She heard his slight intake of breath, as if her movement had freed him. Then his hands cupped her face with infinite gentleness and he deepened the kiss. Her lips parted with a small sigh and her whole body suddenly felt boneless as sensations rocketed through her, tingled every nerve end, made her feel gloriously, immensely alive.
Moving as one, they both rose and she pressed closer to him, her entire being focused on this dizzying, intoxicating stream of pleasure.
Until the plane hit a pocket of turbulence and reality broke in.
His hands dropped to her waist to steady her as she pulled back and stared up at him. Shock widened her eyes and she could hear the pounding of her heart, the raggedness of her breath.
Oh, God. What had she done?
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.
‘Stop. There is no need for you to apologise. None at all. There were two of us involved.’
But she had instigated it, and right now, if they hadn’t been however many thousands of feet in the air, she would have welcomed a hole appearing to swallow her up. But there was nowhere to go, nowhere to run.
‘I panicked. I... I truly don’t know what came over me.’
Apart from a bad case of lust. But it had been more than that—it had been an affirmation, a confirmation, a reaction to his warmth, his strength and his unexpected understanding.
Enough. There was no need for analysis.
‘I guess I needed distraction and the panic kind of made me lose the plot. I’d appreciate it if we can forget this, or at the very least put it behind us as a moment of insanity.’
‘Agreed.’ He ran a hand through his hair and grimaced. ‘I guess we should have stuck to the names of fruit.’
She gave a shaky laugh, relieved at his effort to turn the clock back to pre-kiss time. ‘OK. I cave. Tell me the fifth.’
‘Actually, there are plenty to choose from. Bayberries...and I’d have given you blackcurrant as well. Then there’s a bear berry and of course the betel nut.’
‘It was a great distraction technique—but what made you think of it?’
A moment’s silence and then he shrugged. ‘It’s a tactic I’ve used myself in the past. Not so much for panic as to regulate other emotions. I do understand how it feels to be gripped by an emotion, to feel out of control.’
Sarah shifted to face him. She’d heard the sincerity in his voice, but it surprised her. ‘It’s hard to imagine you not in control.’
‘I can name you three fruits beginning with the letter W. Trust me, I’ve worked through the alphabet a few times. Anyway, I’m glad it helped.’
His tone unmistakably drew a line under the subject, and in truth she didn’t dare ask him to elaborate—it wasn’t as if she wanted to discuss the reasons for her panic. It would be best to regain the professional footing that had been so disastrously lost in the past hour.
In unison, they snapped open their laptops and settled down to work.
* * *
Half an hour later, having breezed through Customs with ease, they emerged from Milan’s airport. Next to him, Sarah paused and looked around, her shoulders relaxed for the first time since that disastrous kiss.
Ben uttered yet another mental curse. What had he been thinking? The answer to that was obvious. He hadn’t been thinking at all. He had simply reacted. And it had been...magical, incredible, glorious. And against every principle he had. Sarah was a single mother, a colleague and soon to be an employee.
Yet he’d kissed her. In part to allay her anguish, her fear, her terror. Not for herself, but for her child. Her love for Jodie was so intense it touched him, whilst also reminding him that there would be no one to mourn him if the plane tumbled from the sky. No one he would regret leaving behind.
Which was exactly as he liked it—he could live his life as he pleased, safe in the knowledge that he was hurting no one. But he shouldn’t have kissed her, and now it was impossible to erase that kiss from his memory bank.
But he could try.
He saw the chauffeur holding a card with his name on it, raised his hand in salute and headed towards the sleek black car that would take them on the short journey to the hotel. In the car, he watched Sarah’s face as she looked out of the window, snapped pictures and looked anywhere but at him.
Even as they pulled up outside the hotel and she alighted she kept her gaze averted, and he couldn’t blame her.
‘Here we are,’ he said.