Miracle Christmas. Shirley Jump

sofas,’ Beth said. ‘We’re both exhausted. So are all of you. We can’t thank you enough for all the support these last few days but you need to go to your homes. Sleep in your beds.’

      The family protested and fussed but Beth was adamant and they eventually all agreed they could do with a good night’s sleep. Rilla and Luca hung around for a few hours after everyone else had left. She felt too anxious to leave. Her home was furthest away and she wanted to be close should Bridie relapse.

      ‘Go home,’ Beth ordered at close to midnight as Gabe prepared their sofa bed.

      ‘I don’t mind staying the night,’ she stalled.

      ‘Luca, take her home,’ Beth said, hands on hips.

      Luca rose and Rilla shot him a ‘down, boy’ glare. ‘But everyone else is so much closer.’

      ‘You’re only ten minutes away,’ Beth pointed out.

      ‘Mum and Dad and Hailey are two,’ Rilla returned.

      ‘So go stay with them.’

      ‘They’ll all be asleep by now and I don’t have a key any more.’ Rilla knew she was going to sleep like the dead. She didn’t want to wake any of them from their first decent sleep in three days.

      ‘I’m two minutes away,’ Luca interrupted. Why he did so, he had no idea. But it made sense.

      Rilla looked at him, startled. She saw Beth look at Gabe in her peripheral vision.

      ‘Problem solved,’ Beth said brightly.

      ‘Luca, no,’ Rilla said, shying from the intense blackness of his eyes.

      ‘You’re tired, I’m tired. I live closer. It’s just geography, cara.’

      ‘He’s right,’ Beth pushed.

      Rilla looked from one to the other. She knew he was right. Except he said ‘cara’ and she wanted to melt. Rilla wavered.

      ‘You can sleep in the spare room,’ Luca said.

       Well, she sure as hell wasn’t going tobe sleeping with him.

      ‘Damn right I will,’ she said, gathering her stuff and heading for the door, Luca’s sexy chuckle following her.

      CHAPTER THREE

      RILLA was exhausted. Utterly, deep-down-in-her-bones, one hundred per cent exhausted. But despite the weariness of her body, the charged silence in Luca’s car was keeping her super-alert. She must have been crazy to agree to this. There was too much to say, too much to talk about. And she just wasn’t up for it. Not tonight.

      Luca pulled into the driveway, braked and turned the engine off. She looked at the flat that had been their home for the brief time they’d been together, too shattered to move, memories swamping her. The things they’d gotten up to between those four walls …

      She’d moved in with Luca within weeks of meeting him, so in love, so sure of their love. The flat hadn’t been much, but they hadn’t needed much. Back then, all they’d needed had been each other.

      After they’d returned from their Italian honeymoon they’d planned on buying a house and had been actively looking when her bombshell pregnancy had been revealed. Then all their carefully laid plans had gone out the window.

      After their marriage had disintegrated she’d moved out and eventually bought herself an apartment at South Bank. Luca had kept the flat, placing it in the hands of a rental agency just prior to leaving the country, and it had been occupied on and off for the past seven years.

      Rilla had often found herself in the street, outside the tiny two-bedroom place where they’d first made love. It had become a habit over the years, a bad one, and she’d noticed only last month that the flat was vacant again.

      Was she ready to be alone with him? In their little flat full of memories? The attraction was still there, she couldn’t deny it. Even after days without sleep, every cell in her body crying out for slumber, it pulsed between them.

      Seven years apart hadn’t doused the instantaneous flare that heated her body every time she looked at him. If anything, maturity had given him an even sexier edge, stoking the flame higher. And the way he’d stayed by her side had been heroic and appealing on an emotional level that called to her even more than the physical attraction.

      ‘Come on, Rilla,’ Luca murmured, breaking the silence in the confines of the car. She was looking at the place as if it were the portal to hell.

      She looked at Luca. He looked bigger, darker, sexier in the dimness of the car. Her name rolled off his tongue, accented perfectly, and she shivered.

       Oh, God, I’m tired.

      ‘Let’s go in,’ Luca prompted, leaning forward to unclip her seat belt as she still hadn’t made a move. She looked completely done in. Maybe he’d have to carry her? Please, no. He wasn’t up to such close contact tonight. Her slumberous eyes were already causing his groin to tighten.

      ‘S-sure,’ Rilla nodded, sitting very still until he pulled away. Damn it, she wasn’t a young woman at the mercy of her hormones any more. She was thirty.

       And over him.

      Luca opened the door and gestured for her to precede him. He tried and failed not to notice how her button-up red shirt pulled across her generous chest as her arm brushed his. How she was wearing the same perfume she’d worn the night they’d skipped out of the restaurant after entrées and made love for the first time.

      Maybe it was the heightened emotional situation with Bridie or his fatigue weakening his resistance, but seven years of denial had come back and smacked him hard in the face. Damn it! He was as hot for her now as he’d ever been. And they were alone. In their flat.

      Luca followed her down the short hallway, throwing his keys on the hallstand and ushering her into the lounge room, not even bothering not to look at her hips as they swayed in the A-line skirt she was wearing.

       Dio! Give me strength.

      He clicked on the lamp and it threw a subtle glow around the room.

      ‘Sit,’ he ordered, and escaped to the kitchen, fixing her a cup of tea. He felt the grittiness of his eyes as he waited for the kettle to boil and rubbed the back of his neck, massaging the aching muscles caused from nodding off in horrible, plastic, government-issue chairs.

      ‘I need a shower. Drink this,’ he said, holding the mug out to her. ‘I won’t be long.’

      Rilla took it and drank, desperately trying to ignore the fact that Luca, her husband, was wet and naked only metres away.

       Estranged husband. Nearly ex-husband.

      Still, when Luca strode back into the lounge there was nothing ex about the leap her pulse performed at the sight of his near-nakedness.

      ‘Oh,’ Rilla said, her eyes drawn irresistibly to the sheer beauty of his chest.

      A thick pelt of dark hair adorned his well-developed pecs and she followed its path as it became sparser, sprinkling lightly across six-pack abs, arrowing down further into a tantalising trail that disappeared behind the undone button of his jeans.

      She found herself wondering if he had underwear on or if he’d hastily pulled the jeans on without? The zipper taunted her and she dragged her gaze back to his face with difficulty.

      ‘Finished?’ he asked, swallowing hard as he recognised the heat warming the tawny flecks in her eyes.

      Luca was used to women looking at him with lust in their eyes but was surprised to discover Rilla was still one of them. There was an annoying twitch in his jeans and he silently cursed himself for his susceptibility.

      It had always been like this. Right from the start. Heady and lust-infused. They’d