A Secret Worth Keeping?: Living the Charade / Her Shameful Secret / Island of Secrets

It had been a tough lesson she had learned hard after being sent to an exclusive girls’ boarding school, where her opinion hadn’t meant half as much as her lack of money. Teenage girls could be cruel, but Miller hadn’t wanted to upset her mother by telling her she was having a terrible time at school. Her mother had needed to work two jobs in order to give Miller a better start in life than she’d had, so Miller had put up with the bullying and the loneliness and made sure not to give her mother any reason to be disappointed in her.

‘If you think I’m sleeping on that, Sunshine, you’re mistaken.’

Valentino’s arrogant assurance was astounding, and Miller stared open-mouthed as he crossed to the bed and placed his watch on the bedside table.

Fortunately she had already anticipated this problem and, she thought grumpily as she fluffed up her pillows, she hoped the bed had bugs in it.

‘Good to know. At least there won’t be any more arguments between us tonight.’

* * *

Tino smiled. He couldn’t help it. Which was surprising since he was still irritated as hell by that kiss out in the garden and the way he had become completely lost in it. Drunk on it.

He’d told himself all day to lay off the little fantasies he’d been having about her mouth, but had he listened? No.

And what was up with that? If he ignored his instincts on the track as he had out in that garden he’d have bought the farm a long time ago.

The problem was he had made her off-limits and that had spiked his interest. Stupid. But he wasn’t a man who could resist a challenge. And on top of that she was clearly not fawning over him as other women did once they knew who he was. There was nothing more likely to get a woman into his bed than giving them his job title, but this pretty little ray of sunshine was not only not trying to sleep with him, she was making up a bed on the floor!

She couldn’t have challenged him more if she’d tried, and because he had been thwarted in racing these last couple of months, first due to injury and then because his car was under-performing and causing all sorts of problems, he was more frustrated than he normally would be. Which went a lot further towards explaining his sexual fascination with her than anything else he’d come up with so far.

It was even more of a reason to keep his distance from her. He wasn’t a slave to his hormones, and he had enough complications at the moment without adding her to the list.

He yanked off his jeans and got into the king-sized bed, letting out an exaggerated sigh of appreciation as the soft mattress gave just enough beneath his body. He might as well enjoy it since he knew she was about to order him to sleep on the floor. He’d do it once she said please. A word she was sorely in need of learning how to use.

He grinned. He was quite looking forward to seeing how long it would take before she caved in and used it.

He watched with some satisfaction as she stalked to the main door and hit the light switch with her open palm as if she wished it was his head. Then she did something completely unexpected. She shimmied out of her robe and got into the makeshift bed on the floor.

And made him feel like an absolute idiot.

‘Ever had your testosterone levels checked out?’ he grumbled.

‘What’s the matter, Valentino? Your masculinity being challenged because I’m not falling at your feet?’

Yes, as a matter of fact it was.

‘Was the kiss that good?’ he purred.

‘I can’t remember.’

He heard her fake a yawn and shook his head. ‘Sounds like you want a reminder.’

‘Not in this lifetime,’ she sputtered.

Her protest was a little too vigorous, which he liked.

Tino stretched out on the bed and stared at the ceiling, his eyes starting to adjust to the grey shadows cast around the room from the moonlight seeping in around the sheer curtains.

He heard the blankets on the floor rustle and his teeth gnashed together. She was being ridiculous and taking this just a little too far. He wondered if she was wearing something lacy. Something like the freshly laundered hot-pink thong hanging on the towel rail in the bathroom. The sight of those delicate panties had knocked him for a six, and he was pretty sure she hadn’t left them there deliberately.

Finding out she really did favour sexy lingerie was a fact he could have well done without. Ball-breaking Miss Miller Jacobs was turning out to be full of contradictions. Not least of all that fiery response to his kiss in the garden.

Acting, she had said after the event. Yeah, right.

Acting, my ass.

Yeah, and you’re not supposed to be thinking about it.

‘I like the thong you left in the bathroom,’ he said, unable to help annoying her as she was annoying him.

‘You can’t borrow it,’ she said after a slight pause.

He gave a soft chuckle. Man, she was sassy. And, no, he didn’t want to borrow it. But he wouldn’t have minded stripping it down her long legs to see what he was sure would be tawny curls underneath. His heart beat the blood a little more heavily around his body and he was unable to stop his mind from imagining her naked and spread out on the four-poster bed. Imagining her soft and wet with the same need that had compelled her to wrap her tongue around his in that garden.

He breathed deep and willed his body to relax, reminding himself that he only wanted her because he’d placed an embargo around her.

The blankets rustled again as she adjusted herself on the hard floor that not even thousand-dollar-a-metre carpet could soften.

His blood was Sicilian, and if she thought he could stay sprawled out on a comfortable bed while she lay uncomfortably at his feet she had another thing coming. But he knew offering up the bed would only play into her martyr’s hands and give her a reason to make him feel even more like a heel, so he stayed quiet and devised another plan that had the double advantage of allowing him to live up to his chivalrous nature and annoy the hell out of her at the same time.

Half an hour later Tino looked down on Miller’s sleeping form. Her hands were tucked under her face and her shoulder-length hair was dark against the white pillow. Deep shadows beneath her eyes attested to how tired she was.

Careful not to wake her, he leaned down and pulled the meagre blanket away from her body—and instantly stilled.

She was lying half on her stomach, one leg bent to the side in an innocently provocative pose. Her pale jersey camisole top and matching three quarter length pants stretched tight over her ripe curves. As far as night attire went it wasn’t the most seductive he’d ever seen, and yet as he gazed at her slender limbs, milky in the shadowy moonlight she had his full attention.

His hand itched to curve around the firm globes of her bottom while he bit down gently on the soft-as-silk skin that covered her trapezius. Would she be sensitive there? Or would she prefer him to kiss his way down each pearl-like button of her spine? Perhaps while he was buried deep inside her.

Tino groaned and closed his eyes. He felt like a randy teenager looking at a full on girlie magazine. Lust, hot and primal, beat through his body and made his legs weak. For a moment he was gripped by an almost uncontrollable urge to roll her over and wake her with a lover’s kiss. Get her to open her mouth for him as she had done earlier, cup her pert breasts, shove those stretchy pants to her ankles and thrust into her until all she could do was chant his name over and over as she came for him.

Only him.

He blinked back the unusually possessive thought, the incongruity of it burning through his sensual haze and reminding him of his initial purpose in pulling the blanket from her body.

Gently, he scooped her up off the floor and carried her to the bed. She stirred and shifted in his arms, the curtain of her hair trailing down his naked arm and her orange blossom shampoo tickling his nose. His body tightened at the allure of that clean smell and he almost tumbled her onto the bed in his haste to put her down. As soon as he did she mumbled something unintelligible and sighed deeply as she curled into the soft mattress.

Tino quickly pulled the comforter up over her near naked limbs before he could change his mind about being chivalrous.

His eyes drifted to the other side of the king-sized bed. It looked vast and empty with her only taking up one quarter of it. Tiredness invaded his body, and although he had fully intended to sleep on the floor he realised he probably didn’t have to. The bed was nearly as big as the infinity pool downstairs and he was an early riser. If the gods were on his side he’d be up and running along the beach before she even knew it was a new day.

Still, he laid a row of pillows down the centre of the bed. No point in tempting fate.

* * *

‘Oh, yes,’ Miller moaned softly as she felt the weight of a hair roughened thigh slip between her legs while a warm, callused hand palmed her breast. Her body buzzed and her nipples tightened, forcing her to arch more firmly into that warm caress. The hand squeezed her gently and somewhere above her head she heard a rough masculine sound of appreciation. Another hand was sliding confidently over her hip toward—

Holy hell!

Miller’s eyes flew open and she stared straight into Valentino Ventura’s sleeping face. Within seconds her brain assimilated the fact that she was no longer on the floor, but in bed and that Valentino had one of his hands on her breast and the other curved around her bottom.

Miller yelped and pushed against his impossibly hard chest, glad when he gave a grunt of discomfort, his jet-black lashes parting to reveal slate-grey eyes still glazed with sleep.

Miller pushed at his hands and scrambled backwards, her legs colliding with one of his knees as she roughly slid her leg out from between his.

Tino let out a rough expletive and moved his legs out of the way. ‘Watch the knee.’

‘Watch the...?’ Miller had a vague recollection of the men questioning Valentino about some racing injury but she didn’t care about that right now. ‘Get your hands off me, you great oaf.’

She shoved harder at his immovable arm and sucked in her tummy muscles as his steely forearm slid across her bare stomach.

Finally, fully awake, he acquiesced.

‘No need to sound the alarm, I was just sleeping.’

Miller gripped the duvet up to her chin. ‘You were groping me.’

‘Was I? I thought you’d just ruined a pleasant dream. Sorry about that.’

‘Yes, I just bet you’re sorry.’ She saw his eyes sharpen on hers. ‘How did I end up in bed with you anyway?’

Valentino casually slid his hands beneath his head and Miller swept her angry gaze over those powerful arms and that muscular chest. She felt her breath catch and her heartbeat speed up and berated her instant reaction.

‘I don’t know, Sunshine,’ he answered. ‘Are you prone to sleepwalking?’

Miller narrowed her gaze, her mind flashing back to last night. A vague memory of being lifted floated to the surface of her mind. ‘You carried me.’

Valentino yawned and pushed up until he was leaning against the headboard. The sheet dropped down to his waist, and the morning sun fell over part of his bronzed chest and corrugated abdomen as if lighting him up for a photo shoot.

He scratched his chest and her eyes soaked him up. God, the man really did look airbrushed!

‘Damn. Maybe I’m prone to sleepwalking,’ he said.

Miller hugged the duvet closer and felt her nipples throb with awareness as her hands accidentally grazed over them. Heat immediately bloomed in her face at the memory of why her breasts felt so heavy and sensitive.

‘This isn’t funny. That’s sexual harassment.’

The great oaf just rolled his eyes. ‘As I recall it, it was you who cuddled up to me in your sleep—not the other way around.’

‘I did not.’

‘Suit yourself. But last night I put a row of pillows between us, and I know it wasn’t me who knocked them aside. Anyway, I disengaged my hand as soon as you asked.’ He raised and lowered his knee gingerly beneath the blanket and she hoped that she had hurt him.

‘Remind me not to do you a good deed again,’ he said.

‘Ha. Good deed, my foot. You wanted to...to...’

‘Have my wicked way with you?’ His eyes glinted. ‘If that was what I wanted that’s what we’d be doing.’

‘You wish.’

‘A challenge, Miller?’

She didn’t deign to respond. Why would she? Of course it wasn’t a challenge—especially when she had liked the feel of him against her a little too much.

Her breathless response reminded her of the time she’d been secretly trapped in the girls’ toilets at the hideous school she’d attended while the main bullies had loitered, giggling vacuously over some boy or another.

By the time they had hit fifteen, boys had been all they could talk about. Miller had wanted to yell, What about when it all goes wrong? But of course she hadn’t. She hadn’t wanted to look more like a freak than they already thought she was. All of them had seemed content to live in the moment in a way she never could after her parents had divorced.

‘There was no way I was letting you sleep on the floor. Get over it.’ Valentino’s gruff voice jolted her back to the present.

‘Turn the other way,’ she demanded, letting her painful memories slip away.

When he complied without argument she shot out of bed and snatched up her robe. Ignoring him, she grabbed her running clothes and stalked towards the bathroom.

‘Just so we’re clear.’ She stopped in the doorway. ‘This arrangement does not extend to sex, and even if it did you would be the last man I would choose to sleep with.’

He looked at her as if he could see right through her. ‘So you keep saying.’

His intense eyes never left hers and Miller found it hard to swallow. He looked irresistible and dangerous with his untidy dark hair and overnight stubble. By contrast she was sure she looked a fright, and all of sudden it seemed imperative that she get away from him. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so vulnerable.

She shook her head. ‘You’re too used to getting your own way. That’s your problem.’

Valentino threw back the covers and stood up. He was only wearing low-riding hipster briefs and Miller quickly averted her eyes. She felt irrationally angry when he laughed. He stalked towards her and Miller deliberately held his gaze, refusing to let him see how affected she was by his potent masculinity.

He shook his head. ‘Lady, you are one overwound broad. Yes, my hand was on your breast—but that little moan you exhaled before your uptight brain kicked into gear let me know that you liked it. More than liked it.’

‘Well, my uptight little brain rules my body, and what you felt back there was just a physiological reaction.’ Miller felt irrationally stung by his assessment, even though she had insulted him first. She couldn’t help it; he just made her feel so...so...emotional!

‘You’re telling me you’d get turned on if you woke up with TJ’s hand on your breast?’

Miller clamped her lips together. That was a no-win question and they both knew it. ‘There’s no way to answer that without stroking your mountainous ego, so I won’t bother.’

‘You just did.’

Oh! Miller swivelled and slammed the bathroom door in his laughing face. He was so arrogant and so full of himself.

Impossible. The most impossible and most gorgeous man she had ever come across.

She leant back against the door and sighed. No wonder he had women lining up outside his hotel rooms to get a glimpse of him. The man was sex on legs and he knew it.

Miller made a frustrated noise through her teeth and her breasts tingled with remembered pleasure as she pulled on her shorts, sports bra and top. A strenuous run would help her forget this morning before her meeting with Dexter and TJ.

Taking a fortifying breath, she decided to ignore Valentino—but that plan instantly unravelled when she opened the bathroom door and noticed him sitting on the side of the bed, tying his shoelaces and dressed as she was.

‘Please tell me you’re not going for a run?’

Valentino looked up. ‘Is there a law against it?’

His eyes immediately dropped to her bare legs and Miller felt slightly uncoordinated as she continued across the room to the closet.

She wanted to say yes, but he would no doubt think she was being uptight again—and anyway it was petty. The man was doing her a favour by being here—albeit a reluctant one—and who was she to tell him he couldn’t go for a run? She might dislike the tumultuous feelings he incited in her just from looking at him, but she was going to have to get used to it if she was going to survive the next twenty-four hours with any degree of dignity. She had already decided she wasn’t going to be his weekend plaything, so how hard could it be?

‘Of course not,’ she said, knowing full well he was a hundred times fitter than she was and would never suggest they run together.

‘You run often?’ he asked.

Miller glanced his way, noting his conciliatory tone. ‘A couple of times a week. You?’ she added, deciding to accept his olive branch.

‘Every morning except Sunday.’

She didn’t want to ask what he did on Sunday mornings. She was afraid her hormones would want her to do more than just visualise it.

He tilted his head, that devilish smile playing around his lips. ‘I get time off for good behaviour.’

The incongruity of that statement brought an instant grin to her face. ‘Yeah, right. I’m sure you were the type of teenager who crawled out of your bedroom window when your parents were asleep and partied all night.’

‘They were called study nights at our house.’ His deadpan expression made her laugh.

When she realised that he was laughing too she quickly sobered. Because she didn’t want to enjoy his company, and by the wary darkening of his eyes he didn’t much want to enjoy hers either.

But still the light-hearted connection persisted and made her nervous. A sudden impulse to place his hand back on her breast and kiss him senseless blindsided her.

‘It’s a beautiful morning. Why don’t we stretch on the beach first?’ he suggested.

Shocked by the unfamiliar emotions driving her thoughts and desperate to break the tension that throbbed between them, Miller cleared her throat and hoped that single gesture hadn’t transmitted to him just how affected she was by his presence.

‘I don’t think we should run together.’

Valentino eyed her dubiously. ‘How will it look if you run off in one direction and I go in the other?’

Telling, probably.

Miller smoothed her eyebrows in a soothing gesture that failed dismally.

She looked down at his long muscular legs dusted with dark hair.

‘Come on, Miller, what are you afraid of?’

Him, for one. Her own feelings, for two. Did he need three? ‘I’ll slow you down,’ she mumbled.

‘I’ll forgive you,’ he replied softly.

Miller sighed. One of her strengths was knowing when she was beaten, but still she was hardly gracious when she said. ‘Okay, but don’t talk to me. I hate people who run and talk at the same time.’

CHAPTER SIX

THE morning was beautiful. Peaceful. The air was crisp, but already warmed by the sun beating down from a royal-blue sky, and the fresh scent of saltwater was tart on the silky breeze. Seagulls flew in graceful circles, while others just squatted on the white-gold sand, unaffected by the gentle, almost lackadaisical nature of the waves sweeping towards them.

The beach arced around in a gentle curve towards a rocky outcrop, and as it was in an unpopulated area it was completely deserted at this time of the morning.

After a few quick stretches Miller set off at an easy jog along the dark, wet packed sand left behind as the tide went out, sure that Valentino would get bored and surge ahead. But he didn’t. And then she remembered that he’d complained about his knee and wondered if she had hurt him this morning.

Feeling hot already, Miller turned her head to look at him, her ponytail swinging around her face. ‘I didn’t really hurt your knee, did I?’ she panted between breaths.

He glanced across at her, only a light sheen of sweat lining his brow, his breathing seemingly unaffected by his exertions. ‘No. The knee is fine.’

‘Was the accident very bad?’

When he didn’t respond, she flicked her eyes over his profile, just in time to see him tense almost imperceptibly.

‘Which one?’

‘There’s been more than one?’

He glanced towards the ocean, and she didn’t think he’d answer.

‘Three this year.’

She wasn’t sure if that was a lot for his profession. She imagined they must crash all the time at the speeds they drove. ‘The one where you hurt your knee?’

He didn’t look at her. ‘Bad enough.’

His voice was gruff, blunt. Very unlike his usual casual eloquence. ‘Was anyone else hurt?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wh—?’

‘I thought you said you didn’t like to talk while you ran?’

It was pretty clear he didn’t want to tell her about it so she let the subject drop. But of course her curiosity was piqued. Dexter’s comment about his next race being the race of the decade was making her wonder if it had anything to do with his accident. She really didn’t know anything about Valentino Ventura, other than the fact that he was called Maverick and he dated legions of women, but she wouldn’t mind knowing what secrets she was beginning to suspect lay behind his devil-may-care attitude to life.

* * *

Tino had never run with anyone before. Not even his personal trainer. Running was meditative, and something he liked to do alone, so he hadn’t expected to enjoy Miller’s company as much as he was.

Despite his large family he wasn’t the type to need others to be close to him. He was a loner. Maybe not always, but certainly since his father’s death. And, yeah, he knew a shrink would say the two were connected but he was happy with the way he was and saw no reason to change. If he died one day pushing the limits, as his father had, and Hamilton Jones had last August, at least he knew he wouldn’t be leaving a devastated family behind him.

The image of Hamilton’s wife and two young daughters—teary and slightly accusing at the funeral, because he’d survived and their father hadn’t—caused guilt to fluctuate inside him.

Survivor guilt.

The team doctor had warned him about it afterwards, and while he’d never admitted to feeling it he knew that on some level he did. But he also knew it was something that would wear off if he didn’t think about it. Because the accident hadn’t been his fault. Hamilton had tried to overtake on one of the easiest corners on the track, but had somehow managed to clip Tino’s rear wheel and hurtle them both out of control.

Hamilton had lost his life and Tino had missed three of the following races due to injury. And he’d failed to finish the last two races due to mechanical issues.

He wasn’t superstitious, and he didn’t believe in bad luck, but he couldn’t deny—at least to himself—that there seemed to be a black cloud, like in a damned cartoon strip, following him around at the moment.

A sudden memory of the moment his mother had returned from the bathroom and he’d had to tell her that his father—the love of her life—had just been involved in a hideous accident clamped around his heart like an iron fist. No one knew what had caused the accident that had ended his father’s life—engine malfunction or human error—but the pit crew had said his father hadn’t been himself that morning, and Tino remembered overhearing his mother urge his father to pull out of the race. But the old man had ignored her and gone anyway.

Tino swiped a hand through his hair. Had that been what had killed him? His mother’s soft request? Tino shuddered. It was a hell of a position for a man to be put in.

Refocusing on Miller’s steady rhythm, he was surprised that he didn’t have to temper his speed all that much for them to remain together.