Aurelio stilled, his heart ramming up against his ribs as an explanation surfaced. Even as he told himself it wasn’t Amber’s style, he couldn’t stop his brain racing ahead, torturing him with possibilities. Perhaps the room service order wasn’t about hunger but setting a mood. Champagne perhaps, to share with some man. Or maybe Aurelio’s own premium prosecco. Bile burned the back of his tongue at the idea of her entertaining a lover in her room.
Ridiculous, he knew. After their flaming hot affair he’d spurned her. He had no claim now on her affections or her body. Besides, despite the way they’d come together so quickly, their need so explosive, Aurelio sensed she wasn’t the sort of woman who made a habit of picking up strangers. Their torrid affair had surprised Amber, he knew, even as she’d revelled in it.
Yet he couldn’t banish the thought of her with another man. It drew a veil of hot mist across Aurelio’s eyes. His hands clenched at his sides, his jaw grinding tight.
‘A pot of herbal tea, I believe.’
Gradually Allegra’s words penetrated. Tea. Not a sensual midnight celebration but the restorative Amber favoured when she worked long hours.
So it was tiredness after all, not some midnight tryst. Logic had told him Amber wouldn’t turn her back on him for an assignation. He’d just been…worried. He needed to check on her. Amber’s actions didn’t sit right with what he knew of her.
Murmuring goodnight to Luca and Allegra, he crossed the still-packed room, avoiding the people eager to catch his attention. He wouldn’t be able to settle till he knew Amber was okay.
*
Amber heard the knock on the door and wrapped the voluminous bathrobe more tightly around her. She’d already undressed, ready for the bath she’d run, only to remember belatedly her room service order.
Actually, Allegra’s order, not hers. The other woman had steered her back to her room, given her a sympathetic hug and decided she needed something soothing. She’d been the one to order room service with a no-nonsense solicitude Amber found surprisingly reassuring. It made a nice change from being independent, from hiding her hurt beneath a can-do outlook and a façade of imperviousness.
It had been nice, just this once, to let someone else take charge.
Life recently had been full of shocks and upheavals. Her affair with Aurelio, so out of character yet seemingly sorightat the time. Discovering herself in love and then, hard on the heels of that recognition, learning how heartbreak felt. Finding herself pregnant and prey to so many fears for the future. Being brutally rejected by the one man in the world who had the power to hurt her. Then trying to find a way to establish some middle ground on which to base a friendship with him.
She didn’t want friendship. She wanted Aurelio!
Amber pursed her lips against a wail of hurt, regret and longing. Anger too, that he’d cut off any chance of a future for them.
She told herself not to be a fool. He might accept her now as a work colleague, but that was all. There could be no going back.
The knock sounded again and Amber crossed the suite, feeling the soft antique carpet beneath her bare feet, then the coolness of marble in the small foyer.
She unlocked the door, opened it, then froze.
‘Aurelio!’ Her heart jammed high in her throat. She felt her breath escape then heard a wheeze as her cramped lungs tried frantically to drag in air.
Despite his debonair tuxedo and the tea tray he carried, he looked hard-edged and determined, not at all like the suave, mainly superficial set who’d attended tonight’s party. His square jaw, already darkening with the shadow of a beard, was set and those jet black eyebrows were lowered in a brooding frown. Long grooves carved his cheeks, but not from smiling this time. He looked…
Dangerouswas the word her tired brain conjured.
But that was crazy. Aurelio wasn’t dangerous to her. He’d already wreaked too much damage on her foolish, poorly guarded heart. He couldn’t hurt her any more than he already had.
If she kept telling herself that she might even come to believe it!
His eyes met hers and that frantic sizzle started in her blood. Instantly Amber clasped the bathrobe tight at her collarbone, standing as tall as she could in bare feet.
His attention fixed on the tell-tale movement.
‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’
‘I’m tired, Aurelio.’ Was that her voice — that high, breathy thing?
‘I won’t stay long. And,’ he lifted the tray in his hands, ‘I’ve brought room service.’
Frowning, Amber reluctantly stepped back, allowing him into the room. ‘How come you’re delivering it?’
He shrugged and her gaze slid inevitably to that vast expanse of powerful muscle and bone beneath his jacket. Amber gnawed her lip and looked away as he crossed the room to put his burden down on a table. ‘I met the waiter and suggested I bring it to you.’
‘I’m pretty sure hotels frown on guests doing that.’ What about her privacy?