‘Cesare?’ mused Nic, registering the Italian name, which she’d pronounced in the Italian way. ‘So—back in the old country?’
‘Very much so,’ she said dryly, thinking of just how sizeable a chunk of ‘the old country’ Cesare’s estates covered.
Nic eased the throttle again. He didn’t want to know any more about the guy that she’d nearly married and hadn’t. Right now he wanted to be the only male in her vision, her thoughts.
Her desires.
At a much slower pace he nosed the boat forward again, keeping his arm around Fran, where he wanted it to be.
‘Let’s see what’s at the far end of the lake,’ he said.
* * *
The sun was lowering by the time they handed the boat in. Nic turned to her. Her hair was still windblown, her skin sun-kissed even with sun-block. She looked effortlessly lovely.
‘What next?’ he asked.
His eyes were light on her, the question in his voice putting the decision in her hands. The choice of what was to happen—or not—between them now.
Fran’s expression flickered. ‘It’s a long way back to the Falcone,’ she observed. ‘Maybe too far?’ Her glance went to the resort motel that was set back on a low bluff.
‘Not in the Falcone league,’ Nic said, ‘but it looks passable.’
He kept his voice neutral, not wanting to show his satisfaction that she was indicating they should stay there together. As he so wanted.
Fran gave a wry smile. ‘There speaks a loyal employee of the famous Falcone chain!’ she answered lightly.
Then she nodded, as if making a silent decision for herself. Maybe thinking about Cesare, talking about him, had confirmed her feelings. Told her that whatever it was that was happening between her and Nic, she wanted it to happen.
‘OK...’ She took a breath. ‘Let’s go for it.’
Even so, she booked separate rooms at Reception—and not just because anything else might have seemed too...obvious. She definitely needed a bathroom and a bedroom entirely to herself—her wind-tangled hair and water-splashed day-worn clothes were a disaster.
Gratefully spotting a small retail outlet, inset into the lobby, she plunged in.
It was a good hour before she was ready to meet Nic in the motel’s bar. As he rose to greet her, she laughed.
‘Snap!’
They had both, it seemed, availed themselves of the retail outlet’s offerings—and not just shampoo and toiletries for her, and a razor for him. They were both now wearing tee shirts bearing the name of the lake, Fran’s in pink and Nic’s in blue.
But where Nic was making do with the chinos he’d been wearing all day, Fran had found a wraparound cotton skirt in white seersucker that floated gracefully to mid-calf to replace her water-stained Bermuda shorts. Her newly washed hair tumbled over her shoulders, and her only make-up was a touch of mascara and lip gloss.
She knew Nic’s eyes were warm upon her.
But then, hers were warm on him, too. He was cleanly shaven, damp hair feathering at the nape of his neck, and the deep blue tee shirt matched his eyes and lovingly moulded his torso. But he was no muscle-bound Adonis. That innate air of Italian style he possessed was overwhelming—the kind of automatic male display that she was used to seeing in her countrymen. It was not vanity, or showing off, but it came instinctively to them.
‘You look so Italian,’ she heard herself say as they took their happy hour cocktails over to a table looking out across the darkening lake. She studied his face consideringly. ‘I wonder where the blue eyes come from? Some Norman ancestor way back...rampaging through the peninsula to make a kingdom for themselves?’
Nic thought about it and liked the idea. He’d made his own kingdom—the Falcone kingdom—deliberately choosing that new name for himself because it made him want to fly high, swoop down on his prey, fly ever higher.
‘What about your grey eyes and blonde hair?’ he asked in return. ‘Are they from your English mother?’
She nodded, not wishing to elaborate about her parentage, aware that she did not want to bring that side of her into what was happening now. Here, with Nic, she was ‘Doc Fran’—she smiled inwardly at his amusedly bestowed moniker—and that was all she wanted to be.
The fact that her mother, Lady Emma, would consider it incomprehensible that her daughter might want to take off as she had with someone who worked in hotel security was irrelevant to her. Her whole other identity, as Donna Francesca, was also irrelevant, as it always was when she was here in the USA, whether it was in her university department, or now, here, with Nic.
And Nic was—well, just Nic. And she didn’t want him any other way. He had a strength to him, a quality to his character that was as evident as his physical strength. It lay beneath the casual, laid-back attitude—a sure knowledge of his own worth, but without any need to display it. She liked him all the more for it.