Rising Stars & It Started With… Collections. Кейт Хьюит
There is nothing they can tell me that I do not already know.”
“Do you really think you can ride the Viper for an entire season? How will you explain it if you can’t stand up when they hand you the trophy?” She could think of far worse scenarios, but she couldn’t bring herself to say them. He knew the possibilities as well as she did.
His voice was as hard as diamonds. “I can ride, Faith. There is no other choice.”
She swallowed the fear and bitterness roiling in her belly. “I don’t understand that, Renzo. You have an entire racing team at your disposal. Men who know how this is done as well as you do.”
“They don’t know,” he snapped, before muttering something in Italian. “I am one of the top-ranked riders in the world. And I know my motorcycles. It has to be me. This is the Viper’s debut. It has to succeed, and for that to happen, I must be the one riding. The sponsors are counting on it. The company is counting on it. Do you wish to find yourself downsized because the Viper fails?”
She knew how much it meant to him, how proud he was, and yet she didn’t believe it was as dire as he made it out to be. Yes, they might lose sponsors and, yes, the newest production model might not sell as well as hoped if the Viper was a disaster. Gavretti Manufacturing might even gain the upper hand on them, which would no doubt anger Renzo a great deal.
But so what? He would be alive and able to bring the company back from the edge of whatever misfortune they might teeter upon. “D’Angeli isn’t going to go broke if the Viper doesn’t smash records,” Faith said firmly.
He looked at her darkly for several moments. And then he stood, his face whitening briefly as he clutched the edge of the desk. “I’ll shower and change and then we can go back to the villa.”
Faith ground her teeth in frustration. Typical man. He didn’t want to talk about it when she pointed out the flaws in his logic.
He started to limp toward the adjoining bath, but she hurried over and slid an arm around his waist. He might be stubborn, but she couldn’t watch him suffer.
“Grazie,” he said, leaning on her as she helped him into the bathroom. It was a luxurious room, outfitted in exotic African hardwoods and sleek chrome fixtures. There was a huge shower at one end, entirely encased in glass, complete with a bench and several nozzles up and down the walls on three sides, as well as one overhead.
“Sit,” she told him when they reached the leather couch in the dressing area off to one side.
He did as she said, and then she bent to take his boots off even though he had not asked her to. But how could he manage it when his leg still hurt? She got one boot off, and then the other before tackling the knee sliders, which were separate from the leathers because they had to be replaced so often. These were scraped pretty badly from his contact with the track, and it made her shudder to think again of how he lay almost flat on his side every time he went around a curve.
The barest slip of control and he and the bike would go their separate ways. At two hundred miles an hour.
Faith shuddered again. The leathers were made for protection, with Kevlar and titanium in the most vulnerable spots, but the last thing she wanted was to see firsthand how good the protection they provided was.
How was it that one of the other talented riders on the D’Angeli team couldn’t ride the Viper? She didn’t believe it for a moment, no matter how good Renzo was. With Renzo as a teacher, how could his team fail? He was simply too proud, too stubborn, to admit he couldn’t do this any longer.
She got the sliders off and then lifted her head to look at him. The last thing she expected to see was the jut of an impressive arousal against the leather. Her gaze flew to his.
He smiled crookedly. “I could see down your shirt,” he said, not the least bit apologetic. “It’s a nice view.”
“You’re in no shape to be thinking about my breasts,” she told him somewhat prudishly, her cheeks flaring with heat.
He laughed. “Cara, I’d have to be dead not to think about your breasts. I assure you I’m quite capable of thinking about them. Of thinking of every centimeter of your body, I should add.”
Faith got to her feet and stood stiffly, in spite of the fact her body was doing that softening-melting-aching thing again. “I think you can do the rest yourself,” she said. “I’ll wait in the office.”
He stood, his face less tight now, and tugged at the zipper that held the leathers in place. It was like having that magazine ad come to life, she thought, as her breath caught and held while the zipper slid downward. Unlike in the magazine, there was a tight shirt beneath the leather, but it was still one of the sexiest things she’d ever seen.
“I’ll be, um, in the office,” she said, turning away as he laughed.
“You could stay, Faith. Wash my back.”
She spun to face him again just as he shrugged out of the top half of the leathers and then peeled the shirt up and off. She’d seen his naked chest last night, but it had been dark. Now he stood before her in all his hard-bodied glory, muscles rippling and flexing beneath bronzed skin—and then she noticed a three-pronged scratch skating over one pectoral muscle.
Faith frowned even as her heart did that funny little skip thing again. She thought of him last night with a tiny mewing bundle in his arms. “Lola did that?”
He glanced down. “Si—but it is nothing.”
And then he was staring at her again, blue eyes daring her. Only a few minutes ago, he’d been in enough pain to bring tears to his eyes, and now he was standing there like some sexy demigod and tempting her into the kind of behavior that ought to make her turn and run right this instant. Instead, she was imagining it. Considering it.
Wanting it.
“How about it, Faith?” he said, his voice a sexy rumble. “Do you want to wash my back?”
“I—I—” She closed her eyes, darted her tongue over her lips. She was not doing this. She was not stripping her clothing and stepping into that shower with him when he’d probably done the same thing a million times before with a million different women. She couldn’t. “I’ll be in the office, Renzo.”
Before he could say another word, she hurried out the door and shut it firmly behind her. But his laughter echoed after her until she almost turned around and went back just so she could look at him one more time. Instead, she retreated to a chair by the window and forced herself to sit with her hands in her lap and stare at the Tuscan hills.
He emerged twenty minutes later, dressed in the trousers and button-down shirt he’d worn earlier, his hair still damp and curling sexily over his collar. Faith stood, clasping her hands together to hide their trembling. Her heart was still racing, and her body still ached, no matter that she’d sat and tried to will the feelings away.
It didn’t work that way, apparently. She wanted things she’d never wanted before, and she didn’t quite know how to get them. How to take that plunge that would mean the difference between continuing the way she had been, and knowing what it meant to be a sensual creature focused on her own pleasure.
Renzo stopped when he saw her. His gaze met hers, heat flaring anew in the blue depths, and she knew that he could see her struggle with herself. He was far too perceptive when it came to women. She tried to remind herself why that was a bad thing, but she just didn’t seem to care.
“Come here, Faith,” he said, and she obeyed without once asking herself why she was doing so. He smelled delicious, clean and fresh and male, and she itched to touch him. But she kept her arms rigid at her sides as she stood before him and waited for something to happen.
Until he reached for her and tugged her into his embrace. One hand came up to cup her jaw while the other spread across the small of her back, pressing her to him. Faith gripped the powerful muscles of his biceps, her breath shortening in her chest.
“I’ve