‘I am. Are you?’
She gave her head a shake. ‘Quite the opposite. I like things planned, organised and well thought through. I like control.’
‘Yet you work in crisis management and damage limitation, where the unexpected is the norm.’
‘True,’ she admitted, ‘but the unexpectedness is expected. Will you go back to doing it?’
‘BASE jumping? No,’ he s
aid, realising, once his brain had caught up with his mouth, that it was true. Which was odd. Because why would he want to give it up? Yes, he’d been injured, but he’d been injured before, albeit not quite so severely, and been back in the saddle as soon as he could. What was different about this time? And why was his chest tight and his pulse fast?
‘What will you do instead?’
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted uneasily, apparently unable to answer anything right now.
‘Doesn’t it get a bit lonely, rattling around here on your own?’
‘No.’
‘You should get a pet.’
The thought of it sent a shudder through him. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Why not?’
Because he needed attachments like a hole in the head. Because he preferred to move through life alone and apart, and that precluded animals. ‘I don’t want one.’
‘Why not?’
‘What business is it of yours?’
‘I’m seeing a theme.’
‘What kind of a theme?’ he asked, a strange sense of apprehension beginning to trickle though him.
‘No neighbours, no pets, no clutter, no attachments of any kind. You don’t just live on an island, Rico, you are an island. So was that why you left Finn’s study?’ she asked with a tilt of her head. ‘Did the thought of potential attachment spook you?’
‘Not at all,’ he said easily, although how close she was to the truth was making him sweat. ‘I merely remembered I had somewhere else to be.’
‘Here?’
‘Precisely. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going for a swim.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
AS IF A swim was going to succeed in putting her off, thought Carla, watching Rico stalk out of the gym as if he had wolves snapping at his heels.
She’d been right in her belief that one could discover a lot from exploring another person’s house. In Rico’s case, she’d indirectly learned that exiting a conversation when it touched a nerve was what he did, and it revealed more than she suspected he was aware of. It gave her points to note and avenues to pursue, such as why he moved through life like a ghost, living in such isolation, even if the isolation was splendid, as indeed it was.
The walls throughout his house were a soft off-white, the floors made up of great slabs of travertine covered with huge, ancient earth-toned rugs. Fine voile hung at the open windows and fluttered in the breeze. The furniture that was wood gleamed, while the sofas and chairs looked sumptuous and inviting.
But the stark absence of personal effects intrigued her. Even the kitchen, which was filled with shiny gadgetry and utensils that obviously weren’t simply for show, bordered on the clinical. And as for his study, a room in which presumably he spent much of his time, well, she’d never seen such order. His desk was bare apart from three massive monitors and a telephone, and not a file was out of place on the floor-to-ceiling shelves that lined one wall.
Did Rico have a place elsewhere crammed to the rafters with all his things? If he didn’t, and this was him, was there really nothing and no one in his past that he wanted to hang on to, to remember? How sad and lonely his life must be with no family and no friends, she thought, feeling a tug on her heartstrings even though how he lived was no concern of hers.
But if he needed breathing space, she was more than happy to let him have it. She knew when to push and when to retreat. How to plant the seed of suggestion and wait for it to take root. Not that she had a lot of time to get anything to take root, but it gave her a bit of breathing space too, which she badly needed after what had happened at his front door when he’d gone very still, his mesmerising blue eyes darkening to indigo and his expression unfathomable as he looked at her with heart-thumping intensity.
She’d had the crazy notion that he’d been contemplating kissing her and even more crazily, for one split second, she’d actually hoped he would, instinctively softening and leaning in and preparing herself for fireworks until he’d suddenly drawn back, leaving her feeling mortified and rattled.