Her Mediterranean Playboy (14 page)

For a mere second he wondered if he was judging Zoe Clark too harshly. Yes, she was fun and easy, even loose—but a blackmailer? A thief? Utterly unscrupulous?

Leandro shrugged. Perhaps he was too harsh, but he refused to change his opinion. It was his safety net. The only thing that kept him from taking Zoe into his arms and making her his…to his shame.

He let out a growl of frustration and turned away from the door, heading outside to the terrace. The air was fragrant and cool, the evening light bathing the lake in shimmering golds and reds.

There were too many memories here, Leandro knew. They were haunting him, mocking him. Tormenting him. Making him feel—when he’d spent the last two decades refusing to feel, to care, letting his obsession be work, success. Wealth. Then there was no time to think—to remember all he’d loved and lost.

He didn’t have to stay, he told himself. He could return to Milan, hire someone to oversee the workmen, the repairs. Zoe.

It would be running away.

He’d hidden from the past, from memories, for too long already. He knew this instinctively—had known when the villa had come into his possession that he needed to face its ghosts. And so he would.

He would face the ghosts of his past, of his family. His father. Exorcise and exonerate them. And then he would move on.

Yet meanwhile the days passed with painful slowness. He couldn’t concentrate on his research—important research, that
would bring him new clients, more money, even celebrity status in his profession.

What are you trying to prove?

He had so much to prove, to account for, that he ached with it. Burned with it. With the ferocious desire to atone for the past, to absolve his father’s sins and his family’s shame.

Having a fling with Zoe Clark would not help his cause at all. It would accomplish the opposite—taking him further from his goal, making him more like his father than he ever wanted to be. Yet, even so, he couldn’t keep this other burning from consuming him, images and imaginings of Zoe leaping through his fevered brain.

It would be so easy…too easy.
And too dangerous.

It was several hours past midnight when Zoe pushed open the front door to the villa with a cautious creak. Her feet ached both from dancing and walking; she’d missed the last bus from Menaggio and, after hitching a ride halfway, had been forced to walk alone in the darkness along the old rutted road.

It had not been a happy time.

To be truthful, the entire evening had been borderline wretched, a fact that annoyed her. She’d gone out in search of a good time, she’d been determined to have one, and she hadn’t.

She’d moped instead.

Oh, she’d danced, chatted, flirted—done everything she could think of to ensure a successful evening. But inside she’d moped. Wanted to be back in the villa. Wondered what Leandro was doing.

Stupid Leandro, who probably hadn’t thought of her at all. Why should he? She was just the slutty housekeeper.

‘You’re back.’

In the process of taking off her heels, Zoe froze, one hand still wrapped around her ankle. Slowly she straightened. In the gloom of the hallway she could barely make out Leandro’s form, although his eyes blazed through the darkness.

‘Yes,’ she said inanely, and he grunted.

‘I wondered if you’d be back this evening at all.’

Zoe stiffened at the implication. After a second’s hesitation
she threw back her head, smiling in the darkness. ‘I didn’t have
that
good a time.’

‘No?’ Leandro stepped closer, and with a lurch of something between alarm and attraction Zoe realised his chest was bare. He wore only a pair of loose drawstring pyjama bottoms. She could feel the heat radiating from him coiling inside her too. ‘How good a time
did
you have, Zoe?’

She lifted her chin. ‘Why do you care?’

Leandro was silent for a moment. Zoe could see the beat of his heart, the pulse in his throat, and felt her own jerk and leap in answer. ‘I don’t know,’ he said finally. ‘God knows, I shouldn’t. Shouldn’t even…’

His voice thickened, almost slurring, and Zoe held her breath as his hand reached out and brushed a strand of hair away from her face, his fingertips trailing her cheek.

‘Want…’

Want. That was what was between them. Heavy and pulsing, a magnetic tidal force she had no strength or desire to avoid. She wanted it—wanted to be pulled under, to lose herself in the moment and the man…Even if that was all it was. A moment.

‘Why shouldn’t you?’ Zoe whispered, afraid to break the moment for either Leandro or herself. Afraid to stop it, yet also afraid to begin.

‘I don’t know,’ Leandro confessed raggedly, and then his hand stole around to the back of her head and he drew her unresistingly to him.

The first touch of his lips against her was sweet, tentative, tender as they tested and tasted one another. Yet even as that sweetness unfurled and bloomed within her it was already changing, deepening and darkening into something primal and ferocious and hard.

It took another split second to adjust, and then she felt the answering need blaze within her. She returned the kiss’s ferocity, her hands coming around his bare shoulders, digging into skin, their bodies pressed against one another now, pressed and pushing, proving something.

Was she exorcising the memory of Steve and the shame he’d made her feel? Proving to herself that she could handle one more no-strings affair? Showing Leandro just what kind of girl she was?

But I’m not that kind of girl, and I don’t think I ever really was.

Zoe pushed the questions and doubts away. She wouldn’t—couldn’t—think. Couldn’t imagine what a man like Leandro had to prove—why he shouldn’t
want
…want her.

For right now there was a great deal of wanting going on.

He pushed the straps of her dress off her shoulders, his lips hot and seeking on the sensitive skin of her nape. They both stumbled back and Leandro landed hard on the stairs—cold, slick marble against bare skin. Uncomfortable, difficult, and yet somehow it didn’t matter, somehow it was still urgent and desperate and
angry
.

Why were they both so angry?

For that was the emotion pulsing to life between them, Zoe realised hazily as they exchanged kiss for kiss, brand for brand. It wasn’t what she wanted, and from some inner reserve of strength she pulled away from Leandro, her bare back biting into the staircase’s wrought-iron railing, and gasped,
‘No.’

Leandro was breathing hard, his face flushed, his eyes blazing blue fire. He dropped his head back, raking a hand through his hair.

‘Cold feet?’ he asked sardonically, yet Zoe heard the bite of another, darker emotion underneath his cynicism, and he didn’t look at her.

‘Something like that,’ she admitted shakily. She pulled up the straps of her dress, covering herself. ‘I don’t want it to be like
that
,’ she said quietly, after a tense silence when the only sound had been their ragged breathing as they recovered from the shock of experiencing something that Zoe didn’t think either of them had expected. Or wanted. ‘We’re attracted to one another, obviously,’ she continued, trying to regulate her breathing, her heart rate, her heart itself, ‘but…not like that.’

Leandro half rolled away, his face and body averted from her, one arm thrown over his eyes. ‘No,’ he agreed in a low voice. ‘Not like that.’

Zoe stared at him, at his dejected, defensive pose, heard the ache of self-loathing in his voice and wondered just what had happened…and why. She curled her fingers around the cold iron banister and hauled herself up.

‘Well, then.’ She’d meant to sound light, but there was a telltale wobble in her voice that made her wince.

Leandro didn’t answer. Still sprawled on the stairs, his face averted, his head bowed, he simply waved one hand—whether in dismissal or entreaty, Zoe didn’t know, but one thing was clear. He wanted her to go. So she did.

He
was
that man. Leandro listened to Zoe’s heels click up the stairs and the distant slamming of her door before he let out a long, shaky breath. And then a curse.

What had he been thinking? Doing? Risking everything he’d worked for in a moment of lust?

He knew what he’d been
feeling
: desire, desperate and angry. More than he ever had before. He didn’t
want
to want Zoe Clark. He didn’t want the complications or reminders, the fears and suspicions confirmed. He didn’t want to be pulled under by desire, to lose himself to lust when he never had before, when he’d always—
always
—been in control. A moment ago he hadn’t been. A moment ago he’d wanted to lose control, to lose
himself
.

He wanted her too much, more than any other woman, and that was the problem. The danger.
He
was.

Leandro let out a shuddering breath. He didn’t want to be proved wrong. Or right. He didn’t know which it was, but one thing was glaringly, terribly obvious from this evening’s encounter: he was his father’s son.

Zoe walked to her room on shaky legs and aching feet. A slice of moonlight bisected the room, and in its silver wash she peeled off her dress, shrugged out of her underwear and fell onto the bed. She shouldn’t feel this way, she told herself. She shouldn’t feel so…
lacerated
. Her soul, her mind, her heart in tatters.

Steve had never hurt her this much, and the realisation that
she’d allowed it only added to her pain.
Why
had she let Leandro affect her? When had she become so vulnerable?

She closed her eyes, longing for the oblivion of sleep. She certainly felt exhausted, yet sleep eluded her. Memories did not.

Leandro, his eyes darkening with desire, his fingers caressing her cheek, his voice confessing raggedly,
‘I shouldn’t want…’

Why shouldn’t he? Zoe wondered now, as she tracked the moon’s voyage across the sky and waited helplessly for dawn. In her experience men like Leandro Filametti—rich, powerful, arrogant men, men like
Steve
—took what they wanted when they wanted, and damn the consequences.

Wasn’t that what Steve had done with her? She still remembered the scalding sting of shame as he’d tossed a few crumpled twenties across the unmade bed.
For services rendered.
She’d thought they had a relationship; he’d seen her as no more than a prostitute—just another chambermaid in his daddy’s hotel who gave a little extra on the side.

Zoe closed her eyes again, wishing she could block out that moment as easily as the moonlight. At least her heart hadn’t been broken, because she hadn’t given her heart to anybody. That had been her one saving grace.

Yet her pride, her self-esteem, her very
self
had been damaged in that moment. For Steve’s careless actions had shone a glaring light on her life and its choices. Was this the kind of woman she wanted to be mistaken for? The kind of carefree, careless life she wanted to lead?

The life her mother had led?

She might have been far more inexperienced and innocent than men like Steve—or Leandro—assumed, but the fact that they even assumed at all hurt. She knew what image she projected, and she was beginning to understand its cost. It had kept her safe—yet had it really? Why was she now feeling so hurt?

She was on the brink of making the same mistake with Leandro Filametti that she’d made with Steve Rinault. And the frightening thing was this hurt
more
.

Except Leandro was no Steve. The thought made Zoe’s eyes fly open, and she stared blankly at the moon once more. What
was Leandro hiding? Why was he selling his family’s villa? And why had there been so much anguish in his voice, his body, as he lay on the stairs and waved her away, a man broken by desire?

The questions swirled in Zoe’s mind without answers, and as the first grey fingers of dawn edged the lake she finally fell into a restless, dreamless sleep.

She awoke to sun streaming through the window, filling the room with the heat of late morning. Guiltily Zoe threw off the covers and hurried to dress. She didn’t need to be derelict in her duties on top of everything else.

Several workmen were hammering away on the roof as she came downstairs, making her wonder how she’d managed to sleep through the noise.

The rest of the house was silent and still, however, and a peek at Leandro’s door showed it ominously closed. Forcing herself to shrug—not to care—Zoe got to work. Mop and pail, broom and dustpan.

She’d managed to clean most of the downstairs reception rooms, with their panelled walls and shrouded paintings—a few sneaking glances under dustsheets revealed more of Leandro’s ancestors—and then she decided to head upstairs and tackle the bedrooms.

Cleaning was a mindless activity, and that, Zoe knew, was what she needed. Scrub and sweep and don’t think. Don’t remember the aching humiliation of Steve’s dismissal, the fresher hurt of Leandro’s anger. Or, even more painful, the endless well of loss and need of her unhappy childhood.

Can we stay here? Please, just this once? I like it here, Mum. I don’t want to go…

Don’t think.

Yet her thoughts kept intruding even as she washed windows and swept floors, feeling like a modern-day Cinderella without her prince. Memories, questions. Desires. Regrets.

It’s better this way, sweetie. The next place will be better, I promise. Don’t you want an adventure?

And of course she’d always blinked back the tears and smiled.
Yes, of course I do.
Because that was the kind of girl she was—the kind of girl she’d made herself be.

Yet somehow, for some reason, being in this villa, being with Leandro, made her question everything she’d ever forced herself to believe.

Don’t
think
.

‘What are you doing?’

Zoe whirled around, a dirty dustsheet crumpled in one hand. Leandro stood in the doorway, dressed in faded jeans and a mint-green shirt open at the throat, looking fresh and cool. In contrast she was hot and sweaty, dirty and dishevelled, and at a distinct disadvantage.