The stunning view made the pain in her legs and pounding heart dissipate as she sucked in oxygen. Orla wiped more sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. She felt unbearably hot and sticky even though she was wearing shorts and a singlet vest. She wasn’t even wearing the pack of supplies, as Antonio was. And her legs felt rubbery. But she also felt exhilarated as she looked out over a breathtaking view of the Côte d’Azur and the glittering sea beyond.
Antonio’s villa lay nestled in the trees far, far below them. His swimming pool was just visible in a flash of blue, making her long to dive in.
‘Here, you should drink lots of water.’
Orla accepted the bottle eagerly and drank deeply. When she handed it back she scowled to see him barely out of breath or glowing with sweat.
She grumbled, ‘Just because you’re used to running twenty miles with a pack of stones on your back …’
He smiled as he said, ‘More like thirty miles with fifteen- to twenty-kilogram weight backpacks.’
Orla’s eyes widened. ‘That’s suicidal.’
Antonio’s face got shuttered and he turned away from her. He shrugged minutely. ‘It’s one way of determining who has got what it takes.’
Orla looked at his remote profile for a long moment before pushing down the questions that bubbled up. Antonio always clammed up when she asked him anything about his time in the Legion. As if he was too close to the source in some way.
It had been three days since that morning in the kitchen followed by the very erotic naked swim in the sea. Orla could have laughed at the vow she’d made to stay for two days and then leave.
As she’d feared, she’d been sucked into a bubble of sensuality. And, more disturbingly, a kind of freedom she’d never experienced before: waking up late, making love, eating, swimming naked in the sea … wearing as little as possible in general. Eating again, making love, sleeping.
In some respects, Orla felt as if she were nine years old again … that tomboy girl, always eager to run free and get into scrapes. Living on the edge. Before everything had changed. Before she’d sacrificed her deepest desires and forgotten what she really wanted.
She must have shivered or something because Antonio said gruffly, ‘I told you to wear a hat.’
He was taking his pack off and bending down to open it, presumably to search for her hat which she’d made a face at earlier. Now he took it out and looked stern, plonking it on her head, over where her hair was piled high in a messy bun.
‘And don’t take it off. You’ll get sunstroke.’
He took out cream and Orla saw him pour some into his hands. ‘Turn around,’ he instructed bossily, and his big hands made short work of smoothing the suncream into her bare shoulders, neck and arms. And despite the heat, she could feel the effect on her body and lamented the fact that this desire was showing no signs of waning.
When he squatted down in front of her to do her legs, Orla put up a pathetic protest but Antonio was already slathering cream right up under the hem of her shorts, fingers coming far too close to where her body was swelling, ripening for his touch.
His fingers swept close to the V of her legs and she smacked his hands away, saying breathlessly, ‘I really will get sunstroke if you keep that up and we make love up here on the mountaintop.’
Antonio smiled devilishly and replied, ‘Damn the sun anyway, and your delicate Irish complexion.’
He stood up and took up the backpack again and said, ‘There’s a shaded spot to have some lunch nearby. Let’s keep going.’
The thought of shade and the possibility … Orla’s inner muscles spasmed with lust but she just said lightly, ‘Aye-aye, sir.’
As he walked on and she followed, she had to bite her lip against the lightness building inside her. These moments of spreading joy at being in this man’s company—and his bed—were becoming far too frequent and disturbing.
Marie-Ange and her husband had called by the previous day with their children. She and Marie-Ange had played with the children together in the sea while Antonio and Dominic had barbecued dinner. Then they’d sat around the pool in the gathering dusk, Dominic’s daughter, Lily, asleep on his lap and Pierre, their son, asleep on Antonio’s. That hitherto dormant longing for children had surged up within Orla again.
She had to face it: something was changing within her. Her life and career, the hotel, all felt very far away. She felt as if she wouldn’t fit back into that world as neatly again, as if some edges had been rubbed off her.
Antonio was leading her into a shaded clearing with rocks that served neatly as chairs and a table. Orla sat down and took off the hat, fanning herself with it gratefully. He took out some bread, ham and cheese, a chilled bottle of water, and one of sparkling wine. Something incredibly tender washed through her.
Antonio handed her
a crude sandwich of ham and cheese and she took it, her mouth already watering. He came and sat on the rock beside her, long legs stretched out, and they ate in companionable silence, sipping the water and wine.
At one point he said a touch ruefully, ‘It’s not exactly what you’re used to.’
Orla ducked her face down, pretending an absorption in a speck of dirt on her leg. ‘It’s fine.’ She would have chosen this crude picnic over any number of fancy dinners in fancy restaurants anywhere else in the world. And that realisation told her once and for all, resoundingly, that she would never end up like her mother. Seduced by the glitter of new wealth. Something like relief flowed through her, as if it had been a subliminal fear for years.
‘I notice that you’re not coming out in a rash not to be wearing one of your smart dresses or suits.’