Chapter Seven
RAFFAELE HAD NEVER found himself in a position where he was making a pass at a woman without being absolutely certain that it would be a reciprocal situation. In actual fact, women were often the ones who did the pass-making, with him in the role of obliging recipient.
But that was what he had just done, wasn’t it? Made a pass at Erin? She was staring at him in dumbfounded silence and he couldn’t blame her.
If he couldn’t understand what had just happened there, then what were the chances that she would? Had telepathy ever been one of her many skills?
He stared back at her, gauging her reaction in the steamy darkness and utter silence.
He should have been kicking himself but he wasn’t. In fact it was a struggle not to reach out and do what his body wanted: reach out and trail his finger over her lips and then bring his mouth to hers so that he could taste her.
Sex. Lust. Desire. A place he’d never thought he would ever want to explore with Erin Fisher, but right now it was the only thing he wanted.
The alluring pull of the woman who made him laugh and made him think had collided with the intense drag of attraction, one that had roared into life with sudden, blinding ferocity when he’d seen her dancing.
‘It’s late,’ he said abruptly. He stood up and remained standing as she stumbled to her feet.
Erin took a step back from him, desperate to put some distance between them because what he had just said was ringing in her ears. He thought she was sexy? Beautiful? Since when? Had she failed to notice that pigs had started flying?
‘It’s late, yes,’ she said feebly, ‘and I’m guessing that you must have had more to drink than you imagine. That rum punch was really strong.’
But even as she spoke, the glittering intent in his eyes had her spellbound.
‘I never drink more than I should. Do you think I must have had too much to drink because of what I’ve just said to you?’
‘Yes, if you really want to know.’
‘Why wouldn’t I find you sexy? Beautiful?’
‘Because…’
‘Because…?’
‘Because I don’t think that this conversation is appropriate.’
‘That’s not an answer. Give me an answer.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake! Because that’s not the sort of thing that’s ever happened to me!’ Erin burst out in a rush. ‘Satisfied?’
‘No.’
‘What do you mean by that? What do you mean by no? You can’t say that.’
‘You fascinate me, Erin Fisher, which is why I want to find out more about you. And yes I can say it. I just did.’
They stared at one another.
When he reached out to trace the outline of her jaw, she audibly gasped but the thrill of his touch was…
electric. It turned every bone in her body to jelly.
She wanted to subside right back onto the bench but weirdly, she was incapable of any movement at all.
She could only stare at his beautiful face, cast in shadows.
That feathery touch had come and gone in seconds but the heat from his finger lingered, and she had to resist the temptation to cover the spot with her hand.
She longed to touch him back. Yearned for it and yet the awareness of the danger of going there roared through her with the force of a volcano.
This was a risk she couldn’t take. Wouldn’t take. She wanted love and this road led to…despair. She knew this man, knew herself…knew the two should never, ever merge.
‘Since when do I fascinate you, Raffaele?’ she scoffed weakly.
He shrugged and looked up to the dark, cloudless sky, the hundreds of thousands of stars studding it, then gazed at her thoughtfully for a couple of seconds.
‘I don’t know and you’re right. Ridiculous conversation.
You don’t have to answer anything.’ He smiled crookedly.
‘Sometimes curiosity gets the better of me and yes, add to that that I happen to find you sexy and it’s a combustible mix.
You go back to your cabin. I’m going to remain out here for a bit… get my thoughts in order.’
Faced with a choice, Erin dithered, watched as he sat back down, stretching his long legs in front of him.
This was about as exciting as life had got for her in…in as far back as she could remember.
She’d played it safe. She always had. With her love life, with her work life, with her plans for her future. As she’d learned from her parents, choosing not to walk the straight and narrow might lead to adventure, but there were too many downsides for it to ever appeal to her.
But now, under a velvety black sky studded with a million stars and the man who’d featured in too many of her fantasies over the years… She could barely breathe as excitement reared its head, beckoning her to explore.
Somehow she found herself sitting on the bench next to him. Succumbing to something more powerful than all her internal back-and-forth reasoning.
‘I work for you.’ She turned to him and heard the pleading in her voice.
‘I get that and like I said, you don’t have to indulge me.’
‘This is just a simple conversation.’ Was it?
‘I suppose I’ve been working for you for quite some time so it’s only natural we end up sharing a little more than just the superficial stuff…
No big deal.’ The steamy, sultry air made her lazy, challenged her to step out of her comfort zone for once in her life even though she continued to tell herself that a conversation was just… a conversation.
She sighed into the stretching silence. ‘My life…on the road so much of the time…it was difficult to form friendships, to form relationships. My mum and dad only ever saw it all as a huge adventure but really, for me, my most secure time was when we were at the commune and things were the same every day. I missed that when we took to the road. I missed the routine, I missed the sameness. I missed the faces that would be there every morning when I woke up and every evening before I went to bed, and those times when we settled for a bit…when I managed to go to school…it was hard. The other kids… You know kids, they can be cruel. They sometimes laughed at us, called us names. That said, there were a lot of amazing times, a lot of friendly faces but even so…’ She turned away, mortified at her outburst but when she moved to stand up, he stayed her with his hand.
‘Keep talking, Erin.’
His voice was low and serious, the voice of a friend.
Except he wasn’t a friend, was he? Or if he was, then this was no longer an innocent friendship.
A Pandora’s box had been opened and she was struggling to put the lid back on it.
Her head was saying one thing but her body was exerting a power that was too strong.
‘What else is there to talk about?’ Erin breathed in deeply at the memories of her younger years. ‘Is this all information overload? I’m guessing you don’t have a lot of stamina for women pouring their hearts out to you.’
Raffaele was caught up in a moment he couldn’t have foreseen in a thousand years.
Frankly, she was right about his usual appetite for heart-to-hearts. Zero. But right now, right here, she could have kept talking forever because he wanted to keep listening forever.
‘Besides,’ she chided good-naturedly, ‘I notice I’m the only one doing the talking.’ Another laugh. ‘Fine by me but I think I’ll call it a day now before you start thinking that you have to fish around to find a hankie to mop up my tears.’
‘Confiding…doesn’t come easily to me…’ Raffaele said roughly.
‘Doesn’t to me either, it has to be said.
Just another one of those things learned along the way.
You never really get the time needed to build the sort of friendships that encourage girlish confidences.
’ She shrugged but her voice was sad. ‘So you learn to keep things to yourself. You don’t have to share anything with me.
In fact, it’s a good idea if you don’t. I’ve already said too much. ’
‘You think my life was perfect,’ Raffaele said on a wrenched sigh and then was astonished. He hadn’t meant to say anything about himself. That was the program he’d always stuck to.
‘No one’s life is perfect but some of us have a bit more to contend with.’ Erin smiled kindly.
‘Fair enough.’ He smiled back at her crookedly. ‘I didn’t live on the road, travelling wherever the wind happened to blow. I wasn’t isolated from my own peer group because I never stayed in the same place long enough to establish a base but…’
‘But?’
Raffaele peered forward into the unknown, into the possibility of handing himself over to someone else. His early-warning systems were ringing in his ears but he wanted to ignore them.
It felt like an act of wild courage.
When he looked at Erin, her head was tilted to one side and her expression was curious but gentle.
Maybe if he’d seen anything else but that gentle curiosity he wouldn’t have taken a deep breath and said, ‘My parents have a loveless marriage. It was always a union that made sense between two powerful families, but love? No. I barely saw them. I was sent to boarding school almost as soon as I was out of nappies. Maybe if I’d been around them I would have stopped hoping for a show of affection that was never going to come a bit earlier than I did.
But I just kept on hoping, until I didn’t.
Eventually, I wised up to my place in the pecking order.
’ He shrugged. ‘I was a teenager when I discovered my father’s affair.
’ He laughed shortly. ‘Why it came as such a shock I have no idea but it did.’
‘How awful for you.’
‘These things happen. Their marriage weathered it, though. I later found out that their marriage had, in fact, weathered my father’s numerous affairs.
My mother told me when I asked her. She didn’t really see why it mattered.
Their marriage was everything a marriage should never be, held together because neither of them wanted to abandon their precious status quo. ’