He could have looked ridiculous.
Knowing who he was, he should have looked ridiculous. He was no more stockman or station worker than Father Christmas.
Instead he looked amazing as he walked towards her, like a male model walking out of a magazine, his expression unreadable, all long-limbed and relaxed in his own skin.
But then she’d seen that skin and he had every reason to be relaxed.
She swallowed, and warned herself not to go there.
‘Holly!’ Josh called as the pair drew closer. ‘Look what I found. Reckon he could almost pass for a local. Whaddayareckon?’
Holly reckoned Franco looked even better close up. Close up she could see just how well those moleskin jeans fitted legs more used to wearing fine Italian fabrics. There was a check shirt under that jacket and a leather belt and buckle and, damn the man to hell and back, but the look suited him and suited him well. And close up she could see the shadowed face under the brim of his hat and could see it was even more Chatsfield-esquely beautiful than she remembered. Not that she was about to admit any of that. She smiled. At least she hoped it was a smile rather than a leer. ‘He sure could pass for a local, Josh, at least until he opens his mouth.’
Franco didn’t.
He was too busy remembering how Holly had looked last night with her hair down. He’d pulled off her elastic to check out her head wound not thinking it would make any great difference, but then she’d turned and looked up at him with those big blue eyes, and honey-blonde hair had framed her face and kissed her shoulders, and for a moment he’d been speechless.
Jet lag couldn’t be responsible for everything, he’d figured, but with her big blue eyes and her hair around her face, the woman had looked halfway edible.
Whereas today it was scraped right back again, almost as if she was punishing it. Good.
Which reminded him …
‘Good morning, Holly,’ he said in an impeccable tone. ‘I have something of yours.’ She blinked up at him, confusion muddying her blue eyes. ‘You left it in the cottage last night.’
He placed something feather-light in the palm of her hand. She looked down to see a black circle of elastic and her stomach clenched. Her hair tie.
She reddened as her fingers curled around it and she realised Josh was looking on. It would hardly help to say she hadn’t left it so much as he hadn’t given it back to her. It would hardly help at all.
‘Thanks very much,’ she said through gritted teeth as she shoved the offending article into a pocket in her jacket.
‘My pleasure,’ he said with a shrug. ‘So where do I start?’
She sent him off towards a bucket containing gloves and snips at the end of the row.
Josh watched him, scratching his head. ‘So … you got a thing for Franco?’
Holly watched him too, liking altogether too much the way the man looked from behind as he strode across the earth. ‘Yeah, I’ve got a thing for Franco, all right. Right now, I’d like to kill him.’
CHAPTER FIVE
‘WHY DID YOU do that?’ she demanded the minute Josh had disappeared. ‘You know what Josh is thinking now.’
‘What’s Josh thinking now?’
‘That I spent time in your cottage last night.’
‘You did.’
‘But not because of that!’
He rubbed his brow. ‘Is that supposed to be a euphemism for you willingly spending the night in my bed?’
‘You know damn well it is!’
‘So you want me to tell Josh we didn’t sleep together?’
‘No! I don’t want you telling Josh anything!’
‘So you want him to think we’re sleeping together?’
‘No! Just forget I said anything!’ She took a deep breath, pulled on a pair of gloves and said, ‘Right, now, this is the way we do it here.’
He listened to her with a wry smile on his face. He didn’t care one way or another whether she was sleeping with the hired help. He just wanted to know if she was. You never knew when something like that might come in handy.
He’d told her he knew how to prune, but Holly still gave him a lesson in it anyway. She didn’t know how they did it in Italy, but she sure as hell wasn’t trusting her vines to anyone without explaining the way she expected it done. Even if he considered himself some kind of expert.
And then they’d started either side of the row together, snipping at the shoots, cutting off everything after the second bud, so she could keep a watchful eye on him. If he was going to be lousy at the job, he’d soon know about it and he’d be on the next plane back.
He was pruning the vines at the right place, she acceded, but he was painstakingly slow. She slowed her own pace down so much it was painful when she could have been quarter way along the row by now.