A Gift for a Lion (25 page)

He smiled slightly. 'I couldn't let them know there was no real reason for you to be on the island, otherwise you would probably have been arrested. But as luck would have it, I had already arranged that you should be my guest and I was able to tell them that you had come earlier than expected because we were in love—and you could not bear to be parted from me any longer.'

Joanna glared at him. 'And of course they believed you.' she said with tremendous irony.

'Fortunately, yes.' He smiled lazily at her outraged expression. 'And it wasn't so far from the truth. I think I fell in love with you,
mia
, the first time I saw you.'

Her cheeks were hot again as she remembered the circumstances under which he had seen her, before she had regained consciousness on the couch in his study.

'I don't particularly want to be reminded of that,' she said stiffly, and he raised his eyebrows mockingly.

'No? Shall I tell you when I first saw you? You were sitting on a rock, combing your hair like a sea nymph— quite alone and very happy. Not at all like the self-willed little socialite I was expecting to see.'

She gave a little cry. 'I thought someone was watching me.'

He nodded calmly. 'I made sure you didn't see me. Much later, I saw you combing your hair again, by the side of the swimming pool, and you looked at me with all your heart in your eyes. That was the first time I had any reason to think you might love me in return.'

'I thought I had given you plenty of reason to think it,' she confessed, and his mouth twisted a little.

'Because you responded when I made love to you? I am not wholly without experience with women,
mia
, and I knew I could make you want me, but I wasn't so sure I could make you love me.'

His gaze made her suddenly shy and she stared at the floor instead.

'But you still haven't explained why Marisa was in your room. You must have invited her…'

'There was a time when Marisa did not have to wait for an invitation,' he said frankly. 'But on this visit I made it clear to her that everything was over between us. I didn't go to her room, or ask her to mine, so in the end she came to me to point out that I was in danger of losing her through my neglect to this other man. I told her I had asked you to marry me and we wished each other happiness and parted.'

His voice gentled. 'I have told you the truth, Joanna. Why have you made us waste all this time? All you had to do was to ask me the next day and I would have told you everything. But when you went without a word, I thought you had simply decided to have your revenge at last—to make me suffer as you once said you would. Haven't we both suffered enough at each other's hands,
mia
?'

She was really crying now, regret for her own foolishness and lack of trust mingling with relief that she had been so disastrously wrong.

'Ah, no,
cara
.' There was no mistaking the tenderness in his voice. 'The time for tears is past. I ask you again, Joanna, will you be my wife?'

'Do you really want me?' she asked shyly, as he brushed the tears from her wet cheeks with his hand.

He smiled and for the first time drew her into his arms, moulding her slender body against his.

'Can you doubt it,
mia
?' he murmured against her hair. 'I am more than willing to give you proof here and now, if you wish, and if the good Signora Warner can be persuaded not to interrupt us.'

'Leo!' she protested, blushing.

'Shocked,
mia
? Yet you have not explained to my satisfaction just how you happened to be outside my room that night to see Marisa,' he teased her.

She bent her head. 'I—I'd come to give you my answer.'

'And not merely with words? Be honest.'

'No,' she looked up at him and smiled, her own longing for him showing openly in her tear-wet eyes. 'No, Leo. Not merely with words.'

'My love and my wife,' he whispered, and kissed her.