Flood Tide (9 page)

“I promised…to your room,” he said, equally clearly.

Reah turned her head away, fast losing her composure. She was so distressed at being unable to outwit Giovanni that she did not notice a figure walk into the marbled foyer.

Ewart was drawn-faced, grim, hardly welcoming, but Reah was relieved to see him. She wrenched herself from Giovanni’s grip and ran to him, her eyes alight.

“Ewart… Ewart, thank goodness. You’re back.”

“You didn’t waste much time,” he said coldly.

“What do you mean? I didn’t know where you’d gone. I was so worried.”

“Obviously,” he interrupted.

“I waited all day.”

“All day?” he repeated ironically. “A whole day? I am touched by the length of your concern.”

Giovanni strolled over, confident of his youth and charm, Reah’s room key dangling from his fingers.

“Darling…” he began, putting both feet right in it with one word. “I have your key.”

“Giovanni…this is my…h-husband,” Reah introduced Ewart awkwardly. Ewart’s eyes narrowed into pools of darkness.

“Darling is coming with me,” said Ewart dangerously. He took the key from Giovanni’s hand. “She has a bill to pay.”

“What do you mean?” Reah demanded. She was the one who had been left all day without an explanation or a message. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“Oh yes, you are,” he said, pulling her close to him. “Your husband, remember? It’s time you settled your debt.”

She looked at the cold anger mixed with contempt in his granite hard eyes, and a panic began to rise in her throat. A sense of desolation swept through her…not her Welsh knight whom she had thought so different from other men, not him too?

A small moan escaped her lips. She knew if Ewart kissed her, she would not be able to resist. The chemistry between them was too strong.

“Please let me go,” she said in a low voice, hating the huskiness which had invaded it. “I don’t want a scene.”

“This is quite mild compared to the scene I feel like making,” he flared. “Do you deny you were taking that hotel Romeo to your room?”

Giovanni was making a discreet retreat. He had no wish to be involved in unpleasantness.

“Of course I deny it,” said Reah. “I was trying to shake him off. But what business is it of yours anyway?” she taunted him, her eyes flashing, hair aflame. “I'm single, a free spirit. I can do exactly what I like. ”

“No, you can’t. While you’re here, you are in my care,” he snapped with an arrogant tilt of his head. “Come with me and don’t argue.”

He turned and walked her firmly in the direction of the lift.

“No, Ewart. Stop it. Don’t make me do this,” she said, struggling. “This is madness.”

“It didn’t take you long to find someone else to buy your supper, did it? Well, I’m tired of waiting. I want my payment now.”

He pushed her into the lift and the doors closed silently. She had never seen him look so angry.

“I’ll pay you back, every penny. If you’ll just wait until I’m back in England…”

“I don’t want your money,” he said harshly. “I make more money than I’ll ever need. And don’t play the little innocent. It’s you I want…you and your damned red hair.”

He unlocked his door and propelled her inside. She stood wretchedly, hardly able to believe that Ewart could be serious. He slammed the door shut and turned the lock on the handle. He switched on a low lamp.

The suite was elegant and luxurious but Reah saw none of it. She saw only Ewart’s blazing eyes and the powerful thrust of his shoulders as he shook off his jacket.

“Take off your clothes,” he commanded.

Reah froze, terror and confusion turning her to ice.

“Take off your dress,” he said coldly. “Or do you want me to tear it off? I will, you know. Then you’ll have nothing to wear when you go back to your room. That could be very embarrassing.”

She began to tremble. This was not Ewart, the man who had kissed her with passion and gentleness in the Cascine gardens, whose lovemaking could be so tender. Had she dreamed that romantic ride?

Button by button, he unfastened his shirt and pulled it out of his waistband. He strolled over to her and tipped back her head.

“Perhaps this’ll warm you up,” he said huskily.

His mouth came down on her lips with a ruthlessness that sent shock waves reeling through her body. Her legs went weak as he pulled her against him. She tried to escape his mouth, turning and twisting, but he pursued her relentlessly, biting her soft flesh with an urgency that made her cry out.

“You liked that, didn’t you?” he whispered. His face was in darkness, a stranger’s face.

“No…no,” said Reah, blinking back her tears. “You’re being cruel and hateful. Please let me go. The joke’s over.”

“Don’t tell me that you don’t want my kisses,” he said. He traced the line of her cheek with his finger, following it with kisses persuasive and caressing. She felt a warmth rising in her veins. His arms closed round her, his hands finding the soft curves of her body with an assurance and mastery that had her traitor body responding to his touch.

“Now take your dress off,” he said again.

She hardly knew what she was doing. She wanted him so much.

This was her special man. She wanted to be loved by him, to belong to him. It was bewildering, the fury and the passion…none of it had any relation to her conception of love. This then was the real Ewart Morgan.

With a small sob, she fumbled with the fastening of the dress and it fell to the floor like a moonbeam. Her hair swung across her face as she stood motionless in her lacy bra and bikini pants. He was looking at her and she could not bear it.

Her breasts were rising and falling rapidly. He did not touch them but she could feel his breath on her soft skin. She ached with a sweet stab of longing to feel his fingers explore the valleys of love.

He tugged lightly at the edge of the lacy bra.

“That’s a very wanton garment,” he said. “Hardly the bra one would expect to find on a school mistress.”

He slid his fingers to the tiny satin bow at the centre; Reah held her breath at the exquisite pleasure. His other hand went to the small of her spine, jerking her so close that his fingers were trapped in the warm hollow between her breasts. A shudder went through Reah’s body. He was discovering the quickly moving swell through the flimsy material; her senses were reeling, common sense had flown, leaving only a reckless urge for more of this ecstatic pleasure.

Ewart heard the low moan but did not kiss her, leaving her longing taut and aching almost unbearably. He knew how to arouse her, to tantalise her senses while holding himself in control. It was a demonstration of his strength and her weakness. It was as if he were mocking her frail body, while she could do nothing but surrender to the surging delight.

She could not escape while his hands played such sensitive music. She was trapped.

Suddenly he dropped his head, taking her mouth with a thirst that would have sent her staggering if his hold had not been so unyielding. Her mind swam in a misty sea of images. There were stars, bright lights, swirling darkness. The muskiness of his skin was primitive. The shattering intimacy of his invading tongue left her breathless and shocked.

There had been nothing in her life before compared with this. All her deepest instincts responded to her growing desire. She wanted this man. He was her fate.

“To bed,” he said. His voice was like a whiplash.

She was quite unable to move. She thought she saw a different expression, fleeting and unfathomable, cross his face, but it was quickly replaced by a mask. He slipped an arm under her knees and jerked her across him like a doll, carrying her across to the bed. She fell onto it, gasping, but before she could move or regain her breath, the hard crushing weight of Ewart’s body forced her back into its softness.

She began to weep as his kisses deepened, forcing her body to respond with slow shivers. His weight was forcing her legs to part, crushing her ribs, her arms flung outspread like a ritual sacrifice.

Suddenly the humiliation of this lovemaking rushed through her with all the force of a torrent. She gathered strength and caught him off guard with a quick, violent catapult movement of her knees. He rolled over, not in pain but definitely taken by surprise.

“No, I won’t give in to you this way,” she cried, wrenching the sheet up and over her bare skin.

Anger flared through her. “How dare you use me to satisfy some animal instinct, to pay me back in some way. I’m a person, a real person and I won’t be treated like this, not by you or by anyone!”

She gathered the sheet round her like an outraged Buddha, hardly knowing what she was saying or doing.

“I don’t care who you are or how famous you may be. You’ve no right to force anyone or demand anything. You’re no better than those two hooligans in the street!”

She was shaking with righteous fury. She scrambled off the bed, pulling the sheet after her, her fingers trembling as she draped it into a toga. She snatched her key from the side table.

“My father would have beaten the living daylights out of you,” she raged, her eyes spitting fire. “You’re just a brute, Ewart Morgan. No better than the mud and slime that flooded this city.”

Ewart was watching her from the bed. Suddenly he stretched out and lay back, clasping his hands behind his head.

“All right, go,” he said casually. “I didn’t really want you anyway.”

Chapter Six

She was hurt and angry, scrubbing herself nearly raw in the bath. A sense of desolation swept through her slim body. Yesterday’s happiness had been nothing more than a moment out of time, nothing to do with the real world.

At last Reah did get to sleep, curled up like a kitten; her bruised and disturbed emotions tossed her straight into the old terror dream of drowning. Now that she knew the identity of the man in her nightmare, it was even more horrific. She saw Ewart fighting against the waves that threatened to pull him under, his face disappearing with a startled look beneath the towering seas.

She struggled to surface from the dream, gasping, her face streaming with perspiration, reliving the feeling of suffocation. She ached inwardly for all that had happened in these recent months. Her father’s death, the cruel and senseless way Ewart Morgan had hounded her through her solicitor, the strange and exciting chemistry between them, and now to have been used by him so wantonly. She did not know which hurt the most.

Early the next morning, she threw her belongings into her case. After last night she could not possibly stay.

She felt the need to make some symbolic gesture. A note did not seem appropriate.

She laid out the moonlight dress on the bed and tore a sheet from her sketch pad and pinned it carefully to the dress. It was one of her sketches of the head of David, that handsome face with the hooded, troubled eyes, the frown, the concentration, the tight clusters of stone curls.

She was trying to say that the treasures of Florence were far more important than a romp in bed. If Ewart did not get the message, then it did not matter.

Reah walked confidently through the streets of Florence. She only needed a room for a few nights, and she had all day to find one herself.

This time she was lucky at her third call. The plump, black-frocked
signora
had a cancellation and was prepared to let the room to Reah for the remainder of the week.

Reah’s bedroom was little more than a cupboard, but she felt immediately at home. The rooms in her cottage were mostly small.

Reah resolved to put Ewart firmly out of mind. She would forget last night and concentrate on sketching. She would build up her portfolio and plan a course for her students.

She had not drawn the Ponte Vecchio, the ancient 14th-century bridge—the only one the Germans did not blow up in 1944.

The bridge was a fascinating jumble of medieval architecture, stone compartments along the crenellated walls overhanging the river, impossible upper floors leaning out at crazy angles.

It was Walt Disney long before Walt Disney.

Reah was good at buildings. She had a keen eye for perspective and composition, and her own particular style for conveying the texture of stone or brickwork.

She settled herself onto a step beneath a statue, her pad open on her knees.

“
La bella signora, buon giorno
.” The compliment was slightly hesitant. Giovanni was looking at her shorn jeans and fringed shirt, not knowing what to make of them. Rich women had strange whims, and to look like a street urchin, even an adorable street urchin, could be one of them.

“Hello, Giovanni,” said Reah. She had forgotten he had a goldsmith’s shop on the bridge.

“I went to your hotel this morning,” said Giovanni, getting straight to the point. “They said you moved out.”

“That’s right. I didn’t feel like paying the bill.”

Giovanni looked bewildered. “You have left your husband?”

“He wasn’t my husband.”

“Ah …” he nodded knowingly, pursing his lips.

“I made him up.”

Giovanni looked blank. Ewart had seemed pretty substantial to him.