‘Skulking?’ It wasn’t a word he’d heard before.
‘Lurking. Loitering. Hiding.’
‘I prefer to think of it as...observing from a distance,’ he said, dismissing the flicker of apprehension that came when he realised with hindsight that perhaps he should have hidden, because now he’d been caught there was no backing out. No leaving without anyone being the wiser. No coming back another, quieter time. Or not at all. It was too late for regrets. He’d set these events in motion. He’d see them through. And in the meantime he’d distract himself by pursuing the beautiful woman before him.
‘You’re here to meet Finn.’
‘I am,’ he said, giving her a practised smile and feeling a surge of satisfaction when her gaze once again dipped to his mouth for a second as if she just couldn’t help herself.
‘Your brother.’
‘Quite possibly.’
‘Then you’d better come with me.’
CHAPTER TWO
WHILE CARLA HAD been making her way over, buzzing with a surge of adrenaline that wiped out her weariness and put a bounce in her step, a number of options with regard to the identity and purpose of the stranger lurking in the shadows had spun through her mind.
He was a curious neighbour, maybe. A paparazzo with pound signs in his eyes. Or something a tad more sinister, perhaps. Finn was a billionaire who owed a string of hotels, restaurants and nightclubs. Some kind of personal attack wasn’t out of the question. Josh was tiny and precious and the threat of a kidnapping was real.
Never in a million years would she have guessed the truth. It was almost unbelievable. But not quite, because that this individual, this Federico Rossi, was one of Finn’s long-lost brothers was undeniable.
He had to be.
They were identical.
Well, almost identical.
They might share eye and hair colour and possess the same imposing breadth of shoulders and towering height, but Finn didn’t have the scar that featured on this man’s face. His nose had never been broken and no accent tinged his English. Finn too lacked the deep tan, and sharp angles and hard lines in the bone structure department. Other than all that, though, the likeness was uncanny.
So why the man falling in beside her as she turned and set off on a discreet route back to the house should have triggered such an unexpected and intense reaction inside her when all she felt for Finn was a vague sort of fondness, Carla had no idea.
Was it the lazy confidence? The deep, gravelly, insanely sexy voice? The air of danger and the accompanying notion that, despite the laid-back exterior, Federico Rossi was a man who did and took what he wanted when he wanted and to hell with the consequences?
Whatever it was, once she’d got over her shock at his obvious identity, she’d experienced a jolt of an entirely different kind. He’d smiled at her, a slow, smouldering, stomach-melting smile, and a rush of heat had stormed through her, igniting her nerve endings and setting fire to her blood. His intense navy gaze had roamed all over her, and in its wake tiny explosions had detonated beneath her skin. By the time he’d finished his leisurely yet thorough perusal of her entire body, desire had been pounding through her and for one brief, mad moment she’d wanted to press herself up against him and seal her mouth to his.
But then some tiny nugget of self-preservation, recognising what was going on as attraction of the most lethal and inadvisable kind, to be neither entertained nor underestimated, had burst into her consciousness and she’d taken a sharp step back from the brink of madness while wondering what on earth she’d been thinking.
Everything about this man, every instinct she had, urged her to proceed with utmost caution, and that was exactly what she was going to do because she got the feeling that he wasn’t to be entertained or underestimated either.
When it came to the opposite sex she never allowed
her emotions to run riot and dictate her actions. She’d done so once before, as an affection-starved teenager who thought she’d found love where she absolutely hadn’t, and that was enough. If Rico Rossi could threaten the iron-clad control she kept on her feelings with just a smile, he could be beyond dangerous, and she had zero interest in prodding the beast.
She did, however, have an interest in keeping him away from Finn and Georgie’s guests, who by now were presumably having lunch but couldn’t fail to be curious should he march straight into the party, the spitting image of their host, only dressed in faded blue jeans and a black polo shirt instead of a suit. So she’d deposit him in the study and then go in search of Finn to impart the surprising yet excellent news that one of his brothers had turned up, and from that moment on she need have nothing to do with him directly ever again.
‘So you know my name,’ he said, shortening his stride to match hers, a move that put him so close she caught a trace of his scent—male, spicy, dizzyingly intoxicating—so close she could reach out and touch him should she wish to do so, which she very definitely did not. ‘What’s yours?’
‘Carla Blake.’
‘Carla,’ he echoed, rolling the ‘r’ around his mouth in a way that sent an involuntary shiver rippling down her spine.
‘That’s right,’ she said with a brisk nod, deciding to inhale through her mouth and keep her eyes ahead to lessen his impact on her senses while upping her pace so that they might reach their destination that little bit quicker.
‘And this party?’
‘A christening. Your nephew’s, probably. I’m a godparent. Georgie is my best friend. She’s Josh’s mother and, I’d hazard a guess, your sister-in-law.’