Under a Siena Sun (Escape to Tuscany #1) - T.A. Williams Page 0,78

a very welcome breeze after the clammy heat of the shore. As she cooled down, Lucy found herself analysing her feelings. She still didn’t know if he really had been the guilty party in the separation, but the more she got to know him, the less she believed him capable of betrayal. Yes, he was undisputedly still a very rich man from a different stratosphere, but all his talk about setting up a charity had been very heartening. And he was also very, very attractive. Her musings were interrupted by his voice.

‘I thought we could go out to that little island out there.’ Lucy followed his pointing finger with her eyes and spotted a rocky lump with a little tower on it, probably about a kilometre or two away. ‘It’s very pretty and it’s unlikely to be too crowded. And, most important, there’s a tiny area of gravel beach; not for us, but for Boris. He loves the water, but getting him back into a boat like this again is a real struggle unless there’s a bit of dry land handy.’ He shot her a smile. ‘If you want to slip into your swimming things, I promise I won’t look.’

Lucy stood up and smiled back at him. ‘Already got them on.’ She pulled off her top and unbuttoned her shorts, letting them fall to her ankles. She glanced down and was reassured to see her bikini still attached in all the right places. As she looked up again, she saw his eyes on her body and her smile broadened. ‘Your turn.’

‘Here, take the wheel, will you?’

Before she could object, he slipped the kill cord off his wrist and clipped it onto hers, slid off the seat and reached for his T-shirt. She made a grab for the wheel before the boat could veer off course. It was going quite fast and it was fun to drive, although it meant keeping her eyes on the water ahead, while she knew he was stripping to his shorts. A few seconds later, he slid back alongside her, but made no attempt to take over the steering. Instead, his bare arm encircled her shoulders as he pulled her gently towards him. She felt her whole body tingle as he kissed her softly on the neck and then turned her face towards him and kissed her properly.

At this point, nobody was in control of the boat, but she couldn’t care less. There was nobody else close-by and the rocky island was still quite a long way ahead. She felt totally transported by his touch and his kiss. It was almost like an out-of-body experience and she found she could hardly breathe. Her head was reeling with the fact that there could be no doubt now that he liked her, a lot. His hands on her bare shoulders felt good and the kiss genuinely made her head spin. Finally, reluctantly, after a long while she pulled away enough to glance ahead of them and was relieved to see the island still several hundred metres off and the boat still heading roughly towards it. There were three or four other boats anchored around it but otherwise it looked quite deserted. She glanced back at David from close range and smiled.

‘Well, Mr Lorenzo, that was rather nice.’

‘Rather nice?’ His voice was even a bit hoarse. ‘It was incredible.’ He looked genuinely moved.

She leant forward and pecked him on the lips, letting her smile broaden. ‘We’ll have to do it again, then.’

David gave a heartfelt sigh and then glanced forward, reaching for the throttle control to slow the boat to a standstill. Suddenly all she could hear were the screams of seagulls high above and the soft lapping of the wavelets against the rubber sides of the boat. He turned towards her, looking suddenly serious. ‘Listen, Lucy, I need to tell you my side of the story.’

‘What story?’

‘The story of why my wife and I broke up.’

Lucy listened, spellbound, as he launched into his tale. The overriding thought going through her head as he spoke was that this – coupled with that amazing kiss – marked a watershed in their relationship.

As he had told her during their visit to Florence, it was miles away from most of the newspaper accounts.

‘The final break-up was my fault – well, to a great extent – but not for the reasons people have been saying. I was away a lot – that comes with the territory in my occupation – and I assumed