Chapter 5

5

       Kelly couldn't get out of the kitchen fast enough when she was done with her dinner. She had no desire to hang around under Adrian De Luca's inspection. Neither did she have a desire to be coerced into having a conversation with him. She wasn't prepared for further discussion about why she was so against the idea of being captured in a blog. Her reasons were none of his business. All he needed to know was that she wasn't interested. In any of it.

      She also needed to get out cause she couldn't think straight while he was watching her with his heavy blue-eyed gaze. And when he had smiled at her, it lit a fire in her belly that poured through her, warming everything from her face to her toes and everything in between, until she felt her insides might melt in a big pool of lust.

     Adrian De Luca was slimmer real life than he’d appeared on tv, but she remembered that the camera supposedly added pounds. Did, In fact, add pounds.

And if she thought his serious brooding expression had been handsome but then he had smiled at her which made her think about sex. Something she hadn’t thought of in a long time.

Sex wasn’t something that had ever been high on her list of priorities. She enjoyed it but she didn’t really see what’s all the fuss was about. She and Levi’s never even had sex which made her question why he had tried so hard for over a year. But Adrian De Luca made her think of sex. He made her think of hot, sweaty sex. Tangled bedsheets and late\-afternoon sex.

The width of a hard, firm, male body. He made her think of multiple orgasms and sex that was so all\-consuming she’d be too exhausted to be able to move afterwords. The kind of sex she’d read about in novels and seen in movies but had never experienced.

Get a grip Kelly, he has a daughter, she cautioned herself. Besides aren’t all these celebrities just as complicated? Memories of Levi and his silence on the subject of his very real family slammed into her.

Her mental picture of him tangled in his sheets were proving hard to shift and even though she knew it was entirely a product of her imagination she was mortified that her mind had taken her there, and she knew she had to put some distance between them if she was going to be able to keep those lustful thoughts out of her head.

She needed some distance if she was going to be able to focus on herself. But if she thought she was going to escape discussing the hottest topic with her sisters, she was mistaken cause all of a sudden Jessica cornered her in the hallway.

‘What do you have against him?’

‘Excuse me?’

Jessica tolled her eyes. ‘Spare me the modesty. You know what I’m talking about.’ She wanted to know.

‘It’s not him per say.’ Kelly tried to explain. ‘I just have a hard time warming up to guys considering one broke my heart forty eight hours ago. Besides, I’m here to help around in the palazzo. I don’t want people in my way. And that includes him.’

Actually the thought of workin In close proximity to Adrian De Luca, of having him watch her with his bedroom eyes, was even more terrifying. She didn’t know if she’d be able to concentrate under her gaze and that made her vulnerable. And feeling vulnerable was not something she enjoyed.

‘Well you better get used to it. I think he’s here to stay,’ Jessica told her. ‘At least for the next four weeks. And we’ll all be working quite close with him. Get that looser Levi out your head.’

Kelly sighed. Jessica was right. ‘You can’t just expect me to get him out of my head Jess but you’re right. I have to try.’ She glared. ‘And if you and Andrea are trying to play Cupid in my life right now—‘

Jessica was laughing. ‘Sure. We told him to come all the way from London to come pretend to want to do business with us just to whisk you off your feet. Girl, get your head off the cloud.’

Kelly eyed her sister carefully. ‘Then why didn’t you tell me about this whole thing while we were still in Boston?’

‘We tried. I mean, with what you were going through—’

‘Right,’ she shook her head then nodded. ‘Not the right time.’

‘You know you’re amazing right? You’d have to be the only female in the entire palazzo who would complain about having to spend time with Chef tall, dark, and handsome. Enjoy it. You’ll be the envy of the women in town.’

Kelly’s snorted. ‘Adrian De Luca. He probably changed his name for television. I mean, really, who has a name like that?’ She said. The name was too good to be true.

‘You don’t like my name Miss Winston?’

Damn it. Kelly closed her eyes and groaned silently. He’d sneaked up on her and caught her out again. All in one night. What was he even doing out here anyway? She really was going to be more careful. Its why he really had to go. She opened her eyes to find Jess trying to stifle a smile. Great. She turned around and came face\-to\-face with chef tall, dark and handsome.

He wasn’t trying to stifle a smile or a laugh. In fact. He was smirking. At her expense. How she’d love to wipe that look off his face but the only way she could think of doing that was by telling him she didn’t like his name. And that wasn’t true. It was a name the rolled smoothly off the tongue. It was a name that wouldn’t be easily forgotten. Smooth and unforgettable. Much like the man himself.

‘You have a very nice name.’ She admitted. ‘I just— never mind.’ She had to tilt her head back to look up to his face. He was several inches taller than her, two inches or three over six feet, she guessed, and from her view point the strong angles of his jaw, darkened by the shadow of his beard, were even more obvious.

‘I assure you. That’s the name my parents gave me.’ He shrugged folding his hands. ‘I seem to be needing to assure you of a lot of things, Miss Winston.’ He was standing close enough that Kelly could see where is his day’s growth of beard was beginning to darken his jaw and she could feel his breath on her face as he spoke, but she was still aware of the little puffs of soft, warm air that smelt of peppermint that brushed her cheekbones when he spoke to her.

She dragged her eyes away from the broad expanse of his chest to meet his eyes. At this distance, she could see they were flecked with brown. Annoyed for noticing, she retorted. ‘I don’t have time for this.’

She stalked off, glaring at Jess to make sure her sister followed her. She didn’t want to leave her consorting with the enemy.

‘That was rude,’ Jess admonished as she hurried to keep pace with Kelly. ‘You’ll need to play nicely.’

‘I don’t care Jess.’ She couldn’t cope with him in her personal space. She was too aware of him. Of his blue eyes, his broad shoulders, of his breath on her skin, and his proximity was playing havoc with her senses making it impossible for her to think.

All she wanted to do was to be left in peace. She didn’t like having this reaction to someone she just met. Literally.

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