The Sicilian's Red-Hot Revenge. Kate Walker

the hell had she been doing?

      She didn’t know this man. Knew nothing about him except his first name and the fact that he had just pulled her from what she had feared was going to be a watery grave—but she didn’t know him! And yet she had been kissing him as if he was the love of her life. She’d been clamped so tight against him that they might have been one person, so close that there was no way she could have denied the sexual hunger he felt—or refuse to acknowledge the fact that it pounded through her own body too.

      Anyone who might have seen them would have thought that they were already lovers, so intimate had been his hold on her, her response to him.

      And this was a man that she knew precisely two facts about.

      His name was Vito.

      And he was a Sicilian.

      It was mad. It was ridiculous. It was dangerous.

      And it was as that last word exploded inside her head that she knew what had happened. She’d heard about it, read about it. She’d been in danger and this Vito had come to her rescue. The fear and the panic, the knowledge of danger and then the sheer, blinding exhilaration of having been saved. That had all created a wild, impossibly intense atmosphere. A hothouse atmosphere in which a very basic attraction had grown, been blown up out of all proportion and so created a volatile situation as a result.

      Just the thought of it caught her body in a shiver of response that made her tremble where she stood. Immediately those black eyes narrowed, sharpening perceptibly.

      ‘You are cold! Forgive me—I should have thought.’

      Already he was looking round, moving, heading in the direction of what she now saw was his jacket, discarded on the sand a short distance away, obviously in the haste of his mad dash to rescue her.

      That thought should ease her mental discomfort, but instead it had the exact opposite effect, making her shudder even harder as reaction set in and the memory of just what had happened—what might have happened and how close she had come to it—attacked her nerves and made her quake inside, bitter tears of memory stinging at her eyes, her knees threatening to buckle beneath her.

      This man—this darkly devastating, sexy, handsome man—had rushed into the turbulent water without hesitation when he had thought she was going to drown, throwing his jacket one way and the shoes she could now see further up the beach another. He’d come to her rescue when he had seen her going under for the third time, and no one had done anything like that, anything kind for her in a long, long time.

      ‘Here…’

      Vito was back at her side, swinging the jacket up and around her shoulders, pulling it closed at the front.

      ‘This should help.’

      ‘Th-thank you,’ Emily managed, her tongue trembling as much as her limbs.

      The jacket was comforting, so that she wanted to pull it closer, huddle into it to hide away from the world. But at the same time it started up a set of memories and emotions that in her present shocked state she was having terrible trouble controlling, so much so that the temptation to fling the garment from her and run was almost stronger than her need for comfort.

      Almost.

      Instead, she found that her fingers had clamped tight over the elegant lapels, crushing the expensive fabric ruinously as she clutched it to her like some sort of shield. Shock was setting in with a vengeance and she didn’t know how to cope with anything.

      ‘Are you OK?’

      Idiota! Vito reproved himself furiously. Of course she was not OK! She had just almost drowned and now she was cold and probably in shock. What sun there had been earlier in the day was already fading rapidly, clouds gathering in the sky. Already some of those clouds were turning heavy grey and, if he was not mistaken, the storm that had been threatening all afternoon was now building up rapidly to breaking point.

      And with the darkening of the skies had come a definite drop in temperature, a chill to the wind that had blown up. Instinctively he rubbed his own arms where the gooseflesh had already appeared. The damp jeans and T-shirt were cooling rapidly—and he wasn’t half as badly soaked as Emily.

      ‘Idiota!’ he muttered again and saw those big blue eyes widen in shock and apprehension as she took a stumbling step backwards, away from him. Immediately his conscience reproached him savagely. With her blonde hair darkened by the water and tangled around her face, her skin pale and her lips almost colourless, she looked like nothing so much as a half-drowned kitten, one he had just kicked out at, hard.

      ‘Not, not you—me’, he assured her hastily. ‘I should not be keeping you here talking when you’re soaked through to the skin. You need to get inside—get warm—change your clothes. We have to get you home—where are your car keys?’

      ‘Here…’ She pulled them from her pocket, where, luckily, she had obviously put them before her wild dance in the water. ‘But—but there’s a problem…’

      ‘There is?’

      Vito had been turning away, heading for the promenade, but the comment and the shaky voice in which it was uttered brought him to an abrupt halt, swinging round to frown down at her again.

      ‘What sort of problem?’

      For a second he thought she was going to keep silent. The way she huddled closer into his jacket, avoiding his eyes, seemed to indicate that. But then she bit down hard on her lower lip and lifted her gaze to look him straight in the face.

      ‘I—I don’t live locally.’

      ‘You don’t?’

      Emily shook her head, sending cold drops of sea water flying from her pale hair. ‘I only meant to be here for the day—I was just passing through.’

      No. His mind rebelled at the thought, rejecting it out of hand. That wasn’t going to happen. She wasn’t going to ‘pass through’, moving on and out of his life without a backward glance. He hadn’t met a woman who had stirred his senses so ferociously in a long time—if ever. He wasn’t going to just let her go without knowing what it would be like to take this instant, blazing attraction further. An attraction that she had felt too. He had sensed it in every inch of her body; felt it when she had trembled against him.

      That hadn’t been from cold, but from the exact opposite. The burning heat of desire that he’d experienced had made him shake too, but with need, with a hunger that he had been barely able to control. Its force had been primitive enough to bring him almost to the point of flinging her down onto the sand and indulging in the raw, primal need that they were both enduring. Only the knowledge that they were in such a public place had forced him to rein in the fierce desire that had him in its grip.

      He still felt that way. But seeing the way she huddled into his coat imposed a control over his actions that warred cruelly with the still burning desire.

      ‘But you have clothes in your car—something to change into…’

      The words died on his tongue as she shook her head again.

      ‘I didn’t bring any with me. I—wasn’t thinking straight.’

      ‘Just passing through.’ Vito repeated her words automatically, his mind busy.

      ‘Just passing through,’ she echoed and shivered again as a drip of water tumbled from her fringe and landed on her nose.

      The small response made up his mind for him.

      ‘Then you’ll have to come back with me,’ he declared, making it a statement of fact, not a suggestion. To him it was the only answer. There was no other way.

      But Emily’s blonde head tilted to one side, blue eyes studying him warily. And there was a new expression in them now. One that had suddenly reminded him that she might be just a kitten—but even the smallest cat had very sharp claws.

      ‘Back where?’

      ‘To