‘I also need to get a phone.’
‘I thought you might,’ he said, one corner of his mouth kicking up in a way that did sizzling things to her stomach which she could really do without. ‘So I had this delivered this morning.’ The model he slid in her direction she knew to be the latest of its kind and worth over a thousand euros. ‘It’s yours if you want it.’
See? she told herself while struggling to get a grip on the heat that was threatening to turn her into a puddle of lust. He wasn’t trying to cut her off. Quite the opposite, in fact. ‘On loan?’
‘If you wish.’
‘I insist.’ She took a deep breath, then said, ‘And on the subject of loans... I was wondering...’
‘How much do you need?’
With a wince, she told him and he nodded. ‘Not a problem.’
‘I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.’
‘No hurry.’
There was every hurry, she thought as she popped an olive in her mouth and watched intrigued as Rico turned his attention to his own plate and began working through it with the same degree of focus he’d had last night. Because she might not disturb him any longer, but Rico, with his dark looks, cool confidence and decisiveness, certainly disturbed her. He was so attractive and so hard to resist on any number of levels. She had to take care not to let this practical help of his slide into something more dangerous where her emotions became involved and she became infatuated with him. The sooner she removed herself from his magnetising orbit and returned home, to her job, her friends, her life, the better.
But when it came to the actual police station visit itself, Carla was unexpectedly rather glad of his presence. As they approached and then pulled up at the jetty immediately in front of the entrance to the building, she welcomed the distraction provided by his proximity and solidity and didn’t even bother to resist the temptation to keep glancing over and drinking in how very good he looked in shorts that revealed the lower half of a pair of very sexy legs, a T-shirt that moulded to his muscles, and mirrored sunglasses.
The only other time she’d been anywhere near such an establishment was immediately after she’d been rescued from the seedy east London hotel she’d ended up in when she’d run away to be with the man she’d thought she’d loved. The occasion had been invasive and embarrassing and horrible, she remembered, her pulse beginning to race and her stomach churning as they alighted, and, just in front of the arch through which she and Rico had to proceed, her step faltered.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked, concern flickering in his gaze as he looked down at her.
She took a deep breath and fixed a smile to her face. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, aiming for breezy but not quite hitting it. ‘Just not a huge fan of police stations. So let’s get this over and done with, shall we?’
She went ahead of him, and stepped out of the bright sunlight and into the dark, busy station, and it wasn’t the same, obviously, but the uniforms and the noise and the musty, damp smell acted like a trigger, and recollections of being interviewed and inspected, stripped and swabbed, suddenly slammed into her head.
In an instant she was awash with memories of the confusion and discomfort she’d felt at the intrusion, along with the fury and outrage and resentment at what had been done to her by those who’d ripped her away from her one true love. She remembered how it had all been brought up again at her abuser’s trial, by which time she’d broken free of his malevolent influence and could see what had happened for the horror it really was, which had converted the resentment and fury into the shame and guilt that still faintly lingered even now, a decade later.
And today it was all too much. She was hot and she was tired. Her defences were weakened by the robbery and jet lag. She didn’t want to be reminded of her abuser and what he’d done to her and how she’d facilitated it. Yet now it was all she could think of. The naïvety and the neediness she’d felt. The hundreds of emails they’d exchanged that contained an angst-ridden outpouring of her concerns, her worries, her hopes, her dreams. The intimate photos she’d sent and the innermost thoughts she’d shared.
The memories and the emotions whirled round her head faster and faster, as if she were on some kaleidoscopic, out-of-control merry-go-round. Her heart thundered as if trying to break her ribs. Her lungs tightened, her dress clinging to her body clammily. She couldn’t breathe. Her head was swimming. Her limbs were turning to liquid. She felt as if she was about to throw up.
God, she wasn’t going to faint, was she?
No. She couldn’t be. She wasn’t the type. She was strong and capable and a survivor. Yet her knees felt weirdly weak. Sweat was trickling down her back and her blood was pounding in her ears. She was hot, so very hot, and her vision was now blurring at the edges and her head was going all prickly.
The last thing she was aware of before her legs gave way was a strong arm whipping round her waist, a hard wall of muscle into which she collided, and then there was nothing but darkness.
* * *
Rico had experienced many, many things in his thirty-one years on the planet but having someone pass out on him was not one of them.
Thank God he’d caught Carla before she fell. Given the direction in which she’d listed, she’d most likely have hit her head on the corner of the very solid-looking table to her right and that might well have put her in hospital. Instead, she’d collapsed into the relative safety of his arms.
Ignoring the screaming protest of his body, he scooped her up in all her dead weight glory and barked out a series of orders that resulted in chairs being swiftly assembled into a row.
Now was not the time to notice how soft she felt gathered up against him or how delicious she smelled. Nor was it the time to dwell on how well he knew this building, how often he’d spent the night here in these cells, having been caught earning money and later ‘running errands’ on the sestieri, a cocky and mouthy youth on the surface, a lost and petrified child beneath. Now was the time to lay her down to get her blood flowing in the right direction and procure the paperwork.
With what wasn’t his most elegant of moves Rico set Carla down, pausing only to slide the strap of her dress that had fallen down up over her shoulder and absolutely not indulging in the temptation to linger.
Dio, the things he’d done, he thought darkly as he straightened and stalked over to the desk, the small crowd in front of it taking one look at the scar at his temple and the bump in his nose and parting like the waves. Willingly at first when he’d been desperate to prove himself and fit in but then increasingly less willingly when he’d gained the respect of his bosses and been asked to take on a bigger role and more responsibility, although by that point he’d been in so deep he hadn’t been able to see a way out.
He hadn’t been anywhere near this place in years. Not since that last time, when, at the age of sixteen, he’d been charged with crimes relating to money laundering. But it might as well have been yesterday. He could still recall how terrified he’d been despite the bravado. How slowly the hours had passed while he waited for his bosses to come and bail him out. How sick with devastation and disillusionment he’d f
elt when he’d realised no one was coming, that the loyalty he’d given them would not be repaid, and how unbelievably naïve and stupid he’d been to put his trust in people who’d dealt only in exploitation and had never known a code of honour.