by Anna Cleary
Alessandro watched her slim hands clench and unclench. She was afraid, that much was clear. Afraid of his involvement with her child. Hoping he would disappear from the scene.
He said quietly, ‘Do you think I won’t believe your word?’
Lara stared down into her glass, then looked up. ‘I think it’s best if we-do everything by the book. In years to come when you’re settled down with your next wife and-other children in Venice, London, New York or wherever, I would not like you to have any doubts.’
He gazed silently at her, his dark eyes unreadable, then said softly, ‘And where will you be then, tesoro? In those years to come?’
She smiled and said brightly, ‘Oh, here of course. With my gorgeous girl.’
‘What? No husband? You won’t be looking for one?’
She heard his subtle mockery and maintained the smile even though she could feel heat rise through her neck and her cheeks. What was he doing? Torturing her with the forbidden subject? The truth was, that nerve he’d touched was so rarely acknowledged it was quite excruciatingly tender. But she’d die before she’d admit it to anyone, least of all him.
‘Who knows?’ She gave her shoulders an airy lift, and lifted her glass to her lips. ‘I might still find one.’
He lounged back in his chair and stretched out his long legs, a sensual smile lurking in his dark eyes. ‘Yeah. There was that guy who liked you. What was his name? Bill?’
‘Bill who?’ She frowned queryingly.
‘Bill. Your MD.’
‘Oh, Bill.’ In spite of her discomfort she broke into a laugh, thinking of poor Bill, with his wife of twenty years and brood of unruly children. ‘Yes, yes, he’s a definite possibility.’ She frowned and tilted her head in mock consideration. ‘All right, Sandro, you’ve talked me into it. I’ll marry Bill. Get him on the phone. Ask him if he likes kids.’
His thick black brows twitched. ‘If you take my advice you won’t jump into anything. I did that once and it was a shocking mistake.’ He reached out and took one of her hands. ‘But I’m glad to have this chance to be with you before you settle down with some guy, tesoro.’
She smiled, though it cost her an effort. The backs of her eyes were dangerously close to pricking and her poor stupid heart was being squeezed in a vice. She said a little hoarsely, ‘And I must say I’m glad to have caught you between marriages.’
He leaned over and kissed her lips. Just a gentle little sexy kiss, but it was enough to reignite last night’s wildfire, and send her blood coursing to her breasts.
It was only a gentle taunt, but so confusing. Why couldn’t he be serious? Whatever happened to the Italian belief that marriage was an imperative for women with children?
Their first courses arrived. Her soup was rich and fragrant, delicately spiced with nutmeg, perhaps a trace of ginger, with tiny green flecks of spinach floating in it.
In between mouthfuls she did her best to steer the conversation into useful channels. His work kept him in London for the moment, he told her, though he’d spent time in Zurich, Stockholm and Brussels, and had lived in New York for a couple of years. Not a good lifestyle for a parent. Or a husband, come to that.
‘Do you enjoy this work for the company? Never settling in one place?’
He shrugged, and heaped some of his abalone salad onto his fork. ‘It’s the work I’ve chosen.’
‘And is that…?’ She probably wouldn’t have asked if she hadn’t finished her champagne and been halfway through the Margaret River blanc. But beneath her flirty surface, questions were boiling up in her, things she had to know, even if they cut her to ribbons.
She raised her eyes to his. ‘Is that why your marriage didn’t work? All the travelling you do?’
He was still a second, his face impassive. Then he said coolly, ‘It didn’t continue because of a lack of passion.’
‘Oh.’ She flushed. ‘Then why-?’ She stopped herself in time. For heaven’s sake, did she want him to think she cared? In fact, she didn’t want to know anything about how they’d been together. It was ages ago now, anyway, ancient history. Still, she couldn’t prevent herself from reaching one step further, even though she realised she was advancing into dangerous territory. His razor sharp brain could pick up any veiled intention, however carefully she concealed it.
She took a casual sip of her wine, met his sharp gaze, then quickly glanced away. ‘So…you and Giulia didn’t consider having children?’
The thick black brows made a twitch, then he lowered his lashes, shaking his head at some private irony. ‘Never.’
‘Was that because you-you didn’t want children, or Giulia didn’t?’
He gave an amused shrug, but his eyes were glinting in that alert way that warned her to take care. ‘Does any man want children, tesoro? Men want women, and they move heaven and earth to win the ones they desire. Children are the inevitable baggage that goes along with them. Most men accept the price if the prize is worth it.’ He smiled, and it crept into his eyes and made tiny little charm lines fan out from the corners. ‘So I’m told.’
She returned the smile, but her insides plunged into a seething chaos.
So he’d put up with children if he wanted the mother enough, would he? For the sake of passion with the object of his desire, that woman he’d move heaven and earth for.
She wasn’t the jealous type, but those words throbbed like a stab-wound. She was afraid of the outcome if he should want Vivi, but she realised all at once she couldn’t bear him to not want her. Obviously she didn’t want him to take her baby away, but what if Vivi needed him some time?
And she was bound to. Call it the wine, or the music, but now he was here in the flesh, the gorgeous, irresistible flesh, the truth was shouting at her from every angle. Greta was absolutely right. Vivi needed her father.
Maybe she shouldn’t have let him off the marriage hook so easily. Did he seriously think she should look for some other man? Some imposter?
If he was basing his advice on his own experience, then she didn’t think much of it. Certainly, he might have gone to extraordinary lengths to win Giulia. But if he’d wanted the beautiful socialite so much, how could he then have dallied in Sydney, making love to her?
It made her wonder, though. Why hadn’t their passion lasted? Had they burned themselves out? Had he been so hot for Giulia, hotter than he’d been for her? How was that even possible?
She was torturing herself with the images just as the waiter glided in bearing their next courses.
When they’d been served she watched Alessandro speak to the young man with the charming civility that always made people twist themselves inside out to fulfil his lightest whim. The boy floated away, a glow in his eyes, ready to juggle plates on his head if it would make the Italian man’s dining experience the richer.
Six years ago, she’d been one of those people. Perhaps that had been her downfall. She’d been so unsophisticated, she’d had no skill in subterfuge, no way of concealing how overwhelmed she was. How deeply she’d fallen.
And she could see that Giulia was the sort of woman men would regard as a prize. She had that lush Mediterranean beauty, she was glam and glitzy and socially connected. From what Lara had gleaned, she was the sort to be found in the thick of the celeb crowd, the Milano fashion week, ski-ing at San Moritz. Perhaps she was one of those flirty signorinas who laughed a lot in a vivacious, sexy way and played an elusive game that drove natural-born hunters like Alessandro mad with lust.
Whatever the reason for the marriage’s failure, one depressing truth lingered on, in Lara’s mind at least.
She stared down at her chargrilled baby snapper, balancing on its elegant little plinth of asparagus. Even when she’d been fresh and unspoilt at twenty-one, good in a bikini, with the bloom of youth in her cheek-at her peak, some might have said-she’d still been no match for the prize that glittered from Italy.
‘Salad?’
She looked up and met Alessandro’s faint, questioning smile.
> ‘Please.’ She allowed him to help her to some pretty coloured leaves masquerading as lettuce. She said in a casual, conversational tone, ‘I saw some pictures of your wedding in a magazine once while I was waiting in a doctor’s surgery. Giulia is a very beautiful woman.’
The salad servers halted infinitesimally on their way back to the bowl. Alessandro’s black lashes momentarily screened his eyes, then flicked up to reveal a gaze darker and more fathomless than the most inaccessible chasm in the Bindinong Range.
He took time, as if choosing his words very carefully. ‘I didn’t marry her for the usual reasons. It was not something I planned.’ She gave him time to expand on his answer, gazing expectantly at him, and he said at last, a faint exasperation in his voice, ‘It was a marriage of convenience. Almost at once it became very inconvenient. It was annulled even before all the wedding gifts had been opened.’
‘Annulled!’ Her eyes widened.
Alert to the minefield he was traversing, Alessandro watched her process the implications, concealing his surge of sardonic amusement. Did it make his marriage less of a crime if there’d been no sex? He made a small grimace. If a woman rejected a man, for whatever reasons, why should she resent his finding solace elsewhere?
‘The reason for it disappeared.’ He sank his fork into the tender flesh of his blue-eyed cod with bland unconcern. ‘There was no point. So we put an end to it.’
After a second he flicked her a glance and noticed a very faint wrinkling of her brow as she weighed up the possibilities of him, Alessandro Vincenti, contracting a marriage and not engaging in sex. He’d have laughed himself if that raw nerve hadn’t recently been exposed to the elements. Who’d have believed that the events of six years drinking in her exquisitenesspast could still destabilise a man’s serenity?
‘Alessandro…’ She extended a hand to touch his. ‘I know men never want to admit this, but-did Giulia-hurt you?’
Disconcertingly, he saw something like compassion in her blue gaze.
He managed not to choke and stared at her in outraged incredulity. It took all of his control not to grab her and shake her. Was it possible she was thinking…? What, that his virility was in question?
He made a curt gesture with his fork. ‘There was no hurt involved. It was a mutual arrangement, without emotion of any sort.’
‘Oh, right.’ She nodded, but it was clear she understood nothing. Per carità. Did she seriously believe he was the sort of man who could love a woman, then five minutes later fall in love with another?
He exhaled a long breath. This was going to be harder than he’d ever imagined possible. He lounged negligently back in his chair and stretched out his long legs, his long tanned fingers curled loosely around the stem of his glass. ‘You’re frowning, tesoro. You’re not worrying about Vivi?’
‘Not at all. She’s with my mother. I know she’s in safe hands.’
‘Ah, yes. She seemed like a very safe mother. Will she be worried about you now, that is the question.’
Lara smiled. He didn’t know the half of it. ‘Why would she be?’
‘Well, mothers want their daughters to stay on the straight and narrow, I find. If she suspected her daughter of being in the hands of a big bad wolf who was planning to eat her up…’
Her sexual receptors swung to attention, and a pang of the old excitement zinged through her. Aha. This was a game she could enjoy.
She gave him a cool glance across the rim of her glass and fluttered her lashes. ‘My mother knows I can keep big bad wolves at bay.’
‘Are you sure you want to?’
The sensual golden shimmer in his hot dark eyes kindled something deep in her womb and ignited her nipples with a warm, restless yearning inside her lacy black bra.
Temptation caught her in its velvet claws. She’d resolved not to succumb again, but was that strictly necessary? Trouble was, last night was still so fresh in her senses. Surely, for old times’ sake, big girls could separate sex from love?
She said softly, ‘I’ll have to think.’
She gave him a long look from beneath her lashes, then turned her attention to her fish, taking her time to relish the tender flesh and piquant sauce. The challenge pulsed between them, stirring a yearning in her veins and an anticipatory tingle in her erotic regions.
Her lips closed over a succulent morsel on her fork. Feeling his hot gaze, she cast him a soft glance, her eyes just meeting his smiling, sensual look without quite lingering.
Eventually her fish’s delicate little spine was laid bare, and for a tiny instant she allowed her eyes to collide fully with his dark, shimmering gaze. At once she was flooded with the vision of how it had felt locked in his embrace, heart to thundering heart, and a wave of longing trapped the breath in her throat.
‘So?’ His voice was as dark and smoky as Satan’s.
Hers was so husky it seemed to come from deep in her diaphragm. ‘I know what would be the wise course.’
The strong lean hands wielding knife and fork arrested, and a flame blazed momentarily in his eyes’ dark depths, startling her with the wild notion that there was more than mere desire smouldering in him, but something as fierce as molten lava.
‘Haven’t you learned yet, Larissa?’ He spoke so forcefully the ghost of old Venice whispered through the polished patina of his perfect English. ‘In some matters there’s of no use to be wise.’ He pounded the table with his fist, making the silver jump. ‘There are moments in your life that you need to seize with both your hands.’
She stared at him in shock, her heart thudding at some veiled comprehension she couldn’t quite read. Was he talking about six years ago?
‘Well…well, how do I know this is one of them?’
He touched his linen napkin to his lips, then threw it down and sprang to his feet. Before she even had time to react he seized her and dragged her up out of her chair, thundering, ‘This is how.’
He pulled her into his arms and brought his stern, chiselled mouth down on hers with such fierce hunger that after the first stunned instant her lips ignited with a fiery demand of their own. She responded to the fabulous pressure, thrilled by the feel of his lean solidity, hard against her breasts and thighs. As his marauding tongue tantalised the silken walls of her mouth, the flavours of raspberry vinaigrette, wine, and big, sexy man rose in her senses and intoxicated her entire being.
Her bones dissolved.
Oh, God. Ravished in a public restaurant.
Lucky he was holding her. Lucky…? His every touch resonated through her like the deep vibrant chords of a double bass.
And as if he too were trapped by the electric connection, like a ravenous wolfhound he dragged her even closer to him, his big lean frame in arousing friction with her curves. She thrilled to the feel of him, sliding her hands under his jacket to explore the powerful muscled body radiating heat through his shirt.
He deepened the kiss and her hot, feverish blood rushed to inflame her nipples. With a moan she raised her arms to link around his neck, caressing his nape and clutching at his thick black hair.
Please, please, yearned her breasts, and other erotic places. In total oblivion of the surroundings, her wanton flesh tingled to his caressing hands on her arms, ribs and hips, every skin cell silently longing, begging for those delicious hands to move into more dynamic territory.
To urge him on she writhed a little against his muscled frame, and was rewarded to feel a hard convincing prod against her abdomen, at the same time as his hand slid to her breast and closed around it in a thrilling hold.
‘…me. Er…sir. Excuse me, sir, madam. If you wouldn’t…’
An irritating, wispy little buzz-fly in her ear solidified itself in her consciousness as a human voice, and she wrenched herself from the escalating delights and sprang guiltily from Alessandro’s grasp.
Trembly with arousal, she took a much-needed drag of air, and made some hurried adjustments to her dress.
The waiter, his boyish shiny face tinged with pin
k, stood with his gaze fixed on the wall, menus clutched to his chest. Through a hot flustered haze she saw beyond him to the neighbouring table, where two couples were now being seated, casting sly smirking looks their way.
She risked a glance at Alessandro, and wished she hadn’t. He was devouring her with his eyes, looking as famished as a wild beast, and she felt her flush deepen.
‘Sir…Would-would s-sir and madam care for a dessert?’
She noted Alessandro snap from his contemplation of her and turn away, glancing thoughtfully around at the architecture while running a nonchalant hand through his hair. He responded to the lad with almost his usual poise, though his deep voice had developed a flattering hoarseness.
‘Give us ten, twenty minutes to think about it.’ He exchanged a narrow, man-of-the-world glance with the boy and the lad responded to it with a knowing nod. Then, as coolly as if nothing unusual had happened, Alessandro held her chair for her, before resuming his own place.
The boy presented them with their menus and departed at high speed.
Still embarrassed, and hyper-conscious of their neighbours, especially the women, who could hardly keep their eyes off Alessandro, though now he was angled away from them they couldn’t catch more than an occasional stunning profile, Lara leaned over and whispered, ‘I think we should go now.’
‘Ah,’ he said silkily, his eyes lighting, ‘but where? Where should we go, tesoro?’
‘Well…home, I suppose.’
‘Your place?’
‘God, no.’ She felt his hand come to rest on her knee under the table, and her heart rocked into a dance number. ‘I mean, that is…’
Under stress, her brain cells were capable of some pretty rapid calculation. Her place was out of the question. But, though time was running out, she was having such a good time, all stirred up like a flesh-and-blood woman for the first time in years. Home would have been such a tame end to things.
