Harlequin Presents January 2015 Box Set 1 of 2(188)

Serena put down her knife and fork. Luca had shown signs of such intransigence and an inability to forgive when she’d first come to Rio, but now she was seeing far deeper into the man and realising he’d had just as much of a complicated background as she had in many respects. And yet he’d emerged without being tainted by the corruption of his father, or by the vagaries of his mother—vagaries that she understood far too well.

For the first time Serena had to concede that perhaps she hadn’t done too badly, considering how easy it would have been to insist on living in a fog, not dealing with reality.

Luca was looking at her with an eyebrow raised. He was waiting for an answer to a question she hadn’t heard. She blushed. ‘Sorry. I was a million miles away.’

‘You said when you first got here that you wanted to see Rio?’

Serena nodded, not sure where this was going or what might happen after last night.

‘Well...’

Luca was exhibiting a tiny glimmer of a lack of his usual arrogance and it set Serena’s heart beating fast.

‘It’s the weekend. I’d like to show you Rio.’

The bottom seemed to drop out of Serena’s stomach. She felt ridiculously shy again. Something bubbled up inside her—lightness. Happiness. It was alien enough to take her by surprise.

‘Okay, I’d like that.’





CHAPTER TEN

‘HAD ENOUGH YET?’

Serena mumbled something indistinct. This was paradise. Lying on Ipanema Beach as the fading rays of the sun baked her skin and body in delicious heat. There was a low hum of conversation from nearby, the beautiful sing-song cadence of Portuguese, people were laughing, sighing, talking. The surf of the sea was crashing against the shore.

And then she felt Luca’s mouth on hers and her whole body orientated itself towards his. She opened her eyes with an effort to find him looking down at her. Her heart flip-flopped. She smiled.

‘Can we stay for the sunset?’

Luca was trying to hang on to some semblance of normality when the day that had just passed had veered out of normal for him on so many levels it was scary.

‘Sure,’ he said, with an easiness belying his trepidation. Serena’s open smile was doing little to restore any sense of equilibrium.

One day spent walking around Rio and then a couple of hours on the beach was all it had taken to touch her skin with a luminous golden glow. Her hair looked blonder, almost white, her blue eyes were standing out even more starkly.

That morning they had taken the train up through the forest to the Cristo Redentor on Corcovado and Serena had been captivated by every tiny thing. Standing at the railing, looking down over the breathtaking panorama of Rio, she’d turned to him and asked, with a look of gleaming excitement that had reminded him of a child, ‘Can we go to the beach later?’

Luca’s insides had tightened ominously. She didn’t want to go shopping. She wanted to see Rio. Genuinely.

Before they’d hit the beach they’d eaten lunch at a favourite café of Luca’s. At one point he’d sat back and asked, with an increasing sense of defeat, ‘Your family really aren’t funding you...are they?’

Immediate affront had lit up those piercing eyes. Luca wouldn’t have believed it before. But he did now, and it had made something feel dark and heavy inside him.

‘Of course not.’ She’d flushed then, guiltily, and admitted with clear reluctance, ‘My sister and her husband paid for an apartment for me in Athens...when I was ready to move on. But I’m going to pay them back as soon as I’ve made enough money.’

Darkness had twisted inside Luca. People got hand-outs all the time from family, yet she clearly hated to admit it. And this was a woman who had had everything...a vast fortune to inherit...only to lose it all.

She’d flushed self-consciously when she’d caught him looking at her cleared plate of feijoãda, a famous Brazilian stew made with black beans and pork. ‘My sister is the same. It’s a reaction to the tiny portions of food we were allowed to eat by our father, growing up.’

Her revelation had hit him hard again. The sheer abuse her father had subjected her to. Anger still simmered in his belly. Luca had felt compelled to reach out and take her hand, entwining his fingers with hers—something that had felt far too easy and necessary.

‘Believe me, it’s refreshing to see a woman enjoy her food.’

Her hand had tensed in his and she’d said, far too lightly, while avoiding his eyes, ‘I’m sure the women you know are far more restrained.’

Was she jealous? The suspicion had caught at Luca somewhere deeply masculine. And that deeply masculine part of him had been triggered again when he’d insisted on buying her a bikini so she could swim at the beach, as they hadn’t been prepared.