That did grab her attention. She lifted her tear-swollen face and stared. Carlo was standing several feet away, the moonlight picking out the grim lines of his darkly handsome features.
'It didn't sound like that.'
'Six months ago, I met Sunny for the first time at a
party in Rome. She knew Lukas was dying. She's been
chasing me ever since '
'Chasing you?' Jessica echoed.
'The first couple of times I ran into her, I took her out to dinner, purely and simply because she's my father's wife,’ Carlo spelt out with sardonic bite. 'But Sunny read that differently. She took it as encouragement. She showed up at my apartment one night in London and asked for a bed for the night, told me this stupid story about being afraid to stay in a hotel alone since some friend of hers was raped. I fell for it... but the only bed Sunny wanted into was mine...'
Jessica swallowed hard. 'And?'
'She told me she was in love with me and I had her
driven to a hotel in the middle of the night. But Sunny's
very persistent because no man has ever rejected her,’
Carlo murmured with an expressive grimace. 'Sunny is
one of the reasons I brought you here. I wanted her kept
at a distance '
'So you needed me as a... a buffer '
'It would be a little difficult for her to get into my bed when it was already occupied,’ Carlo said very drily.
Bemusedly, she struggled to recall what Carlo had said in that emotional scene she had stumbled on, and she realised that Carlo had said nothing that did not fit the story he had told her. Her head ached at the effort of concentration. She was almost afraid to give way to the intensity of her relief.
'She's so beautiful,’ she muttered. Carlo said nothing. In the silence, all she could hear was the thunder of her own heart and the soft rushing
of the surf. 'A storm in a teacup, then,' she said uncomfortably.
Tm sorry, I assumed——'
'The worst? Don’t you always?’ Carlo drawled.
As he extended a lean hand down to her, Jessica allowed him to pull her up. The force of her distress had left her badly shaken. Relieved as she had been by Carlo's confidences, she still felt frighteningly raw and vulnerable. Badly needing to believe that he did not find Sunny desirable, she looked up into his hard features but she could read nothing there, knew that what Carlo did not volunteer, she would never guess. Carlo did not easily reveal his emotions.
He tugged her back along the beach. She could feel
the pain in her abused feet now and the sting of the
scratches on her arms and stomach. At the foot of the
steps, he surveyed her limping gait and groaned.
Bending, he hoisted her over one shoulder.
'You can't carry me up there!' she objected.
But he did, although by the time they reached the top
every muscle in his superbly built body was feverishly