Harlequin Presents January 2015 Box Set 1 of 2(168)

But Luca rapped out, ‘Stay there! You’re weak and dehydrated. You’re not going anywhere today, or this evening. The women have prepared some food and you need to drink lots of water.’

Luca stood up, and his sheer size made Serena feel dizzy enough to lie down again. As if by magic some smiling women appeared in the doorway, holding various things. Luca ushered them in and said to Serena over their heads, ‘I have to go to the mines. I’ll be back later. You’ll be looked after.’

Weakly, Serena protested, ‘But I’m supposed to be taking notes...’

Something flashed in Luca’s eyes but he just said, ‘Don’t worry about that. There’ll be time tomorrow, before we have to leave.’

‘Before we have to leave.’ She felt a lurch in her belly and an awful betraying tingle of anticipation as to what might happen once they did leave this place.

* * *

The following morning, early, Luca was trying not to keep staring at Serena, who sat at the end of a long table in the communal eating hut. She was wearing a traditional smock dress, presumably given to her by one of the women to replace her own clothes, and the simple design might have been haute couture, the way she wore it with such effortless grace.

A small toddler, a girl, was sitting on Serena’s lap and staring up at her with huge, besotted brown eyes. She’d been crying minutes before, and Serena had bent down to her level and cajoled her to stop crying, lifting her up and settling her as easily as if she was her mother.

Now she was eating her breakfast—a manioc-based broth—for all the world acting as if it was the finest caviar, giving the little girl morsels in between her own mouthfuls. She couldn’t have looked more innocent and pure if she’d tried, tugging remorselessly on his conscience.

A mixture of rage and sexual frustration made Luca’s whole body tight. The remnants of the panic he’d felt the previous day when she’d been so limp in his arms after being stung still clung to him. She’d been brave. Even though he knew he was being completely irrational, he couldn’t stop lambasting her inwardly for not behaving as he expected her to.

Their eyes met and caught at that moment and he saw her cheeks flush. With desire? Or anger? Or a mixture of both like him? Suddenly her significance wasn’t important any more—who she was, what she’d done. Or not done. He wanted her, and she would pay for throwing his life out of whack not once but twice.

Resolve filling his body, he stood up and said curtly, ‘We’re leaving for the mines in ten minutes.’

He didn’t like the way he noticed how her arm tightened around the small girl almost protectively, or how seeing a child on her lap made him feel. All sorts of things he’d never imagined feeling in his life—ever.

Her chin tipped up. ‘I’ll be ready.’

Luca left before he did something stupid, like take up his phone and ask for the helicopter to come early so that he could haul her back to Rio and douse this fire in his blood as soon as possible.





CHAPTER SIX

A FEW HOURS later Serena was back in her own clothes, now clean, and sitting cross-legged beside Luca in the hut of the tribal elders. She was still smarting from the intensity of his regard that morning at breakfast. As if he’d been accusing her of something. Her suspicions had been reinforced when he’d said, with a definitely accusatory tone, on their journey to the mines, ‘You were good with that little girl earlier.’

Serena had swallowed back the tart urge to apologise and explained, ‘I have a nephew just a little bit older. We’re very close.’

She hadn’t liked being reminded of that vulnerability—that from the moment she’d held Siena’s son, Spiro, he and Serena had forged an indelible bond and her biological clock had started ticking loudly.

For someone who had never seen the remotest possibility of such a domestic idyll in her life, she was still surprised at how much she craved it.

And she hated it that she’d barely slept a wink in the hut because she’d missed knowing Luca’s solid bulk was just inches away. She dragged her attention back to what she was meant to be focusing on: writing notes as fast as Luca translated what he wanted taken down.

They’d spent the morning at the mines and she’d seen how diplomatic he had to be, trying to assuage the fears of the miners about losing their jobs, while attempting to drag the mine and its administration into the twenty-first century and minimise further damage to the land. It was a very fine balancing act.

When he was being diplomatic and charming he was truly devastating. It gave Serena a very strong sense of just how seductive he could be if...if he actually liked her. The thought of that made her belly swoop alarmingly.