“Get in the car, Lauren.”
“I prefer to walk,” she told him, using a cutting stare to drive home to him that she would die before she’d go anywhere with him.
“Do you want me to put you in it?” He pushed his seat into place with a sharp click and a meaningful gather of his muscled frame.
“You wouldn’t. Not here,” she scoffed with a little smile and shake of her head. A car crawled past, honking repeatedly.
“I will,” he assured her. It wasn’t so much his tone that gave her pause, despite it being very severe. It was the inferno of cold heat in his eyes, a maelstrom beneath his calm demeanor.
Her heart skipped a beat. She wasn’t afraid of him, but for a second she was afraid of it. The energy. The source of his anger. It was an unknown force, but it felt very personal.#p#分页标题#e#
To combat it, she reminded herself he was a liar. He had held her in contempt for sleeping with him so soon after Ryan’s death while fully aware that Ryan had been cheating all along. As her indignant fury soaked back into their staring contest, the spark of rebellion in her expanded to an inferno.
“Go for it,” she goaded, and returned to the café and Dino’s watchful curiosity.
Never in a million years would she have believed Paolo would do it, but athletic arms gathered her up faster than a parent caught a runaway toddler. The sudden grab startled her into letting out a yelp that turned into a string of angry protests as she wriggled in the cradle hold that pinned her to his chest.
He was beyond impervious. And strong. Amazingly strong since she was not only tall, but she’d started putting on baby pounds.
None of that made an impact and despite her struggles, he wasn’t the least bit rough. He carried her around to the passenger side like she was a case of crystal tableware, prone to breakage.
Why that made her feel secure, she had no idea, but for all the horrid embarrassment of being manhandled in public like this, there was a component of sweetness. She loved being close to him again. Feeling the ripple of his flexing muscles made her go weak with anticipation...
That would be embarrassing. She began to struggle more earnestly, but he didn’t set her on her feet until he needed to free one hand to open the car door.
She glared at him, flushed and hot. Shaking off his grip on her arm, she said, “You made my hat fall off!”
“Get in or I’ll run over your damned hat.”
He would. She could see he was in just that sort of rancorous mood.
Fuming, she plopped into the car and buckled up, watching as he circled the car, snatched up her hat, then threw it across to her as he climbed behind the wheel.
“What is wrong with you?” she muttered as she gently pinched the felt brim back into shape.
“You are wrong with me,” he bit out, squealing his tires as he peeled away like they were leaving a bank robbery. “I haven’t behaved so outrageously in years, but you had to throw down the gauntlet, didn’t you?”
“You didn’t have to pick it up!”
“I was worried about you,” he near shouted. “You fainted two days ago, in case you’ve forgotten. I thought I’d find you facedown in the pool. Instead you were flirting with some transient. I wasn’t about to leave you to make your own way home and not know if you made it. What if he followed you?”
“He’s a grad student on break—”
“I don’t care who he is. Don’t talk to strangers.” He pulled into the villa’s drive, reducing her leisurely twenty-minute walk to half a minute with his arrogant, caveman foot on the gas.
“Strangers like you? Because you sure aren’t the man I gave you credit for being!”
He said nothing, just braked to a firm stop and sat there with hollow cheeks, hands gripping the wheel of the car so hard his knuckles stood out white and sharp as the glaciers across the lake.
“I would ask you why you did it, but I already know. You hate me and Ryan was your best fr—”
“I thought something horrible had happened to you today! Does that sound like I hate you? Look at my hands. They’re still shaking.” He showed her one that was a hair off rock steady. “What does that tell you?”
“That you’re a really good actor.”
CHAPTER SIX
SHE SLAMMED OUT of the car and went into the house. He followed, aware that he’d already revealed too much, but he couldn’t leave things like this.#p#分页标题#e#
“Stupid electronic locks,” she muttered with a baleful glance when he entered. “I’m looking for the manual, you know. I’m going to change the number.”