Why did it feel as if everything had spun off its axis and nothing made any sense any more?
He took her shoulders, held her at arm’s length to look into her eyes. ‘Let’s not think about it today. Tomorrow is soon enough. Go and get dressed. Wear something fancy. We’ll go somewhere special.’ He brushed a kiss across her brow, making her smile despite her confusion. ‘It’ll take our minds off it.’
‘Do you really think—’
‘We can go anywhere you want,’ he interrupted her. ‘Your choice.’
‘Okay,’ she said, more pleased than she probably should be at the thought that she didn’t have to go today.
She hurried into the bathroom, shut the door and leaned back against it, letting the excited little hammer-beats of her pulse drown out the doubts. Everything was fine. More than fine. They’d made a silly mistake, but it didn’t have to mean anything.
She’d always found it hard to hold back as a teenager, to weigh and judge and interpret other people’s feelings properly. It was the reason she’d fallen so easily for Gio, and she’d worked long and hard in the decade since at keeping her emotions in check and never letting them get the better of her again. But maybe she’d held on too hard, turned herself into someone she really wasn’t.
It didn’t have to be a bad thing that she had such strong feelings for Gio. They had a shared history, and now she’d spent time with him, and understood the extent of his parents’ neglect and what it had done to him, it made sense that she would feel their friendship more keenly.
She twisted the gold-plated taps on the large designer tub.
She’d come here to get over her past mistakes, but surely the best way to do that was to heal the part of herself she’d lost that night. She didn’t have to be frightened of her feelings for Gio any more.
When their fling was over they would go their separate ways, having reclaimed the good things from their childhood and left behind the bad.
As the water gushed out, and she sprinkled bath salts, another thought occurred to her and she smiled.
Gio had said she could pick their destination for this afternoon. And she knew exactly where she wanted to go. She wasn’t the only one who needed to heal.
But as Issy slipped into the steamy, scented water, and let the lavender bubbles massage her tired muscles, she couldn’t quite shake the suspicion she had failed to grasp something vitally important.
What the hell had he done?
Gio lay on the bed, his arm folded under his head, as he stared at the fan on the ceiling.
He’d taken her without a condom. He turned his head to stare at the bathroom and heard the reassuring hum of running water.
Except he wasn’t feeling all that reassured.
Had he totally lost his mind?
He never, ever forgot to wear condoms. Partly for personal safety reasons, but mostly because he had absolutely no desire to father a child. Even if the woman said she was on the pill. No matter how hot he got, or how desperate he was to make love, he always used protection.
But Issy got him hotter and more desperate than any woman he’d ever met—and for the first time ever the thought of contraception hadn’t entered his head.
She’d made him feel raw and vulnerable with all that nonsense about getting to know Claudia’s family, until he’d been desperate to shut her up. But the minute he’d tasted her, the minute he’d touched her, the usual longing had welled up inside him and all he’d been able to think about was burying himself inside her. Before he knew what was happening he’d been glorying in the exquisite clasp of her body and shooting his seed deep into her womb without a thought to the consequences.
It hadn’t been a mistake, or an oversight. It had been sheer madness.
Getting off the bed, he shrugged into his robe, then scraped his fingers through his hair.
How the hell had this happened? He felt more out of control than ever now.
What if she actually got pregnant? He knew Issy. She would never consider an abortion. But he didn’t want a child. He knew what it was like to be an afterthought, an inconvenience, a mistake.
And why had he asked her to stay? By rights he should have been breaking the speed limit to race her to the airport even now, and then piloting the plane back to England to make sure she got whatever she needed to ensure there was no chance of a baby.
Temporary insanity had to be the answer. He slumped into a chair by the terrace table and frowned at the remnants of their aborted lunch. Although he wasn’t sure how temporary it was any more.
The woman was drivi
ng him nuts. In the last few days he’d become addicted to everything about her.