Chapter Five
Infuriatingly, at the precise moment I decided to stop avoiding Ryan, he inconveniently disappeared. I spent the night sitting on my balcony, waiting for another of Stefano’s cars to make the journey up from the town, but for this one to have Ryan in it. I eventually fell asleep, my head resting on the balustrade. When I staggered down to breakfast the next morning, the imprint of the balustrade still on my cheek, the housekeeper assured me Ryan had returned at some time during the night, because his suitcase was now neatly packed and waiting in the hall, but that he’d promptly gone out again.
“Signor March is not staying long this time,” she said, giving me a dark look. “He is not happy.”
Even the staff were now ganging up on me.
I tried not to look as though I was reading the luggage label upside down.
“Is he going back to the States?”
“Tonight he catches a plane to Rome.”
Wherever he was headed, I’d never see him again – and it was entirely my own fault.
I spent the morning hoping not to be too obvious about hanging around the entrance hall, but by mid-afternoon Ryan still had not reappeared and both his and Luca’s suitcases had gone. Feeling thoroughly miserable, I changed into my bikini and made my way outside to the pool.
On the way I passed Stefano heading inside for his afternoon nap. “Don’t sit under the lemon tree,” he told me. “It is a true Sorrento lemon. Huge. If one fell out of the tree it could kill you.”
Killer lemons? He had to be kidding!
I walked across the terrace and into the garden. Although there were palm trees surrounding the pool, they didn’t give as much shade as the lemon tree. I stood beneath it and looked up. Considering it had been planted in pride of place, it appeared a bit sorry for itself. Some of the leaves had died and there were not many lemons growing on it.
Deciding to risk it, I draped my pink beach towel over one of the sunloungers and dragged it beneath the tree. I arranged the sunlounger so I would have my back to the villa and a beautiful view across the bay of Naples, towards the lavender smudge that was Vesuvius.
It was so peaceful I could hear the bees buzzing around the flower pots and, after a few more minutes, a little lizard ran out across the paving stones. I gave up trying to read my book and instead lay back on the sunlounger, staring up through the foliage of the lemon tree. There was a spectacular contrast between the emerald green of the leaves, the vivid blue sky and the yellow lemons. I remembered the brightly-coloured pottery I’d seen for sale in all the gift shops. The colours were exactly the same.
And those lemons truly were huge. Their weight pulled right down on the branches. I wondered whether I should move away and sit beneath one of the palm trees instead, but the heat was making me feel indolent. Before I knew it, I was asleep.
I was woken, sometime later, by a gentle thud. When I opened my eyes the first thing I saw was one very large lemon, rocking gently on the paving slab beside me. It seemed Stefano was right about his killer lemons!
Well, maybe it wouldn’t have killed me, but it would certainly have given me a nasty headache. I glanced at my watch. It was 4.00 pm. I really ought to go and pack. This time tomorrow, I would be back in rainy old England and never see Ryan again, unless it was on the cover of one of those celebrity magazines. And, what was worse, I totally deserved it.
I rolled over, with the intention of getting up, only to see Ryan on the neighbouring sunlounger, fast asleep.
Desire twisted my stomach. He was stretched out, his arms above his head, his tawny skin glistening in the sunlight. My gaze slid further down, following the ridges of his stomach muscles and the faint dusting of golden hair disappearing into the waistband of his shorts. I sighed; although to be honest, it might have been more of a moan.
It was then I saw the inky black lettering curling over his right hip, emerging from the top of his shorts. If he had not been stretched out like that, I’d never have seen it.
So that was the famous tattoo …
I couldn’t resist it. Slowly, ever so slowly, I reached out, took a slice of the material between my fingers and gently tugged, pulling his shorts down, millimetre by millimetre, until I could see the first letter.
Which was ‘M’.
My name began with ‘M’!
I gave the shorts another gentle tug, revealing the next letter, but it was written in such tiny script I could hardly make it out. Was that an ‘a’?”
A hand shot out and grabbed my wrist.
“Uh uh,” said Ryan, his brown eyes crinkled with amusement. “No free samples.”
I shrieked and fell off the sunlounger, landing right onto Ryan’s stomach. Instinctively he tensed those beautiful muscles – but not quickly enough. The grin turned into a grimace.
“It serves you right,” I said, albeit breathlessly.
Ryan was still grimacing. “Apology accepted,” he said. At least he hadn’t lost his sense of humour.
As I was now sprawled inelegantly across him, I quickly sat up. “I thought you were asleep. You made me jump.”
“You were about to remove my shorts!” he countered.
“I was not!”
“You were. You wanted to see my tattoo.”
“Not in the slightest.”
We both knew I was lying.
“You only have to ask … ” he said, and now he was smiling so broadly his teeth gleamed white against his tan. He slid his thumb into the top of his shorts. “Say ‘please’ … ”
“Isn’t that a rather girly place to have a tattoo?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he admitted.
“After you’d consumed an entire hotel mini bar?”
“Champagne. I was at the Grammys, remember?”
“You sent me a text saying you had a big surprise for me, and the next morning the tabloids were full of photos of you with Destiny Swan. Bloody stupid name … ”
I broke off, well aware I sounded bitter, and then I realised what I’d said. Destiny – whose name began with a ‘D’ …
“Whose name is it?” The words were out before I could stop myself.
“You didn’t get to see?” Now he was definitely laughing at me.
I scowled. “No.”
“Too bad,” he said, flipping his thumb out of his shorts. “Better luck next time.” He swung his legs off the sunlounger and strode towards the pool changing rooms, leaving me sitting beneath the lemon tree feeling distinctly sour.
I picked up the fallen lemon, tempted to hurl it after him, or at the very least into the pool. But then I’d have to fish it out again, which would mean getting wet. If I got wet, I’d have to shower and change before heading back into the villa. If I dripped pool water up the stairs, I’d be in severe trouble with Stefano’s housekeeper, who didn’t seem to like me very much anyway. But I could hardly go into the pool changing rooms. Not with Ryan already in there.
Possibly naked.
Why was I grinning?
I glanced back at the villa. It was Sunday afternoon and all the upstairs shutters were closed. Stefano would be snoozing, Gina was visiting a friend and I had a pretty good idea what Luca and Portia were doing behind the shutters of his room.
I scooped up my towel and sauntered over to the changing rooms. The door wasn’t locked; it wasn’t even closed properly. It was practically an invitation.
I pushed the door open.
Ryan was standing in the shower with his back to me, stark naked, shampooing his hair. Unable to move, I watched him rinse the soap from his hair, and then he reached out and switched off the shower.
“Perhaps you should close the door?” he said.
Damn! He’d known I was there all the time!
“I surrender,” he said, turning round and holding up his hands. “You can look if you want.”
He meant his tattoo, obviously, but I did try to maintain eye contact – for all of five seconds. But if you were faced with six feet worth o
f gorgeous blond rock star, what would you do?
My gaze dropped.
And he chuckled – blast him!
Abruptly I slapped my hand over my eyes and threw him my towel. “Here, take this.”
“Thank you, sweetheart,” he said.
I gave him a few more seconds to be on the safe side, and then peered between my fingers. Even with that ridiculous pink towel half falling off his hips, he was breathtaking.
“Should I be worried,” he began, “that you’re looking at me in exactly the same way that you were looking at that ice cream last night?”
“I am not!”
He smirked. Then accidently-on-purpose let the towel slip an inch.
“Oh go on,” he sighed, in feigned martyrdom. “You know you want to.”
Curiosity got the better of me. I moved closer.
It turned out he only had the one tattoo, located low on his right hip. It had been inked in a curling black script, making it hard to read.
“Well?” Strangely, he didn’t sound so confident now.
“It’s very small,” I grumbled. “I can hardly see it.”
“Please tell me you’re still talking about the tattoo!”
Now it was my turn to grin. “Why is it so small?”
“Because they’re bloody painful!”
“Luca has them all over his arms,” I pointed out.
“Luca has the skin of a rhinoceros.”
The last time I had been close to Luca’s bare skin, it had appeared to be the exact opposite – smooth, golden and scented of lemons. Although maybe this was not the time to mention it!
I tilted my head sideways. There was the ‘M’, followed by ‘a’, and then ‘r’, and then another ‘r’ –
Abruptly I stood up.
As Ryan had been peering down, I almost cracked the top of my head on his chin. He put out his hands to steady me.
“Marry me, Megan?” I said in disbelief. Talk about an indecent proposal!
“Yes,” he said. “Um, that is, I’m supposed to say ‘Marry me, Megan’, and you’re supposed to say ‘yes’.”
“But why?”
“Why do you think? Because I loved you – love you,” he quickly amended. “I still do. I’m making a right mess of this, aren’t I? I’d wanted to ask you to marry me for weeks, but I was stuck in America and I didn’t want to do it over Skype. So I got it into my head that I should make this grand gesture – not helped by getting completely rat-arsed at the Grammys, I admit.”
Maybe I ought to offer him a get-out clause, in case he’d changed his mind. “Removing tattoos can be as painful as having them done in the first place – ”
“Never,” he said, quite fiercely. “Even if you say ‘no’, I’d never – ”
I couldn’t help myself. I took that one remaining step to close the gap between us, flung my arms around his neck and kissed him. Immediately he was kissing me back – hard, hot and sweet.
“Come with me to Rome,” he said, sometime later. “Please? I don’t want to be parted from you again. Not with your overactive writer’s imagination. You’d have me married to the Pope by Wednesday.”
“Yes, I’ll marry you,” I said, curling my fingers into his blond hair and reaching up to kiss him again. “If you’ll still have me! And yes, I’ll come with you to Rome. But first – ”
And that was when I made an indecent proposal of my own.
THE END
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