The first Clara knew that they’d reached their destination after what felt like hours flying over the Mediterranean was when the helicopter made its descent. They’d made one refuelling stop in which she’d given Bob a quick walk—Marcelo made a makeshift lead for him—and borrowed Marcelo’s phone to call her colleague Liza in England who was looking after Samson and Delilah for her and make sure they were okay and reassure Liza that she wasn’t dead and would be home soon to take them off her hands.
Holding onto Bob tightly, she jumped out. They’d landed in a field, the grass of which was a bit scratchy under her bare feet, but she wasn’t going to complain. Rather scratchy feet than be married to King Pig! And the sun was hot and shining on her, which was nice. It felt like an age had passed since she’d last been out in the sun, and she spent a moment enjoying the warm rays on her face.
‘Right, which way’s the embassy?’ she asked Marcelo after she’d profusely thanked his men and pilots for rescuing her.
A look of bemusement came over his handsome face. ‘You’re planning to walk?’
‘I’m very fit. I walk with the dogs for miles every day at home.’
He smiled. ‘It’s already taken care of.’ He pointed to the two cars waiting by the hangar. ‘The second one will take you to the embassy.’
‘Oh, you are fabulous, thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
Practically bouncing on her toes to reach his face, she planted a kiss on his cheek. The bristles were soft!
Allowing herself one final stare at the gorgeous face and fabulous ice-blue eyes, Clara debated whether or not to plant a kiss to his firm mouth, just to see what that felt like too, but decided against it. She didn’t want him getting the wrong idea and thinking she’d changed her mind about offering her body to him.
Instead, she reached for his hand—oh, wow, it was huge compared to hers—and squeezed the fingers. ‘I know I’m going to take you out to dinner once I’ve sorted the mess that is my life out, but I also know it in no way repays the debt I owe you. You can call it in any time or any place and I will fulfil it. I’m not exaggerating to say you’ve saved my life, and probably Bob’s too.’
The lines around his eyes crinkled and he squeezed her fingers in return. ‘It has been...an experience.’
She cackled with laughter, knowing exactly what he meant. Clara was well aware she’d been born without a filter but situations of heightened emotions always made her motormouth tendencies worse. She thought Marcelo had done very well not to at least threaten to gag her, so kudos to him.
‘It certainly has,’ she agreed. ‘Thanks again.’
Flipping a final wave at him, she set off to the cars, keeping her focus on the one he’d designated as hers to stop herself from looking back at him.
She’d never wanted to look back at a man before. Another first.
This really was a day of firsts. She supposed it was because Marcelo was so ruddy attractive. If she was a girl who enjoyed sexual pleasure she would have had no hesitation in offering herself to him, but Clara preferred sensory pleasure of a more inanimate kind. Beautiful clothes and stylish furniture—even second-hand ones like she had—couldn’t hurt you or lie to you or abuse your trust the way humans did. Lies really were the worst because it was lies that destroyed trust. Too many, especially when they came from the very people you were programmed by birth to trust, destroyed something fundamental inside you, making it impossible to believe in anyone. The only person who’d never abused Clara’s trust was her mother.
Marcelo watched her walk away, as bedraggled, truculent and sexy a sight as he had ever seen even from the rear. Even Clara’s walk was sexy. She wasn’t trying to be sexy. She just was.
Look at those legs. Smears of grime from the helicopter streaked her calves, scraps of what had started the day as a beautiful and expensive wedding dress clung to the toned golden thighs. Her feet were bare, long untamed hair strewn...
‘Wait,’ he called.
She stopped walking and turned around.
Damn it. He couldn’t let her walk into the embassy like that. Sure, they would help her but there was something so wonderfully uncaring about the way she carried her dishevelment that his heart twisted on itself.
Whydidn’t she care?
‘Come back to my place,’ he said before he could change his mind. ‘Have a shower and some food. I’ll get Alessia to bring some clothes for you...and then I’ll take you to the embassy.’
Clara’s lips swirled while her eyes narrowed with thought. Then her features loosened and she grinned. ‘Do you promise not to lock me in a room and threaten to kill my dog if I don’t marry you? Because I’m very keen to get home to my English dogs and my job.’
Marcelo laughed at the very idea. He had nothing against marriage. He would marry one day, but not for a long time. Civilian life was so unutterably boring that the thought of settling down any time soon and losing the only excitement to be found in this royal life was, for the moment, anathema. Mind-numbing tedium was his life. The agreement with his family when he joined the army was that once his military life was over, he’d become a working member of the Berruti royal family. That his military life had come to a premature end was irrelevant. The deal stood. The adventures he’d enjoyed in his army days were memories that would have to sustain his impulsive, thrill-seeking tendencies for the rest of his life because royal life consisted of duty and decorum.
It was a shame, he mused, that Clara was a virgin, and a proud one at that. If she wasn’t, he’d have no hesitation in taking the seduction path with her. A very short-lived seduction. Never minding his aversion to settling down, he had a strong feeling that wherever Clara went, chaos followed. If there was one thing incompatible with royal life, it was chaos.
She was the least virginal woman he’d ever met. In fairness, he didn’t think he’d known any virgins since his school days, unless he counted his sister, who he assumed was a virgin considering she never dated, but he would rather swim in an algae-ridden pool than bring the subject up and find out. It brought him out in hives just to think it. To his mind, virgins were decorous and shy. He doubted Clara had a shy bone in her delicious body.
And she was delicious. There was not an inch of that body he wasn’t attracted to. He could still feel the softness of her plump mouth on his cheek and the pad of his finger from when he’d pressed against it to quieten her. His finger had sunk into it.
She was hot and delicious and the least virginal of virgins in the history of virgins. A conundrum to be figured out by a better, more patient man than him.
Or a woman? Was that why she was a virgin? Did she prefer her own sex?
But he’d seen interest in her eyes. He was certain of it. Marcelo knew when a woman was attracted to him and Clara didn’t have the guile to try to hide it.
But that didn’t mean anything. She’d blatantly told him he was handsome and sexy. She’d also told him she had no intention of sharing her body with him and there had been nothing in those honest brown eyes to contradict that.
But as the good lady herself would say, this was all moot. He’d feed her and give her the privacy to clean herself up, and then he would send her off to the embassy and never think of her again.
Folding his arms across his chest, he raised a brow. ‘I promise.’
She gambolled back to him like a spring lamb. ‘Then I accept. I’m starving!’