Time To Heal [COMPLETED]

PROLOGUE

"Can I buy you a drink?" someone asked behind Anastasia Hazel Forrester, and she schooled her features into an impassible mask before turning to face her interlocutor. A pair of stunning blue eyes stared back at her coupled with a dazzling smile meant to charm.

"I'm all good," she drawled lazily, indicating her glass and dismissed the handsome stranger who had accosted her without second thoughts. She loathed the fact that the opposite sex seemed to think that every lonely woman at a bar was fair game.

"Are you sure?" he insisted with an obvious slurred Italian accent, unfazed to the fact that she was clearly not interested. Ana refrained from replying, praying that he would pick the hint. Thankfully he did. She breathed a sigh of relief – that was her fifth overtures for the night, and she was not impressed.

She'd heard that Italians were pretty flirtatious and straight-forward but had never been a hands-on witness to the fact until today. She'd just landed in Milan the previous afternoon and was looking forward to some solitary time with herself. However, it was proving impossible to spend some quality with herself when she was constantly being approached by men. Maybe she should go back to her room?

Sighing wearily, her eyes travelled across the hotel lobby, and inexorably landed on a lonely man, and Ana did a double take. He was the most handsome man she'd ever seen. She sucked in a breath, gorging on the perfection of the specimen, who remained clueless to her observation as he ordered a drink from the bar.

Was he Italian? His features did not give a clue about his heritage, but he looked nothing like the other males, the tone of his skin was comparatively fairer than the traditional dark olive timbre. What differentiated him from others was the brooding enigmatic sex appeal that he seemed to emanate without much effort. Like he didn't have a care in the world, blatantly ignoring the come-hither looks the women surrounding him kept sending in his direction.

He was uninterested just like herself. A sense of affinity and relatability struck, as he gave the depiction of being lonely even among the crowd. Exactly like she was feeling right now.

Judging from the way he was dressed; he conveyed the message of being rich. Not that Ana cared – it was only a subconscious observation as she knew the type being constantly surrounded by them in the form of her father's friends.

Italian men were renowned to be exceptionally gorgeous, but Ana wasn't sure that the stranger was one of the locals. There was something about his fierce aura which beckoned to her in a peculiar fashion. It was as if she was drawn to him; her entire being tingled with awareness and an insane restlessness.

Then, out of the blue, his gaze homed into hers, and she forgot her next breath. It was insane that she was so attracted to his physical beauty, but she felt mesmerized by a pair of exceptionally gorgeous green eyes, unable to look away even if her life depended on it and flushed when he lifted his glass in acknowledgement of her stare.

Was she being too obvious?

Even then, she couldn't avert her gaze. There was something between them – that raw chemistry crackling through the air, seizing it with a tight tension. Anastasia could literally sense electric sparks flying across the room as green eyes watched her broodingly from the other side of the bar. He could feel her interest, she was sure of that, but it felt like he was debating with himself whether to act upon it or not.

He was the first one to look away, and Ana breathed a sigh of gratification when she was no longer captive of that intensely cogent gaze. It felt like somebody had lifted a huge burden from her shoulders.

It had been too lethal - her heart had pounded in her chest, erratic and out of control, unlike anything she'd ever come close to experience before. Hell, her heart was still jackhammering in her chest like she'd just run a marathon, her hands damp with sweat as she tried for to pick up her glass with a casualness she was far from feeling.