Read Online Playing the Playboy's Sweetheart by Carol Marinelli - Free Book Online Page A

his legs and was actually grateful for the excuse of being sunburnt, because her body felt as if it were on fire.
    She smelt of summer—suntan oil, combined with the crisp scent of her T-shirt and an elusive fragrance that seem to be designed just for him, because in that moment both were turned on.
    She could feel his eyes burning into the back of her neck and worried she might leave a damp patch on his jeans as his hand pressed a little into her thigh. She was so turned on.
    ‘What’s for lunch?’ Emily asked, but with the air so thick and lust-laden even that sounded suggestive because had he said
This
and then pulled her a fraction back further onto his lap, offended was the very last thing Emily would have been.
    Or had he said
This
and then planted his lips where the pulse in her neck was jumping, Emily might have found herself turning around and so, rather quickly, Emily jumped from his lap.
    Her T-shirt felt like a blanket. There it was again—the sudden urge to shed her clothing that occurred when he was around. Emily opened the fridge and was rather tempted to climb into it, just so that she could have a cool place to hide.
    ‘What do you want for lunch?’ Emily said, but her words were very stilted because she was choosing them very carefully.
    ‘I would like,’ Hugh answered, equally carefully, because he was as turned on as she was, ‘whatever you would like.’
    Emily pulled out a bottle of wine.
    ‘That’s what got us here in the first place,’ Hugh pointed out.
    ‘I’m on holiday,’ Emily said, and poured two glasses.
    ‘I’ve got a very long drive tonight, so I’d better not.’
    ‘It’s just for the photos,’ Emily said, putting a glass on the table beside him.
    ‘That’s very cruel,’ Hugh said.
    It actually was—he wanted a glass of wine, he wanted to stay here a while, he wanted her to raise her arms so that he could simply strip off her T-shirt.
    Sex was in the air and he didn’t get how Emily consistently denied it.
    Hugh watched as she added a few cubes to her wine. ‘That’s so wrong!’
    ‘Ah, but it’s so nice,’ Emily said, taking a sip.
    ‘Get changed,’ Hugh said.
    ‘Changed?’
    ‘For
tomorrow’s
picnic.’
    ‘Of course.’
    Emily ran upstairs and selected denim shorts and a black halterneck, put on some large silver loops and some lipstick then pulled her hair out of her ponytail.
    ‘Wow!’ Hugh said, as she came down the stairs. ‘I wish I
was
here tomorrow to see you!’
    He had changed too but only into a different T-shirt, which was now white and only served to make his eyes more green.
    Help!
    ‘Aren’t you wearing shorts on your holiday?’ Emily teased, as they headed out to the back garden.
    ‘I don’t want you getting too excited, Em.’
    He was joking, of course, teasing her too, yet, Emily conceded, he was also telling a bit of the truth. Yes, perhaps the less of Hugh’s skin on show the better, Emily thought as she spread a blanket under the shade of a tree.
    Hugh was thinking the same because her rather ample breasts were still without a bra and when she bent over, her ample bottom actually had him look away.
    ‘Oh, my,’ Emily said, opening the hamper. ‘I don’t know where to start.’
    ‘I do,’ Hugh said, taking out a Scotch egg, ‘these taste nothing like you remember them.’
    ‘Have you had one already?’ Her eyes accused him of cheating.
    ‘One, when I was collecting the order.’
    ‘Anything else?’
    ‘No.’
    She squeezed lemon over wild Scottish salmon and Hugh got straight into the potted lobster, but there was just too much to choose from. From pepper and jalapeno-stuffed olives, to gorgeous cheeses and quince paste, and they chatted and laughed and smacked hands away when someone pounced on a delicacy the other wanted.
    They did everything but feed each other and in the end, for safety’s sake, Emily lay on her back rather than face him.
    ‘I never want to stop eating,’ Emily said.
    ‘Nor me.’
    ‘But I