Read It Takes Two (Italian Summer Book 1) Online
Authors: Lily Zante
It Takes Two (Italian Summer Book 1) (24 page)
He dipped his chin. “I understand that. But it was just how you said it. You can be pretty hurtful sometimes.”
“Not sometimes, Carlos, most of the time. Admit it. It’s like Ava says, you’re a saint to have put up with me for as long as you have.”
“Somebody’s got to love you,” he said and kissed her suddenly; planting his closed lips on hers.
Her eyes glassed over and she felt herself smiling through blurred eyes. He stroked her cheek as her eyes brimmed with water and then he reached down and kissed her again. A proper kiss this time where she melted into his mouth and gave herself to him. She had missed this; the feel of him, the smell of him, the very essence of him. He pulled his lips away and she wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him, breathing in his scent and feeling the warm skin of his neck against her forehead.
“Come on,” he said, picking up the baby monitor and grabbing her hand.
“Where?” she asked, frowning.
He said nothing and she followed him out of the pensione.
“Tori?”
“It’s okay, we have the monitor. The door’s locked. Elsa is there, and we are just here.” He led her to the middle of the lawn where in the distance they could see the vineyards all around.
“I love this place. I’d come out here sometimes when Tori and I would get back from the hotel. It’s a world away from my usual hectic life at the restaurant.”
“It must be a huge contrast,” she murmured, loving the way his hand, so big, so warm, felt around hers.
“There’s not a soul around, just me and my thoughts. I figured out what I really wanted.”
“What was that?”
“You and Tori.”
She pressed against him and they stood with their arms clasped around each other’s waists.
“I’d booked a restaurant for us for this evening.”
“Oh?” she looked up at him, scrutinizing his face.
“Nico recommended it to me so I went in and had a look around earlier today. It’s beautiful, simply stunning. I think you’d love it. I reserved a table out on the balcony for us, overlooking all of Verona. I thought I might take you there tonight and win you back.”
“You don’t need to win me back. You already have me.”
“I do, don’t I?”
She nodded.
“Shall we go? I booked a table for nine.”
“We could make it another day,” she suggested. “We’re here until the wedding.”
“Actually, no.”
“No?”
“We could stay longer. I took off the entire month.”
“Oh.”
“So we can stay here a couple of weeks after.”
“I don’t mind.” She said, “Whatever you want.”
“What about that restaurant?” he said, again.
“I had something else in mind.” She couldn’t help but smile, knowing that it had been a while since they’d been together.
“Some other restaurant?”
She raised an eyebrow. “No, no, no. We can go where you suggested tomorrow. But if you’re hungry,” she murmured, unable to take her eyes off his lips, “I could arrange some food for you.” She gave him her best sultry voice.
“Uh-huh.” And it had worked. She could already see that he’d lost the capacity to think, the way his eyes had grown dark and she guessed that the blood from his head had pooled further down below. Suddenly, she couldn’t wait any longer. They had been apart for too long.
“Food at the restaurant or food…anyplace else you want me to put it?”
“Uh-huh,” his lips parted and he stared at her, desire flashing in his eyes.
“It’s been a while, hasn’t it, Carlos?”
“A while?” He was definitely gone. The ability to think clearly had vanished. “Did you have anything in mind?” She licked her lips suggestively and in the next moment he picked her up and flung her over his shoulders, Fred Flintstone style. She squealed with delight as he strode quickly back to the pensione.
** The End **
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Honeymoon Series:
Honeymoon Series Boxed Set
(Books 2, 3 & 4)
Italian Summer Series:
(A spin-off from the Honeymoon Series)
Perfect Match Series:
Perfect Match Boxed Set
(Books 1, 2 & 3)
Tainted Love Series:
(A spin-off from the Perfect Match Series)
Tainted Love Boxed Set
(Books 1, 2 & 3)
The Billionaire’s Love Story:
The Gift, Boxed Set (Books 1, 2 & 3)
Standalone books:
Unexpected Love (Bundle: An Unexpected Gift & Love, Inc)
Excerpt from ‘All That Glitters’
Chapter 1
“You dropped your towel.”
His voice, soft and golden like melted butter, stole into her thoughts, jolting her from her dreamlike state. Andrea, who had been lying on the sun-lounger, letting the sun kiss her bikini-clad body, now opened her eyes and looked up through the brown filter of her sunglasses.
Him again
. She’d noticed him before, she thought, watching him as he stood beside her with a white towel in his hand.
He was gorgeousness personified and so different from the dark haired Italian men she was used to. The man before her was blue-eyed and golden and hotter than lava; she thanked the god of fitness, for she could see that the gym had been particularly good to him.
Blinking, she became vaguely aware that her own towel lay by her feet and she was just about to reply to the handsome stranger when Caprice beat her to it.
“That’s mine,” her friend purred, leaning over Andrea to take the towel from him and no doubt giving the man a good eyeful in her plunging cherry red bikini. Andrea’s eyes narrowed. Caprice, with her long straight hair and luscious body, had the type of figure and full lips that gave men ideas.
The man glanced at her friend and grinned, and Andrea was grateful for the huge Prada shades that shielded her eyes as her gaze swept easily over his chest and arms. He looked like a tower of strength, standing over her with his tall and taut gym-sculpted body. She felt vulnerable lying down in her bikini and propped herself up to a seated position. Her movement attracted his attention and he looked at her, making her feel self-conscious and excited all at once.
“Are you ladies enjoying your stay here?” he asked. His accent was American, she noticed and the more she stared at his electric blue eyes—as blue as the lake which the Villa Costanza overlooked—the more she recalled that she’d seen him yesterday, too.
The pitter-patter of her heart increased and she briefly wondered whether the sun had affected her. She was far too cautious and sensible to believe in insta-love, yet here she was ogling this man as though he was the last of his species.
Her body was reacting to him—even if her mind still sat on the side-lines wondering when to join the game. She tried to think of something to say, so that he would know she had a voice, that she wasn’t mute.
“We are,” said Caprice, wriggling around in her seat. “Someone had a big milestone birthday celebration this weekend.”
“A milestone birthday?” he asked, his eyes twinkling. “A twenty-first?” he asked, all innocent.
“
She
turned thirty,” replied Andrea, nodding her head at Caprice and finally getting a chance to prove that she could talk.
“Thirty is the new twenty,” Caprice declared as she rubbed sun lotion slowly and suggestively over her upper body. Andrea smiled at the man, more out of embarrassment for her friend who had turned the art of applying sun cream into foreplay.
“I agree. That’s quite a milestone you celebrated in style.” With his attention directed at Caprice, Andrea’s eyes darted to his body. Her gaze lowered to his swim shorts which hung dangerously low on his waist. Rivulets of water trickled down his chest and kept her transfixed as she watched them cling to the light dusting of golden hairs across his chest.
He caught her looking and her throat dried up like a prune. She didn’t know where to look.
“Nice meeting you, ladies,” he said, finally. “Happy belated birthday,” he told Caprice before stealing a look in Andrea’s direction. Then he walked away.
She stared at the perfect V-shape of his back. Caprice made lewd, low moans and licked her lips in pure, unashamed admiration as he stood at the side of the pool, getting ready to make a dive. The glittering water was blue and silver as slivers of sunlight fell and danced upon its gently moving surface. He dove in and disappeared, emerging moments later with his arms raised, thick and corded at the biceps, as he swept back his golden hair.
Andrea’s heart galloped as though she’d just sprinted four hundred meters. She lay back on the sun-lounger, her chest rising and falling.
Hot damn.
“Where did
he
come from?” Caprice sounded as though she needed an inhaler even though she didn’t suffer from asthma. “If I was single…,” she whispered, adjusting herself on the lounger. “Oh, look,” she cried, almost spilling out of her bikini. “I have my towel here, see.”
“Maybe someone else dropped theirs,” murmured Andrea.
“Or maybe that was his line,” purred Caprice. “I think he was interested.”
“You’re with Luigi.”
“I can still look
.”
Caprice pouted. “And he’s not here.”
“That makes it alright?” Andrea asked.
“I’m not breaking the law. You can be with one person and still have thoughts for another.”
“That’s called cheating.”
“It’s harmless, Andrea. I love Luigi and I would never do anything silly.” She settled back on the chair.
Andrea welcomed the silence and the feel of the sun as it licked her skin. This weekend had been the tonic she’d needed. The Villa Costanza nestled high above Lake Como and was set in a small wooded peninsula. An enchanting and luxurious hotel, it was tucked away in a quiet corner of Bellagio with only the view of the lake and surrounding greenery around. This magical paradise had enabled her to unwind completely during the long weekend.
It might have explained why her pulse had rocketed the moment she’d set eyes on the golden haired stranger. She didn’t usually notice men, not as easily as her friends Talia and Caprice did. They seemed to have been born with some sort of heat seeking device which locked onto all the hottest guys within a short range.
Yet she’d noticed
him.
“It’s been a great weekend, huh?” Caprice asked.
“It’s been amazing. I so needed this,” Andrea replied, dreamily. “I can’t thank you enough.”
“You are welcome, my darling. I wanted to celebrate with two of my best friends but now I wish I didn’t have to leave so soon. Why didn’t we make it longer?”
Because it would have cost a fortune
, Andrea thought, wishing her friend would lie down and keep quiet for more than a minute.
“Make sure you plan at least a week for your thirtieth birthday celebrations.” Caprice could talk for the world, and Andrea realized that she wasn’t going to get the peace and quiet she desired. She sat up and tied her thick dark curls into a ponytail.
“I was thirty last year,” she said quietly.
“You didn’t invite me!”
“I didn’t do anything.” Andrea opened her bottle of sun screen lotion and rubbed it over her shoulders. “I think I might have had takeout pizza.”
Caprice snorted. “That’s tragic! I hope your thirty-first birthday is more exciting. I hope you’ve found a man by then, at least.”
Andrea’s smile slowly faded and she shook her head. “I don’t think I’m too good in that department.” She’d messed up a few months ago with one of her best friends, Nico Cazale. He was now a reformed man who only had eyes for one woman—a woman who had recently become one of her good friends. Andrea hadn’t shared any of this with Caprice and Talia though.
“You don’t give yourself a chance. You’re always too busy working in that warehouse of yours.”
“I happen to love my business and what I do.”
“A business isn’t going to keep you warm in bed at night. You need someone to share it with. You need to live a little.”
“I’m lousy when it comes to reading men.” Andrea replied and didn’t like the way Caprice nodded her head eagerly.
“Am I that bad?” she asked but Caprice seemed to have dropped out of the conversation completely.
“I think he’s interested,” her friend said, speaking low as though she had no air in her lungs.
Andrea turned to look just as Caprice hissed, “Don’t look now—”
But it was too late; she already had. He’d slipped on a baseball cap and pulled it down low over his forehead as he slid down his recliner. The white wires of his headphones hung down his chest and her eyes once more scanned the full length of his body.
She turned back to Caprice, her insides vibrating like jelly. His sun-lounger was three spaces away. Had he been here before them this morning? Or had he only now picked his spot? It wouldn’t surprise her if he’d picked this spot so that he could take a better look at Caprice, she guessed. Men flocked to her as though she was giving away free money. Andrea had seen it all her life, from their college days onwards.
