The Amalfi Coast was a mecca for billionaire property development and high-end tourism but, when you factored in the deprivation in Naples’ slums less than thirty miles away, opportunistic robberies weren’t uncommon.
“I’m not lost,” she said, snapping his olive branch in two. “I know where I am. And where I want to go. And it’s not back to New York.”
Yeah, it was. But he’d deal with the problem of getting her on a plane once they got to the airport. First he needed to swing by wherever she was staying so she could wash up and they could grab her luggage and travel documents.
Once she was on her way home, he’d follow up with the police on the investigation. Even if she hadn’t been hurt, he wanted the little bastards who had done this to her caught and prosecuted.
“So, where were you headed with no transport and no shoes?”
“Sorrento. If you could drop me there, that would be terrific. Then you can tell Dario you’ve done your bit.”
“Is that where you’re based? In Sorrento?” he asked.
She cleared her throat. “Not exactly.”
He glanced at her. The rosé blush was heading for her hairline at an alarming rate.
“Then where’s the rest of your stuff?” he demanded.
“Probably half way to France by now on the back of my stolen Vespa, with my shoes.”
Jared’s fingers clenched on the wheel hard enough to leave an indent in the leather. “Please tell me that doesn’t include your passport,” he said.
The glare she sent him gave him the answer he didn’t want.
CHAPTER TWO
THE LAST OF the sunshine glinted off the convertible’s paintwork as it powered down the winding coast road and cast shadows over Jared Caine’s face, making him look even more forbidding than usual. The short, dark strands of his hair danced playfully in the breeze but did nothing to soften the line of his jaw—which he was clenching hard enough to crack a tooth.
His eyes were hidden behind the dark lenses of his designer sunglasses, but Katie didn’t need to look into them to know Jared Caine was angry about the latest turn of events and trying hard not to show it.
Join the club.
She looked back toward the horizon and slipped down in the seat until the car’s luxury leather upholstery cradled her. She closed her eyes, letting the well-oiled hum of the convertible’s engine drown out the deep hum in her abdomen—which had kicked off the minute Caine had stepped out of his car—and was not remotely significant.
Caine was a phenomenally good-looking guy—with a potent sexual charisma. Especially if you had a weakness for tough, take-charge, control-freaky types who demonstrated about as much empathy and sensitivity as the jagged rocks of Campania’s coastline. And apparently she did, especially when she was exhausted and traumatized and had just been mugged.
Luckily, she had previous experience of this reaction. She would get over it.
And at least he’d stopped trying to bully her into getting on a plane. She might have been able to get some grim satisfaction out of thwarting his plan but for the painful throbbing in her frontal lobe as she tried to get her head around the huge mess she was in.
The car phone buzzed loudly, making her head hurt even more.
“Hey, Dario,” Caine said, answering the call and then switching to speaker phone.
“Tell me you’ve found her, Jared?”
Katie’s heart somersaulted in her chest at the urgency in her brother-in-law’s voice and she straightened in her seat.
“I’ve got her here with me,” Caine replied. “Picked her up on a farm track five miles from Sorrento. We’re on speaker.”
Dario cursed in Italian. “Katie? Grazie Dio,” he murmured. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“I’m good, Dario. Really, it wasn’t anything major. I got robbed, but they didn’t hurt me. I didn’t want you and Meg to worry.”
“Is she okay, Jared?” Dario asked, even though she’d already answered that question.
Caine’s all-seeing gaze swept over her, assessing her condition again, the way he had when he’d first stepped out of his car. And the hum went haywire.