From Rome with Love: Escape the winter blues with the perfect feel-good romance!. Jules Wake
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looked at him, innocence and nonchalance written all over his carefully posed face. Ha! She didn’t think so. But she wasn’t big headed enough to think he’d done it purely to wind her up. Clearly he was so bloody self-centred, it hadn’t even occurred to him that he might be intruding.
‘Yep, while you two love birds are taking in the city, I’ll be out doing business and in the evenings, while you’re romantically dining a deux, I’ll be wining and dining local restaurateurs, picking their brains.’ Why did he have to sound so damn patronising? Like he was her elderly bloody aunt or something.
Superior sod was only two years older than her and she’d known him since she was eight. He ought to remember that she had memories of him as a schoolboy with gangly legs in regulation uniform grey shorts. Nan had worked for his family as their daily, so Lisa had spent many a school holiday in the big farmhouse kitchen at his parents’ home. When they were older they used to walk to the bus stop, on their way to school together, although he’d gone to a very different school. And despite the best efforts of the pretty, posh girls from the other school, he still sat with the cleaner’s granddaughter. When she was sixteen, he went off to university and not long after that Nan had decided to move out of the village when she stopped driving.
‘Yes, I’m looking forward to having a wonderful time.’ She deliberately added a touch of huskiness to her voice. Let him think what he liked. She certainly wasn’t going to tell him that she and Giovanni were just friends.
The plane turned, a slow, wide swing, and she saw the runway stretching out, before it completed its turn to face the long expanse of tarmac. Her knees turned to jelly and she gripped her armrest, her fingers cramping.
‘I’m quite surprised you took Giovanni up on his offer,’ said Will, in a conversational tone.
‘Why?’ she asked sharply, taking a quick breath as she registered the engines revving up.
Will shrugged, an amused look on his face that had her itching to wipe it off. Arrogant git.
‘It’s quite a commitment, going on holiday with someone. You’re not exactly the committing type.’
‘Says who?’ she asked, her head snapping towards him, half an ear on the increasing roar of the engine and conscious of that horrible sensation of being on the back of racehorse about to charge into action and unable to stop it.
‘You, I seem to recall. You told me you weren’t on the market for that sort of relationship.’
She pursed her lips, wishing she’d said a lot less to him that night nine months ago. Her words had been fuelled by a healthy dose of self-preservation. If only she’d had the sense to stick to them.
The plane picked up pace. She cast a fleeting glance out of the window at the trees speeding past. She leaned harder into her seat, bracing herself.
‘You seemed quite adamant,’ added Will, with a perverse grin, his voice filled with teasing challenge. Women chased him all the time, but she wanted to be different. And she didn’t want to depend on anyone. She thought that perhaps they’d found common ground, because he didn’t do commitment either. Boy, did he not do commitment. She’d lost count of the women he’d seen in the last seven months. No, that was a humungous lie. There’d been Izzie, the vet’s assistant, Cordelia, the interior designer, two Charlottes, Eva, Olivia, Thea, Martina, Ella and Dora, short for Isadora, which exactly summed up the sort of well-bred, well-educated and well-connected women Will associated with. She had been an anomaly. Although, to be fair, he’d treated her equally badly.
She shouldn’t complain. Everyone knew what he was like. She should have stuck to her guns and not given in to the beguiling undercurrent of chemistry that crackled between them. At fifteen they’d been friends. At twenty, when he came back from university, something had changed, which probably had a lot to do with the fact that he wasn’t a boy any more. Luckily he’d gone off to do something in the City, like his dad. Then he came back again.
It was when she started work at the pub that something had reared its head. After managing to resist for six months, she’d given in, tired and fed up after a horrendously long week at work, going home to solitary meals. After the late-night shift at the pub, against all her better judgement, when one too many brushes up against him had ignited her hormone levels to combustion, she’d foolishly let them do the talking. She might have even made the first move. She was still furious with herself for letting down her guard.
Memories slid through like tendrils of mist, snaking, damn them, through the barriers she usually managed to keep in place, before building into full-blown images, bringing with them the heat and taste of him. They exploded in her head, sending a rush of adrenaline punching into her system, making her pulse surge with fevered heat.
She clenched her fists tight beneath her legs, but it was no use, she couldn’t get him out of her stupid head. Heat gathered between her thighs as she tried to dispel what had become an indelible vision of his body gliding over hers, the remembrance of heated skin to skin and his hands tenderly cupping her face as he kissed her with a passionate thoroughness, as if scouring every other emotion out of her.
No wonder he was such a success with women; he had a brilliant routine. He’d successfully made her feel as if she were the only woman who had ever mattered to him. Or had she fooled herself because she was lonely? Whichever it had been, all the defences she’d so carefully constructed to protect herself from ever falling in love had gone up in smoke.
She should have stuck to her guns. Being independent was the best way to be. That way you couldn’t be let down by anyone. And hadn’t he shown her the truth of that?
She scowled, scrunching up her face, as if there were a nasty smell in the vicinity, which there might as well have been. Will was bad news. A womaniser, who moved on to the next woman as soon as he’d made a conquest. She’d been a challenge, like an unclimbed mountain to be scaled. And the minute he’d conquered her, he’d moved on to the next.
‘Maybe I’ve found the right person to have a relationship with,’ she snapped.
‘What, Giovanni?’ Will scoffed. ‘He’s not right for you.’
‘Why not?’ she asked, unable to keep the outrage at bay. ‘Although, what the hell it’s got to do with you, I’ve no idea.’ How dare Will presume he knew her or what was right for her?
‘I know you.’ Much as she wanted to, she couldn’t duck his serious contemplation. ‘You need someone stronger. More worldly. Someone who will treat you as an equal.’
Lisa deliberately didn’t say anything. That counted him out. Will was infinitely superior and he knew it. Although it was doubly annoying that he’d nailed the very reason she was doing her best to discourage Giovanni’s determined flirtation, but she was damned if she was going to admit it out loud, especially not now and not to him, of all people.
‘Come on. Giovanni’s a lovely guy, but so is a Labrador puppy. There’s no emotional maturity there. Plus, he’s a good Italian mama’s boy. He’s not looking for an equal; he’s looking for someone to replace his mother. Someone who will look after him, tell him he’s wonderful and pick up after him. I can’t see you putting up with that.’
‘And you would know, would you?’ challenged Lisa, ignoring the flash of fury that his astute assessment triggered.
‘And there we go.’ Will smiled and he reached out and touched her hand. ‘You okay now?’
‘What?’ The unexpected contact startled her. It occurred to her that she hadn’t touched Will since that weekend or he her. Why now? They’d both been at great pains to avoid each other ever since THAT night.
He nodded his head towards the window and the view of the fields below them.
‘We’re safely off the ground.’ He leaned forward and fished a book out of the seat pocket.
She stared at his bowed head in open-mouthed astonishment, but he gave no sign of acknowledging it. She felt completely wrong-footed. Had his strategy been