sick with devastation and disillusionment he’d felt when he’d realised no one was coming, that the loyalty he’d given them would not be repaid, and how unbelievably naïve and stupid he’d been to put his trust in people who’d dealt only in exploitation and had never known a code of honour.

But that was ancient history, he reminded himself with a clench of the jaw. On leaving the courtroom that day he’d slammed the door shut on everything that had happened to him between the death of his parents and turning his life around, and it no longer had the ability to affect him. Nothing on any level other than the purely physical did these days.

By the time he returned to Carla, forms in hand, she’d recovered and was sitting up, looking slightly dishevelled, slightly stunned, yet oddly, mystifyingly...adorable.

‘What happened?’ she asked, her question cutting through his bewilderment, since he’d never found anything adorable, oddly or otherwise, while the huskiness of her voice sent a jolt of awareness through him.

‘You passed out.’

She stared at him. ‘Seriously?’

‘Yes,’ he said curtly in an effort to pull himself together. ‘You went out like a light.’

‘Who does that these days?’

‘You do, evidently. How are you feeling?’

‘A bit odd,’ she said, after thinking about it for a moment, and then added with a grimace, ‘A lot mortified.’

‘Should I call the paramedics?’ he asked, the fact that he was asking a question instead of issuing an order and expecting it to be obeyed a further source of irritation. But if there was one thing he was beginning to realise about Carla, it was that she preferred to make her own decisions and didn’t respond well to being told what to do, however well intentioned.

‘No. I’m fine.’

He looked at her, caught the paleness of her face and the turmoil in the shimmering depths of her eyes, and frowned. ‘You really don’t like police stations, do you?’

‘No,’ she said with a faint shudder.

‘Why not?’

She tensed. ‘Does anyone?’

Well, he certainly didn’t, which would have given them something in common had he ever been remotely interested in seeking such a thing with anyone. ‘What made you faint?’

‘The heat,’ she said, and he might have believed her if she hadn’t bitten her lip and shifted her gaze from his.

‘It’s not that hot.’

‘Jet lag and lack of sleep on top of a stressful week and even more stressful weekend, then,’ she said with a scowl. ‘How would I know?’

Of course she knew. She wasn’t the type to stumble. Or collapse. Besides, he’d felt the tension vibrating off her. He’d caught the turmoil in her expression the second before she’d fallen into his arms. But actually it didn’t matter what he did or didn’t believe. It was none of his business. He didn’t need details. He was just here to facilitate her departure and get his life back. ‘Do you need any help with the forms?’

‘No, thank you.’

In the ten minutes it took her to fill in the details, Rico distracted himself by going through the seventy-five emails that had come in since they’d left the house, deleting or replying with single-minded focus and ruthless efficiency.

One unexpected disadvantage of working on his own with only back office support was that during the fortnight he’d spent in hospital being put back together while dosed up on morphine he’d been unable to operate his phone, let alone engage with the highly complex financial instruments he used to manage his funds. As a result he’d lost millions, which he was still in the process of recuperating.

The markets might be closed today but decisions still had to be made. Strategies had to be clarified. Requests had to be considered and, in the case of the email from one Alex Osborne of Osborne Investigations, who was apparently looking into his and Finn’s biological family and was after details about him that he had either no intention of sharing or else didn’t know, ignored.

Responding to or even engaging with the investigator, however briefly, would not help him in his quest to return his life to normal. It was bad enough that Finn kept popping into his head, triggered by Carla’s revelation last night at dinner about how upset his brother had been by Rico’s departure from his house.

The nonsensical guilt that came with these appearances was not something he appreciated. He doubted he could shed any light on anything anyway. He certainly didn’t need to open the email that had come directly from this new-found brother of his. He wasn’t interested in anything he might have to say. He wasn’t interested in family full stop, and that was where this ended.

‘That’s it,’ said Carla briskly, snapping him out of his dark, rumbling thoughts. ‘I’m done.’

She stood up and swayed and Rico was on his feet in an instant.

‘Steady,’ he said, instinctively putting one hand on her shoulder, which he realised was a mistake the minute he did it. She tensed beneath his touch and her breath caught. Her gaze jerked to his, a flash of heat lighting the emerald-green depths of her eyes, which exploded a reciprocal burst of desire inside him before she shook his hand off at the exact same moment he snatched it away.

‘Sit down,’ he said curtly, resisting the urge to curl his hand into a fist to squeeze out the burn. ‘I’ll take them.’

For once she didn’t protest but did as he suggested with alacrity, and by the time he returned with the report his hand had just about stopped tingling and the memory of the feel of her soft, smooth skin beneath his palm had just about gone.

‘Want to get out of here?’ he asked, looking down at her and noting with relief that she now displayed no hint of her reaction to his touch.

‘Very much so,’ she said coolly, clearly having decided, like him, to take the denial approach.

‘Are you going to pass out again?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I don’t know about you,’ he muttered as they stepped outside out of darkness and into the light, ‘but I could do with a drink.’