In a Storm of Scandal

‘Poppy …?’ Concern roughened the edges of his velvet voice.

Poppy’s eyes lifted. She blinked twice to clear her swimming vision and reminded herself she was a competent twenty-first-century woman, not some wimpy heroine in a Victorian melodrama, and even if she had needed a masculine chest to bury her face in Luca’s was already spoken for.

‘This doesn’t look good, does it?’ she said, directing a ‘give it to me straight I can take it’ look at his dark lean face.

She could hide a lot, but not the fear in her luminous eyes. Gianluca studied the emerald stare directed his way and felt something twist hard in his gut.

‘Do not jump to conclusions,’ he cautioned. ‘You always did have a tendency to be over-emotional.’ And outspoken, sentimental, not to mention extremely stubborn, but most of all Poppy had always been herself more so than any person he had ever met.

‘We all move on, Luca.’ She didn’t bother trying to make the message subtle. ‘But cross my heart I’ll do my level best not to have hysterics,’ she promised. ‘So what next?’

‘Next I dry off.’

‘You’re wet …?’ As Poppy made the belated observation her gaze travelled upwards from his feet. Hard …

the word popped into her head and stayed there; greyhound lean and tough, there was no vestige of anything approaching softness in Luca.

‘Top marks for observation.’

Poppy dragged her eyes to his face. ‘But what I don’t understand … How did you get out here, with the storm …?’ Her voice trailed away as her glance shifted to the mullioned window that was being battered by a shower of freakishly large hailstones.

The ferry wasn’t running and the only person willing to ferry her here from Ullapool had refused to wait a moment after she disembarked, so anxious—with good reason as it turned out—had he been not to get caught out in open sea when the storm hit.

‘I bought a boat.’

Poppy stared. He said it the same way someone might say, ‘I bought a bar of chocolate.’ He obviously didn’t have a clue that he had said anything out of the ordinary.

‘Of course you did.’

There were plus sides to his extravagance: at least they were no longer stranded when the storm abated; at least they had an exit route that did not involve SOS signals or swimming.

‘I can’t believe you made it here in this,’ she mused, watching, her stomach performing helpless flips of appreciation, as he walked long-legged and effortlessly elegant like some jungle cat towards the fire.

‘I did. The boat didn’t.’

Poppy, her thoughts still very much involved with thoughts of his feral grace, was still joining the mental dots when he added, ‘It sank.’

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