Read Online Her Last Night of Innocence by India Grey - Free Book Online Page B

tonight was hardly doing justice to its almost mythical capabilities. For some reason having her in the passenger seat was making him stick to speed limits and hold back from overtaking cars he would otherwise have left standing.
    ‘How far is it to where we’re going?’ Kate asked, looking out to where the first snowy peaks of the Alps loomed palely in the distance.
    There was something about her tone that made him think she was regretting coming almost as much as he was beginning to regret asking her. He should have talked to her back in the hotel. Made her go over the events of that night and then left for the chalet in the morning. Alone.
    ‘Probably about another three hours. It’s right up in the mountains, so the roads aren’t great. Do you ski?’
    She bent her head so that her face was screened from his view by the soft curtain of her hair. ‘I’m afraid not.’
    She wasn’t your type at all .
    Suki’s words came back to mock him, and he felt his lipsquirk into an ironic smile of tacit acknowledgement. All his girlfriends skied and snowboarded and scuba-dived. As well as having supermodel looks, those were pretty much the qualifications for the job.
    ‘I’ll just have to teach you, then.’
    ‘In this?’ She gave a nervous laugh, her fingers plucking at the slippery fabric of her evening dress. Long fingers, he noticed. Long and delicate. ‘I’ve hardly got the right clothes for skiing.’
    He looked back at the road again, frowning. ‘I’m sure Francine has ski stuff there you can borrow.’
    ‘Francine?’ There was a tiny note of alarm in her voice.
    ‘My neurologist. It’s her house.’
    And her idea, he thought grimly. Right now it didn’t feel like one of her better ones. Already the thought of being away from the track and the team was making him feel on edge, and that feeling was only exacerbated by the idea of being with Kate Edwards. It would have been one thing seducing her in the hotel, spending the night with her to see if it brought back any memories of the last time, but spending a couple of days alone with her was quite another. The whole point of the exercise had been to relax, per l’amore di Dio .
    ‘Anyway, I’d be rubbish at skiing,’ she was saying now, in her soft, low voice. ‘And terrified. I’m the girl who had to be rescued from halfway up an indoor climbing wall on a Clearspring team-building exercise. I’m the least white-knuckle person on the planet. That night when we—’
    She broke off. Cristiano glanced across at her sharply.
    ‘Go on. Tell me.’
    ‘That night in Monaco, you drove me from the track to your house to do the interview.’ She darted him a sideways look and smiled shyly. ‘I was scared out of my wits by your driving.’
    He gave an ironic smile, but in the light of a passing car Kate noticed that he was gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles showed bone-white through his tanned skin.‘With good reason, as it turned out,’ he said cuttingly. ‘Given what happened the next day.’
    ‘Don’t,’ she muttered in anguish, closing her eyes and tensing as he pulled out to overtake the lorry they’d been following for the last few miles. The car surged forward with a powerful, muted roar. When Cristiano spoke again his voice was thoughtful.
    ‘You’re not much of a fan of motor racing, are you?’
    ‘No,’ she admitted, staring dully out at the dark houses of the small town they were driving through, picturing the children asleep behind the closed shutters. ‘But my brother was a huge fan of yours, which meant I was just about clued up enough to do the interview.’
    ‘Was?’
    ‘He’d been killed in a car accident the year before.’ She attempted a rueful laugh. ‘That’s probably why I freaked out about your driving—and the fact that my dad had died the same way when I was younger. Cars have always made me nervous, and Will’s death was still a bit raw.’
    Letting go of the steering wheel, Cristiano rubbed