Carol Grace – Mediterranean Men & Marriage: The Italian's Forgotten Baby / The Sicilian's Bride / Hired: The Italian's Bride (страница 14)
“No. Not a one.”
“Strange.”
She shrugged. “Maybe you had other things on your mind.”
He felt a smile forming and gave in to it. “You mean, like that romance thing you were talking about?” he teased her.
She gave him a look and didn’t answer that. Instead, she tried to get back to business.
“Okay, take a good look. Doesn’t anything ring a bell? Tickle your memory? Bring on a feeling of déjà vu?”
Slowly, he shook his head. “No. Not a thing.”
She shaded her eyes and looked at the ocean. It seemed to go on forever. Sometimes being on an island could feel lonely. Everything she’d grown up with was so far away. She didn’t often get that feeling, but right now, she had a little hint of it. And it chilled her a bit. There was reality to face here.
She was going to have a baby. Marco’s baby. Just the thought made her catch her breath and feel ill, so she pushed it away. She would think about that and all its implications once they found his plans and got him safely off the island. Then she would decide what she was going to do. Until then, she had to pretend everything was normal.
Looking up and down the beach, she felt a quiver of nostalgia.
“You really don’t remember this?” She waved her arm in an arc as though indicating the whole panorama before them. “Not even a little tiny bit?”
He shoved his hands down into the pockets of his slacks and hunched over, looking uncomfortable. “That’s right. I don’t get any memory vibes at all.”
She shook her head, looking at him as though she had a hard time believing what he’d said.
“How could you have forgotten?”
She said it softly, more to herself than to him. She remembered. She bit her lower lip and let recollection flow. Their first kiss had happened right there by the jagged outcropping of volcanic rocks. She’d been showing him how the waves had broken through that part of the reef and came rushing in to the shore, depleting as they came but still carrying enough force to make a great display of sea foam against the rocks. As she turned to see if he was impressed, she’d found he was studying her instead of the ocean.
“I love when you get so excited about something,” he had said softly, reaching out to push back a strand of hair that had come loose and was falling across her face. “Your eyes sparkle and your face lights up with a glow, like rose petals.”
She’d blushed, right there on the beach. There was something so sweet and simple about his words and yet they conveyed a warmth she wasn’t used to in men she’d dated. Maybe it was the slight Italian accent, maybe it was the honesty in his tone, the earnest pleasure in his face, but something had struck a spark in her and she’d lifted her face and reached for him.
His arms had come around her and his mouth had found hers, warm and hungry in the coolness of the ocean spray. She’d loved his kiss from the first, and his hard body excited her in ways she didn’t expect. Despite the reputation she’d had over the years, she didn’t usually feel passion with the men she knew. What she did feel was a sort of desperation, a need to blot out loneliness, a hunger for something she never did find. So the sense of sweet desire he conjured up surprised her and took her breath away.
Embarrassed, unsure of how to deal with the new feelings, she’d had to pull away quickly, laughing. Then she ran away and he’d followed her, chasing across the beach until he’d caught her, tackled her from behind and they both went down into the sand.
She treasured that day. She was pretty sure she’d never feel another like it. But that was then. This was now. She glanced at him sideways. How could he be that same person and yet not have that experience in his memory? It was like dating a twin or something.
Suddenly, she wanted him to kiss her again. The feeling swept over her like a wave and she could hardly breathe. She knew how dangerous this was, and that she had to fight it. She was being tossed around by a current of emotion, and she had to remember to keep her head above water.
She knew that. But she still wanted his kiss, ached for it. Turning away, she ran again, just as she had the other day, but this time she wasn’t laughing. Just like before, he followed her. Had she known he would? Had she done this because she was sure of it? She really didn’t know, but when he caught her, when he pulled her around to face him and took her face between his hands and touched his lips to hers, she heard a soft cry and realized, to her horror, that it was hers.
But she forgot that soon enough. His mouth on hers was hard and soft at the same time, cool and hot, rough and smooth. Her arms slipped into a circle around his neck, and she arched her body into his. It felt right and natural, and she wanted him so badly.
The wind tossed her hair and the sun was hot on her shoulders, but all she knew was the smooth warmth of his mouth, the hard excitement of his body, the thrill as his hands began to move up under her shirt.
No. She had to stop this. If she didn’t, she would just be repeating her last mistakes, doing it all over again, falling for a man who wasn’t what he pretended to be. Surely she couldn’t be this stupid. Could she?
Chapter Six
GATHERING ALL HER STRENGTH, Shayna pulled away.
“Shayna…” Marco tried to pull her back again.
“No, don’t say anything,” she said, backing away, her eyes huge with remorse as she fooled with her hair, pulling it back into the ponytail band. “That was a mistake. A big, big mistake. I didn’t mean to do it and…”
His face changed. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought that was pain in his dark eyes.
“Don’t say you wish it hadn’t happened,” he told her roughly. “Just don’t tell me that.”
His tone caught her by surprise. He seemed to feel strongly about it. But what the heck, so did she. Her chin rose. “All right. I won’t tell you. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”
He looked at her for a moment, then the anger slipped away and he relaxed until he had a soft laugh for her. Shaking his head, he said, “Shayna, you can twist things around so that they mean exactly the opposite of what they are supposed to mean. You drive me nuts.”
“The feeling is mutual,” she said, trying to maintain a huffy exterior but failing on all counts. She shook her head, exasperated but somewhat amused at the same time. “This is too much. You’re doing just exactly what you did before.”
His face was a picture of innocence. “What I did before? What did I do?”
She threw out her hands. “These patterns must be ingrained in you somewhere. Even if your mind doesn’t remember, your body does.” She gave a short, humorless laugh. “Your body doesn’t have amnesia, Marco. Isn’t that remarkable?”
He frowned, trying to understand her. “Will you tell me what you’re talking about?”
She heaved a sigh and shrugged. “You’re re-creating what happened when I brought you here the first time.”
He made a face. “Because I kissed you?”
“Yes.”
His brow furrowed over that one. “Shayna, any man worth his salt is going to want to kiss you, anytime, anywhere. He doesn’t need to have his body especially trained for it.”
“Oh!” He was being frustratingly dense and she gave up, turning away. “Never mind.” She looked toward the sea, then back at him. “So that’s over now. Don’t feel this changes anything. We’re back to being wary adversaries.”
“We are?” He looked adorably bewildered. “I mean…I didn’t realize that was what we were in the first place.”
“You don’t pay attention.” She studied him, the set of his jaw, the way his eyelashes made lacy shadows across his cheeks in the sunlight, the slight stubble of his beard that was beginning to show, his mouth—oh how she wanted to kiss that mouth again. Against her will, her own smile surfaced.
“Oh, just forget it,” she said in semidespair. “What just happened never happened. Okay? Come on, I’ll show you some caves.”
She started off across the sand, only looking back to see if he was following. He was, though more slowly than she would like. He was obviously thinking over what had happened, even after she’d told him not to. That made her smile, but she turned so he wouldn’t see.
“Here they are,” she said, stopping before an area that looked like an ordinary landslide of rocks.
“Where?” he asked, coming up behind her.
“Look closely,” she said, pointing out the opening.
“Not bad,” he told her admiringly. “I never would have noticed them on my own.”
They had to lower themselves over the slide and then wedge themselves between a couple of large rocks, but finally they were inside, and it was breathtaking. The air was cool, the light was filtered and the ceilings were ten feet high.
“It’s like being in a natural cathedral,” Marco said, speaking softly as though in respect.
“Isn’t it?” She nodded. “I love this place. Come here.” She showed him where they could lie on their stomachs in the cool sand and look out through an opening at the waves on the reef.
“This is like a World War II pillbox,” he told her. “I’ve been in some up in the Marianas Islands.”