Amelia’s spoon clanked against her gelato bowl. “Yes.”
“I’m good with my hands.”
She inhaled deeply through her nose and exhaled again with exaggerated patience. “I know.”
“And even better with my—”
“I know,” she interrupted. A flush flagged her cheeks, and her hazel gaze skidded away from their romantic alcove.
The servers had set up the table in the shade of one of the tents tucked beneath trees and then discreetly departed, exactly as Toby had requested. A breeze stirred the gauzy drapes and strands of Amelia’s drying hair.
His taste buds had gone on strike, but not because of his concussion. He’d been too busy thinking about her slender figure beneath that bathing suit and debating how he’d get her nak*d without using his hands.
He deliberately rubbed his bare feet against hers again beneath the linen tablecloth just because he liked hearing her breath hitch and watching the color rise under her skin. Unless memory had failed him—and he hoped it had—Amelia was easily the most responsive lover he’d ever had. Instead of little hidden pockets of pleasure, her entire body had been one contiguous erogenous zone. No matter where he’d touched, she’d responded. He wanted her to again.
He dragged his big toe along her instep. She abruptly jerked her feet away and shoved back her chair, but the tightening of her n**ples rewarded him.
He didn’t doubt he could get her back in the sack with a little effort. Probably within the half hour if he used all his tricks. But he didn’t want to have to chase her again tomorrow. This time he wanted to get her into his bed and keep her there until he was ready to let her go. That meant revising his plan, taking it slow and steady instead of pedal to the metal.
She’d be a delicious distraction from what he couldn’t have, a race he could win and a hunger he could satisfy. God knows he needed a distraction from being away from the track and HRI.
“Toby, I have things to do today. What’s my penalty?”
“I haven’t decided yet. What are your plans for this afternoon?”
“Nothing you’d be interested in.”
“Like?”
“Tourist stuff.” She rose and shrugged on her cover-up. “Museums.”
It stung a little that she didn’t think he’d be interested in museums. Had she, like his father and countless others, written him off as a dumb jock? “I’ll have the car waiting in thirty minutes.”
“That’s not necessary.” She gathered her belongings. “And just for future reference, most women take more than thirty minutes to get dressed.”
“Not you. You don’t waste time caking your face with tubs of makeup that a guy’s only gonna smear. After the museums we’ll have dinner at the Italian restaurant Vincent’s mother booked for the rehearsal dinner. She made reservations based on someone else’s recommendation and she asked me to check it out and make sure it’s suitable.”
Resignation settled over Amelia’s face, puckering her brows and tightening her mouth. He had her up against the wall and she knew it.
“Fine,” she snapped through barely moving lips.
Strategy worked every time. Pretty soon Amelia would be his. But not today. Today he intended to enjoy the chase.
If anyone had told Amelia she’d enjoy the company of an egotistical, thrill-seeking, smooth-talking ladies’ man like Toby Haynes, she would have suggested they have their head examined.
Her pulse skipped as he seated her at a corner table on the colonnade outside the dining room of the ritzy Italian restaurant. Her irregular heartbeat had nothing to do with the brush of Toby’s lightly callused fingers against her nape as he lifted her hair over the back of the chair and everything to do with the breathtaking sunset over the Italian Riviera.
Who do you think you’re fooling?
She sighed. Toby’s seemingly incidental touches had tantalized, titillated and tortured her in the seven hours since they’d left the pool.
Seven hours. And not once had she wanted to smack him. She couldn’t believe it. He’d apparently been on his best behavior, and if she was on edge, it was only because she kept waiting for him to collect her five-minute debt. She didn’t doubt he would or that it would be physical. Intensely physical.
He might not have aggravated her with an unrelenting stream of flirtatious banter this afternoon, but he’d watched her. The way a predator watches prey it wants to consume. The way a man watches a woman he intends to bed.
The Oceanographic Museum and Aquarium had been as fascinating as she’d expected. But a museum she hadn’t intended to visit—one Toby had coerced her into—had been the highlight of her day. Prince Rainier’s extensive collection of antique cars and carriages had entranced her, reminding her of royal processions, old movies and Hollywood glamour. There had been the traditional Mercedes-Benzes and Rolls-Royces she’d expected as well as more exotic cars she’d never heard of. Toby’s knowledgeable commentary had only enhanced the experience.
He settled across the table from her. A crisp white shirt stretched over his broad shoulders, accentuating his tan. Fine tufts of golden-blond curls peeked from his cuffs and open collar. “Tomorrow we’ll tour the Venturi factory.”
She startled when the waiter opened her napkin for her and laid it in her lap before handing her a menu. You didn’t get service like that back in Charlotte—at least not in the restaurants she frequented. “What makes you think I’ll spend tomorrow with you? You’re not my tour guide.”
“Because Vincent sent me over here so the bridal party could babysit me, and Candace has dumped me in your lap.”
Surprised by his perceptiveness, she shifted in her seat. “You figured that out, huh?”
“Doesn’t take a rocket scientist. Vincent wants me away from the track—and he’s not averse to calling in a few favors to get what he wants.”
Did Toby also realize Candace was shamelessly matchmaking? The idea was too humiliating to contemplate. “What’s Venturi?”
“Venturi is a sports car manufacturer here in Monaco.”
“Can’t stay away from gas-guzzling big engines?”
He leveled a patient look on her and she had to look away. Okay, so she’d been needling him. But she didn’t want to like him and today…today she’d enjoyed his company a little too much for comfort. Dangerous territory.
“Venturi has built GT racers for twenty years, but the model I’m interested in is an electric sports car. I want to see how they packed performance into a battery-powered vehicle. I can’t test drive it, but you can. I’ll ride shotgun and you’ll tell me how she feels.”
“Do I even want to know how much this car costs?”
“Six hundred.”
“Thousand? Dollars?” He nodded and she gulped. “That’s a few too many zeros for me. I’ll pass.”
“You’ll love it.” The wine steward arrived and Toby asked, “Wine?”
“No, thank you.” She didn’t dare weaken her willpower with alcohol. He sent the steward away without ordering.
“You shouldn’t let me stop you from having wine with your dinner, Toby. Candace said Mrs. Reynard chose this restaurant specifically because of its famous wine cellar.”
“I don’t drink.”
She frowned. Teetotaling didn’t fit her image of the fast-living adrenaline junkie she knew him to be. How had she missed that ten months ago? “Why?”
“My dad was a drunk. A mean one. Don’t want to turn out like him.” He stated it matter-of-factly and opened the menu.
A fissure formed in her preconceived notions of him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“I don’t advertise it.”
“Did he…hit you?”
“Until I knocked him on his ass.”
Sympathy squeezed her heart. You couldn’t work in health care and not deal with physical abuse at some time, but it still disturbed her. No matter how fiercely her parents had fought, they’d never hit each other or her. Thrown things? Definitely. But not at anyone. Verbal arrows were their weapons of choice, but even those had been aimed at each other and not Amelia.
“And your mother?”
“Got tired of his abuse and left the day I turned fifteen.”
She struggled with the urge to comfort him even though he hadn’t asked for it. In fact, his brusque manner discouraged it. “Not a great birthday gift.”
“Better than watching him smack her around.” Toby signaled the waiter, who immediately rushed over, thereby killing that line of discussion. “Brave enough to let me order for you?”
“I…okay. But I won’t eat anything weird or icky.”
His smile said Trust me, and then he ordered in Italian, his voice deep and shockingly sexy. The waiter departed and Toby answered her surprised gaze with a shrug. “I have an Italian Formula 1 guy working on my engine team. He taught me enough to get by.”
“I’m impressed.” That wasn’t a lie. Unfortunately.
“Good.” His eyes narrowed. “Bet you had a mom, apple-pie and homemade-cookies childhood.”
Amelia blinked at the quick change of subject. “You’d lose that bet. My parents married because my mother got pregnant with me. By the time I turned twelve, Mom had decided to make good on her repeated threats to leave my father. We were due to move out the week dad had his accident. Mom stayed to take care of him.”
“What kind of accident?”
“My father was a firefighter. He went back into an inferno to save a fallen comrade. The other firefighter died, and my father ended up paralyzed from the waist down. Mom can’t forgive him for putting his coworkers ahead of his family. And she makes sure he knows it every single day.”
Stunned by her confession, Amelia ducked her head and studied her knotted fingers. Why had she told him that? She’d never discussed her dysfunctional family with anyone. Not even Candace, her best friend, knew the whole truth or Amelia’s shameful secret.
For most of her teen years Amelia had secretly wished her mother would pack up and move out instead of staying behind to martyr herself caring for her injured husband. Life would have been much more peaceful if she’d left Amelia with her father.
But that was a boat of guilt she’d rather not row tonight.
Toby reached across the table. She abruptly leaned back in her chair to avoid contact. Accepting comfort from him had landed her in trouble the last time.
He narrowed his eyes. “You chose nursing because of your father.”
“I liked helping him and making him comfortable.” Looking after her father after school and on weekends had given her mother a much-needed break from being caretaker and her father a break from her mother’s acid barbs and tantrums.
“Do you ever hear from your mother now that you’re famous?” she asked Toby in an attempt to change the subject.
“She called. Once.” The single hard-bitten word discouraged Amelia from asking for details, but it didn’t stop her.