IT WAS ALL over bar the shouting.
All tasks had been completed and the rest of the twenty-four-hour period after the lunch break had been jam packed with challenges and excitement.
The bus-crash scenario where they’d needed to triage so many injured people, including the woman who was trapped and losing a dangerous amount of blood. They’d dealt with a cardiac arrest and a young man having a stroke, whose acting had been superb. Even as Georgia had been asking her initial questions, his speech had become slurred and his face had started to droop on one side. The impressively set up scenario of a mass shooting incident in the last couple of hours had been responsible for finally using up any remaining ounce of her energy.
Skipping breakfast, she and Kate had gone to their room to grab a few hours’ sleep but it hadn’t been enough. When the alarm sounded to remind them it was time to go to the competition debrief, Georgia couldn’t drag herself out of bed.
‘You go,’ she mumbled. ‘Tell me all about it later.’
The extra sleep had been exactly what she’d needed. By the time the competitors gathered in the town square for the prize-giving ceremony, Georgia was refreshed and ready for anything. Standing in the crowd beside Matteo was adding considerably to the anticipation. More than once, she found her gaze caught by his as she glanced up and their eye contact was a conversation all in itself.
A reminder of a conversation anyway.
‘I intend to win.’
‘So do I.’
‘Do you always get what you want, Georgie?’
‘Not always...’
But her heart skipped a beat as the announcement became imminent for their section of the competition.
‘And the winner is...Scotland...’
There was a split second as Georgia sucked in an astonished breath where she was still locked in a moment of that silent communication with Matteo and she saw something change in that gaze.
He was impressed with her.
More than that. He had to be disappointed that he and Luke hadn’t won but she could swear he actually looked proud of her and, in that instant, that meant more than anything else could have.
She wanted to be the person that this man was proud of.
Because it made her feel as if she was a better person than she’d ever been before.
But then her lungs were full of air, and happiness laced with her own pride tipped into something that had to be let out, and Georgia emitted a rather unprofessional squeal of delight, threw her arms around Kate and squeezed her best friend as hard as she could.
Even then, in that moment of pure joy, she was aware of a longing to feel Matteo’s arms around her in a hug like this but there was no time for that. They had to weave their way through the sea of people and applause, to make their way to the stage and receive their trophy. The pace, and the excitement, didn’t stop there either.
After the prize-giving came the convoy that was the highlight of this ceremony, where every ambulance and Jeep or makeshift emergency response vehicle put their lights and sirens on and drove through all the surrounding villages, throwing toys and sweets to the crowds of children lining the roads to enjoy the spectacle.
Georgia recognised the cute little boy from the schoolroom scenario and leaned further out of the window as they sped past to make sure her gifts landed as close as possible to his outstretched hands. When he caught the soft toy bear in a kilt that had been on the front of their car, amidst a shower of boiled sweets in the colours of the Scottish flag, she let out a whoop of satisfaction.
Matteo, who was driving, turned his head with a frown of disapproval at the danger she was putting herself in, but he was laughing at the same time.
He knew exactly how much pleasure she was getting by pushing both the limits of safety and the rules for this traditional convoy that, astonishingly, she’d just had to remind Kate of—no alcohol, no speeding and no leaning out of vehicles. It seemed that Kate was a little drunk on adventure, possibly for the first time in her life, but Georgia knew that Matteo was as addicted to this kind of adrenaline rush as she was.
Sharing that kind of personality trait would have given her an instant connection with anyone but there was more to it as far as Matteo was concerned. Not that she wanted to think about that right now. She just wanted to enjoy the delicious sound of his laughter. And his voice with that fabulous accent. And the fact that she could make the most of it all for the next few hours as all the competitors and their supporters, the officials and army of volunteers for this competition were treated to an evening of food and wine and dancing.
It was Matteo who brought a chilled bottle of champagne to the table that Georgia and Kate were sitting at, having loaded plates with offerings from one of the many barbecues being used. The long, rustic table was crowded with their new friends from places like New Zealand and Croatia and there was already a generous supply of drinks available, but that bottle of champagne instantly became the star.
Like Matteo...
He sat opposite Georgia and winked at her. ‘I hadn’t forgotten,’ he said softly. ‘You have a taste for champagne, yes?’
‘Mmm...’
So this offering was a gift just for her, because he’d remembered what she liked?
Something inside Georgia was melting but she tried very hard to stop the process. Nobody was this perfect—it just wasn’t humanly possible.
‘So who thinks they’ll do this again?’ Luke asked after Matteo handed her a brimming plastic cup and filled one for himself.
‘Me,’ she responded instantly.
‘Me,’ Matteo said at exactly the same moment.
Grinning, they both raised their cups and touched them together in a toast. Their gazes touched at the same time and that melting process suddenly accelerated.
The sense of connection that was there between them was mind-blowing. It was way more than a shared love of adventure. More than anything that could be encompassed by mere physical attraction. For a heartbeat, and then another, it seemed that she and Matteo were in a space that nobody but the two of them could ever inhabit.
A dangerous space. The kind of fantasy planet that came into being when you fell head over heels in love with someone. An orbit that could only last until it got annihilated by an inevitable meteorite of discovering how wrong you’d been.
But...maybe it was possible to visit that planet.
Just for a little while. A few hours?
The longing to do that was overpowering.
This had nothing to do with that crazy plan. This was simply the force of attraction for someone who had unexpectedly stepped into her life—and who would step out of it again very soon.
Someone with whom she felt a connection like nothing she had ever experienced before.
What would it be like to get even closer to this irresistible man?
Dave, the New Zealander, was saying something about how expensive it would be for them to come back to do the competition again but Georgia wasn’t listening.
The prospect of getting really close to Matteo was both the most exhilarating thing ever and a bit scary. Georgia was playing with fire here, and she knew it.
At least the reminder that there were other people around them forced her to break the eye contact with Matteo but she knew the damage—if that’s what it was—had already been done.
He was as aware of her as she was of him for the rest of that dinner and she knew he was watching her when she dragged Kate onto the dance floor when the lights dimmed and the live band launched into some rock and roll. It was a general invitation for everybody to start letting their hair down and enjoy themselves. It was also a private invitation for Matteo to cut in and claim her as a dance partner.
It took only a minute or two and there it was. An outstretched hand and a smile that melted her heart all over again.
The fact that they were surrounded by other people and the noise level was deafening only seemed to enhance the effect of his skin touching hers for the first time.
It was only his fingers catching hers, sending her into a twirl that took her away from Kate and towards a less densely populated part of the dance floor, but Georgia could feel the power of that touch sending a current into every cell of her body.
Circuits were being fried so that she couldn’t seem to catch a coherent thought. Physical sensations, emotions, words—even the sounds, scents and colours around her were blurring into something that was too big to comprehend, let alone analyse. There were memories woven into whatever was happening, too. And desires.
Everything she had ever wanted, or could want, appeared to be within reach every time she was in contact with this man’s skin. The bass notes of the music they were dancing to were a drumbeat, urging her towards...something.
Towards this... The look in Matteo’s eyes when he tugged her off the dance floor and into a quieter corner past the doors.
As he bent his head to kiss her for the very first time...
If her brain was sending any warning that going any further could be risky, it was nothing more than a barely heard whisper amidst a roaring cacophony of desire. So easy to dismiss because it was insignificant. It didn’t matter. Nothing else mattered.
Nothing else even existed...
* * *
Dancing with Georgia was like playing with light.
With fire...
The sparkle in her eyes and the shards of gold in her hair as those curls bounced and swung through shadows and into the gleam of the spotlights over the dance floor.
The way his skin burned whenever it touched hers.
He had never wanted a woman as much as he wanted Georgia Bennett right now.
He had to kiss her.
Nothing more, he warned himself as he led her away from the dance floor. This was too special to ruin by moving too fast. This was the beginning of something that made this first night together far too important to enjoy as nothing more than a casual sexual encounter.
But he had to kiss her. To find out whether the touch of her lips—the taste of her—could actually be as incredible as he believed it could be.
And, Dio mio, it was even more than he had believed was possible.
He had found the woman of his dreams. Gorgeous and clever enough to keep him on his toes. Someone with a passion for the same things in life. A body that was perfect, with just the right curves in all the right places. A combination that coalesced into a response to his own that was taking him somewhere he’d never been before.
In love...
Head-over-heels, crazily in love...
‘Ti desidero,’ he murmured, when he could finally lift his lips from hers enough to form any words. ‘Così tanto.’
It was safe to say how much he wanted her, wasn’t it? She hadn’t given any hint that she could understand his native language.
But maybe the language of love was universal and it was the tone that said it all, because Georgia’s eyes were huge in this dark corner and they were telling him that she knew exactly what he was saying.
‘Me, too,’ she whispered.
He could feel the way she drew in a quick breath because his hands were still on her ribcage, his hands cradling the delicious weight of her breasts.
She used that breath to form some more words. ‘My room or yours?’
For a heartbeat, Matteo froze, and that in itself was shocking. At any point in his life before this, he wouldn’t have hesitated in accepting such an invitation from a beautiful woman. Sex was one of life’s greatest pleasures after all.
But this was different.
Georgia was different.
And this...connection between them was so new. So beautiful but also fragile.
What if she thought he was only interested in the sex? That it meant nothing more than that?
Or what if he rejected the offer and she disappeared because she thought he wasn’t interested?
He couldn’t think straight. And then he saw the tip of Georgia’s tongue appear and trace the outline of her bottom lip.
He could barely muster any words in Italian, let alone English.
‘I haven’t got... I mean it might not be...safe...’
He could feel the movement of her body between his hands as she pressed herself closer. She lifted her face, inviting him to kiss her again.
‘It’s safe,’ she said softly, her eyelids lowering to shutter her gaze. ‘I promise.’
A promise was a vow and Matteo let his eyes drift shut as he sank into the astonishing way her lips responded to his. The touch of her tongue sealed his fate. He trusted her.
How could he not trust the woman he knew he was destined to marry?
* * *
The grand, if half-baked, plan of finding someone suitable to father her child had not even been a consideration when Georgia had made that promise to Matteo that this was safe.
The fact that she’d lied to him by inferring that she was on the Pill or in a safe part of her cycle had also been dismissed as unimportant as she allowed herself to be swept away on this tidal wave of pure desire.
Okay, maybe that whisper of warning had returned to try and sneak past the breath-stealing anticipation as she led Matteo to her bedroom in the accommodation block but it had been a short walk and all it had needed to send any doubts into oblivion had been the look in Matteo’s eyes and the touch of his fingers as he began to unbutton her shirt. Her knees almost buckled as he bent his head to kiss the curve of her breasts just before he undid the clasp of her bra and somehow tipping her head back in ecstasy had the same effect on the rest of her body and there they were—squashed onto the narrow confines of her single bed.
The size of that bed made it so much harder to shed the rest of their clothing but it didn’t seem to matter. Any awkwardness dissolved under low peals of laughter, of pausing to share another passionate kiss. Of moving to make things easier that only brought new areas of their skin into contact. The only light came from the moon beyond an unshaded window but Georgia didn’t need to use her eyes to discover that Matteo’s body was as perfect as she had suspected. She only needed her fingers and her lips and sometimes her tongue to explore the planes of hard muscle, the soft fur of masculine hair and the exquisitely tender skin in secret places.
She only needed her own skin to experience the power in his hands but it was her heart that registered the astonishing gentleness with which that power was being harnessed.
Georgia had never been made love to like this. Carried to a place of such a mind-blowing release that it was inevitable that the roller-coaster would dip in its aftermath. Even so, it was a bit of a shock to find it so hard to swallow past a painful constriction in her throat as she lay in Matteo’s arms, feeling the thump of his heartbeat finally returning to a normal level.
If she had been a crying type—which she certainly wasn’t—she would have tears trickling down her face by now, wouldn’t she?
It was a shock, too, to realise how hard it was going to be to walk away from this man.
She’d just given Matteo more than her body. Right now, her brain was fighting to retrieve her heart.
‘I want to see you again,’ Matteo murmured. ‘Soon...’
Georgia turned her head so that she couldn’t get undone by those eyes. She wanted to see him again soon as well. So much that it scared her.
‘You live in Italy,’ she reminded him. ‘Scotland is a long way away.’
‘Nessun problema.’ He was smiling. ‘I can find a way. I’m ready for new adventures. Scotland must be a very exciting place to work on rescue helicopters, yes? Lots of mountain work?’
Oh...help... How amazing would that be? To have Matteo living and working in Scotland? To be with him again, like this...
Again and again. To forge a relationship that could last the rest of their lives?
She’d done it again, hadn’t she? Fallen in love at the drop of a hat and now she was dreaming of that little church and the house with a picket fence and a whole tribe of adorable children.
She couldn’t do this.
She’d promised herself she would never be stupid enough to do this again. And she’d meant it.
The sliver of fear already in existence gathered force and shivered its way down her spine. There was a hint of anger there as well, that she’d allowed herself to let things go this far.
Not just the falling-in-love kind of far. She’d taken a huge risk in having unprotected sex.
Using Matteo as a sperm donor hadn’t even crossed her mind when she had been swept away by this overwhelming chemistry. When she’d told him it was safe, it had been because she had somehow convinced herself that she was in a safe part of her cycle.
She had to be, because she hadn’t been able to fight a desire like nothing she’d ever experienced before.
However long the odds were, however, the possibility was there. And if she hadn’t won that spin of the pregnancy roulette wheel, there would be consequences she didn’t want to have to think about.
What she could think about were the consequences of imagining that this initial head-rush of falling in love could last and become something permanent and trustworthy.
She knew how unlikely that was.
She knew how gutting it was when the dreams crashed and burned.
Georgia had just had one perfect night. The best thing she could do would be to keep it like that. Bottle it into a memory that would never get tarnished.
‘I can’t do that,’ she heard herself whisper, her words strained with the effort of releasing them.
She felt the subtle shift of Matteo’s body. The birth of a tension that encompassed bewilderment and something else. Something darker.
‘Why not? I... I thought we had something special here, cara.’
‘We do.’ There was a gap between them now but that couldn’t entirely explain the chill she could feel. ‘But that’s just it. This is here. Anywhere else would be...impossible.’
She had to meet the intense gaze she could feel on her face. Even in this dim light she could see the expression in those dark eyes.
She was hurting him and she hated herself for that.
Enough that she could change her mind and break her vow? Take the risk that her heart was insisting would be worth it this time?
She actually parted her lips to tell him that but she didn’t get the chance to speak.
Matteo was rolling away from her. Getting to his feet and starting to gather his clothes.
‘So this was just a one-night stand for you?’ He had dragged on his underwear and now his trousers.
The slip in his excellent English was poignant enough to make Georgia catch her bottom lip with her teeth. To generate the prickle that warned of tears she would never allow to fall.
Matteo didn’t bother doing up his belt. He was pushing his arms through the sleeves of his shirt with jerky movements.
‘There’s someone else, isn’t there?’ He sounded angry now. ‘Someone in Scotland? You’re cheating on someone?’
Oh, how was it possible for one word to convey such ultimate disgust?
Georgia closed her eyes.
She remembered the conversation over drinks that first night. When Kate had been shocked to discover not only that Luke was no longer married but that his best friend had never known his ex-wife’s name and only referred to her as ‘the cheating cow’?
She could hear Matteo’s words echoing in the back of her mind.
‘If someone cheated on me or lied to me like that, I would never let her name pass my lips again...’
This was it. The easy way out. No further excuses would have to be found and Matteo’s attitude to both cheating and lying would ensure that he didn’t try to contact her again. He believed he’d been used for no more than a bit of fun. Worse, fun at someone else’s expense. Someone who would possibly be devastated if they found out.
She knew that Matteo had been aware of the same level of connection she’d discovered with him so she couldn’t blame him for being so angry. If the situation were reversed she would feel exactly the same way.
Getting her next word out was going to be the hardest thing she’d ever done.
She couldn’t do it, in fact. All she could manage was a single nod of her head and that felt like an acknowledgement of how justified Matteo was to be reacting like this but, of course, it was interpreted as a confirmation of his accusation that she was cheating on a boyfriend back home.
And, maybe, the sane corner of Georgia’s brain had intended it to be taken that way.
As she closed her eyes, she saw Matteo swoop on his shoes and socks but she knew he hadn’t bothered to put them on.
Because she heard the door of her room slam shut only seconds later.