Sophie immediately tensed, breathed in deeply and pulled open the door.
She had put on a navy-blue button-down dress with a pattern of tiny white flowers and cap sleeves. It was figure-hugging to the waist and then flared to just above the knee. And she had left her hair loose, for once, a tangle of curls that reached almost to her waist.
Nothing could have prepared Niccolo for the assault to his senses brought on by the sight of her. He sucked in a sharp, shaky breath and for a few seconds his mind went completely blank.
He had such a sudden, powerful urge to reach out and touch this sweetly forbidden fruit that he shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his loose grey linen trousers.
‘You’re ready,’ he said gruffly. ‘Most women I’ve met find it impossible to get their act together in under two hours.’
‘And even more women would be insulted at that sweeping generalisation.’ Sophie half turned to gather a small string bag then spun round to see him grinning as he backed towards the door to nudge it open with his shoulder before stepping aside to let her precede him out.
‘None of the ones I’ve ever dated.’ He was still grinning, his dark eyes sliding appreciatively over her as she looked ahead, chin tilted, mouth pursed in righteous indignation. He wanted nothing more than to kiss it back into a smile.
He gave up trying to fight an urge that felt too powerful for him. Sometimes, he thought, it might actually be a good thing to release some of that rigidly held self-control which defined his behaviour.
It had certainly worked when it came to Annalise, he now thought. Hadn’t it? He’d never been so relaxed around his daughter before. He’d stopped being the father whose job it was to provide and protect and allowed himself to be the father who also had fun. Or at least he was getting there.
Sophie muttered something but he didn’t quite catch it.
‘What?’
She followed as he led them through the yacht and the myriad nooks and crannies for sitting and relaxing and socialising and eating, all a marvel of sophisticated leather and glass and metal combinations interspersed with rugs and expensive artefacts.
‘Imeantthat I’d bet every one of those women you dated could get ready in under fifteen minutes if they had to,’ Sophie said tartly.
‘Then why do I always end up looking at my watch whenever I arrange to meet them somewhere?’
‘I hear that nothing beats a fashionably late entrance.’
‘Do you use that gimmick when it comes to impressing a man?’
Instead of her hackles rising, and maybe it was the effects of a day spent lazing in the sun by a pool with someone waiting on her hand and foot, but she couldn’t get annoyed. She said on a groan, ‘Are you about to invade my private life again?’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Niccolo murmured.
‘Wouldn’t you?’ she returned drily, breath hitching in her throat as she glanced across at him.
‘You’ve already warned me off asking questions you don’t want to answer—’
‘And you often obey when people warn you not to do something? You never,everjust ignore them and power ahead regardless?’
‘I’m very much liking this new-style Sophie,’ Niccolo said in a low, amused voice which managed to be serious enough for Sophie to feel a tingle of delicious danger thread through her. ‘Can I see a bit more of her? She’s a lot more intriguing than the one who’s on guard all the time.’
Sophie became aware of the low murmur of voices ahead of them, but strangely she wished they could carry on talking. His sexy drawl was sending pleasurable shivers through her and she was sick of being on the defensive around him.
‘I’m on guard for a reason,’ Sophie murmured, half to herself, thinking about Scott and the way she had walked through a door she should never, ever have walked through because, for a moment in time, she had been so vulnerable after her parents’ death.
‘Tell me...’
But it was the wrong time and the wrong place, Niccolo knew, for this conversation and it was one he would return to.
She intrigued him and he had given up trying to either analyse or justify his reactions.
Ahead of them, duty called. This was what he was about. Duty and work first. This was what he had spent his entire adult life striving for and his entire teenage life aiming to achieve...financial security on such a scale that he became untouchable.
For once, duty felt onerous, but for the next three hours he complied, even though his eyes kept straying and his thoughts kept playing around with all sorts of contraband scenarios.
She circulated with grace and ease, comfortable chatting to whomever she happened to be with. No one would ever guess that this was a woman who had been through a year and a half of trauma and was only on this yacht at all because circumstances had forced her hand, because she had needed the money on offer.