by Daphne Clair
Making a meal had been foreplay, a seductive art that Zito practised with the same unselfconscious, epicurean enjoyment that he brought to their lovemaking.
An art that had not diminished in the last year. Despite the inadequate work counter and the inconvenient placing of fridge and cooker, he demonstrated the same competence and controlled flamboyance that he had in his perfectly planned workspace with its acres of tiles and stainless steel. He even managed, apparently by instinct, to avoid hitting his head on the low-hung cupboards.
A bad dream? No, rather a blissfully sweet one, but unbearably nostalgic.
Roxane had told him once that his cooking style was like Russian ballet—so much honed masculine muscle disciplined to graceful and occasionally extravagant use within a defined space reminded her of the male dancers.
Zito laughed and said, ‘Aren’t they all gay?’
‘Not all of them,’ she’d protested, and he’d demanded to know how she knew, playing the jealous Latin lover, and finally swept her off to bed to prove that he was definitely, unmistakably heterosexual.
CHAPTER THREE
UNCONSCIOUSLY Roxane’s lips curved in a wistful, reminiscent smile.
He’d had no need to prove his sexual orientation to her. It had been blatantly obvious from the first time she’d looked into his eyes. Despite her inexperience Roxane had recognised with a small starburst of excitement the quickly controlled but unmistakable flame of sexual desire. A flame that had ultimately consumed her, leaving behind the ashes of a marriage and a troublesome, glowing ember of reciprocal hunger.
An ember, she admitted with inward dismay, that removing herself from his dangerously flammable orbit, settling in another country, rebuilding her life without him, had failed to destroy. The sound of his voice, his breath warming her temple, the touch of his lips on the vulnerable skin of her wrist, had been enough to bring it flaring back to instant life.
‘You had a bottle of Te Awa Farm Boundary in that cabinet in the other room,’ Zito said, lowering a handful of spaghetti into a pot.
Roxane mentally shook herself, irrationally glad that she needn’t be ashamed of her choice of that increasingly less rare commodity, a good New Zealand red. Zito had taught her to recognise decent wines. ‘I’ll get it.’
‘No, stay there.’ His hand pressed her back into the chair as he passed her on his way to the door.
But she got up all the same, needing to do something to banish the bittersweet memories. By the time Zito came back carrying an already opened bottle and two glasses, she had spread a cotton cloth on the table and set two places. And was standing staring at them, thinking, Why am I doing this? If I had any guts I’d have shown him the door and told him not to come back.
He poured wine into glasses, handing one to Roxane. ‘Sit.’
She sat.
Habit, she told herself, watching a knife flash through an onion. During their marriage she’d become accustomed to letting him tell her what to do, and it had taken her less than sixty minutes to slip back into the mould he’d shaped for her.
Zito picked up a tomato and cut easily through the shiny red skin. Always buy good knives. That was something else he’d taught her. On moving into the cottage she’d treated herself to the best German stainless steel, although she could ill afford it.
Subconsciously she had still been under the spell he’d woven about her.
This mood of stunned acquiescence was due to shock. When they’d eaten she would assert herself, thank him politely and then tell him to go.
She shifted her gaze from his lean, strong fingers pinching tips of fragrant thyme from the collection of herbs on the window ledge, and reached for the luminous ruby wine, letting it slide down her throat like liquid satin.
Zito poured wine from the bottle into the concoction he was stirring on the cooker, intensifying the tantalising aroma that was making Roxane’s taste buds come alive.
Soon he set before her a plate of spaghetti coils dressed with butter and herbs, topped by a mouth-watering garlic-scented sauce and garnished with fresh basil.
Then he sat opposite her, lifting his wineglass in a silent toast before picking up a fork and expertly winding spaghetti around the tines.
Instead of eating it he offered it to her, leaning across the small table, and automatically Roxane opened her lips and accepted the delicious mouthful.
Nobody cooked spaghetti sauce like Zito. Involuntarily she closed her eyes to better appreciate the taste. This too was a remembered ritual, and behind her tightly shut lids tears pricked.
She swallowed, licked a residue of sauce from her lower lip, then dared to open her eyes, hoping Zito would be concentrating on his meal.
He was smiling at her, his gaze alert and quizzical and a deliberate sexual challenge as it moved from her mouth to her eyes.
‘It’s…’ Roxane cleared her throat. ‘It’s great, as always.’
He never made exactly the same sauce twice, varying the ingredients and the amounts according to his mood and what was available—or according to his assessment of her mood of the moment. But each variation was a masterpiece, and tonight’s was no exception.
‘Good.’ As if he’d needed her seal of approval, he applied himself to his plate. ‘It would have been better if I’d made the spaghetti myself, but this is not bad.’
‘It’s made on the premises I buy it from.’ He’d spoiled her for the ordinary supermarket kind.
Roxane had never mastered the tricky business of twirling spaghetti round a fork without some strands trailing all the way back to the plate, or having the whole lot perversely slide off just as she lifted it to her mouth.
Zito let his fork rest several times as he watched her efforts, a quirk of amusement on his mouth.
‘Don’t laugh,’ she said finally, exasperated. ‘You know I’m no good at this.’
He did laugh then, openly. ‘Look—like this.’ His hand came over hers, his fingers manipulating the fork, lifting it to her mouth with every strand neatly rolled.
She pulled her hand from his as she swallowed the proffered morsel. Dozens of times he’d tried to teach her, yet she’d failed to learn, maintaining it was in his genes, that he’d been born with a silver spaghetti fork in his mouth.
‘I’m out of practice.’ And with him critically studying her technique, she was clumsier than usual. ‘I hardly ever eat pasta now.’ What they were having was left over from a recent dinner she’d made for a couple of friends.
‘No wonder you’ve got thinner.’ His penetrating glance at her figure disapproved.
‘I’m not thin!’
‘Thinner, I said,’ he corrected. ‘You’re as lovely as ever—’
‘Thank you.’ Her voice was brittle.
‘—but you’ve lost weight.’
‘I’m getting more exercise than I used to. It’s healthy.’ She’d begun walking to work to save the bus fare when she’d been living in rental accommodation and her casual job wasn’t paying much. But she’d enjoyed the early morning exercise, except when Auckland’s fickle weather turned nasty. Her present job being largely desk-bound, walking to the office was a good way of keeping fit. ‘Do you still play squash?’
‘Yes.’
At one time he’d been a state champion; trophies lined the bookcase in his study where he sometimes worked at home. But after he turned twenty-five the business had gradually absorbed more of his energies. His grandfather had retired and his father had been anxious to groom the heir to take his place in the family firm.
‘How is your family?’ Roxane inquired.
‘Do you care?’
There it was again, that flash of acrimony like a searing flame darting through the steely armour of politeness.
‘Yes, I do,’ she said steadily. ‘I like your parents, and I miss your sisters, they were fun and very good to me. And your grandfather is a darling.’
‘But not his grandson.’
Roxane stopped trying to persuade a stubborn strand of sp
aghetti onto her fork and looked up. ‘I told you, Zito, it wasn’t—’
His closed fist thumped on the table, making the glasses jump, the wine shiver and sparkle in the light from overhead. ‘You told me nothing! Nothing that made any sense!’
Roxane had jumped too, and she felt her face go taut and wary.
He said immediately, wearily, ‘I didn’t intend to scare you again. This can wait.’
Zito had never believed in mixing food and argument, maintaining it spoiled both of them, that each deserved to be enjoyed in its own way. Nine times out of ten, he said, after a good meal an argument didn’t seem worth the effort.
Nine times out of ten he’d been right. And the tenth time, his way of resolving any issue between the two of them had been to make love to her until she could no longer think, until nothing seemed to matter but her need for him, and his for her, and every problem dissolved in the aftermath of passion. They had never, she thought with surprise, had a real quarrel.
‘Eat,’ he said, and she realised she’d been caught in a net of insidious remembrance while her food cooled.
A childish spurt of rebellion urged her to put down her fork and tell him she didn’t want any more. Instead she twirled more spaghetti and lifted it carefully to her mouth.
‘Do you feed yourself properly?’ he asked her.
‘I have perfectly adequate meals. Salads, lean meat, fish…soup in winter, and vegetables.’
He made a sound deep in his throat as though he didn’t think much of that. ‘Do you entertain?’
‘My personal entertaining tends to be impromptu and informal.’ The cottage couldn’t comfortably be used for large gatherings. Even the dining room that previous owners had carved from the original big old-fashioned kitchen didn’t have space for more than a table for six and a sideboard.
‘Tell me about this job of yours,’ Zito invited.
‘I started work with Leon’s catering firm soon after I arrived in Auckland, as casual labour. At first I was just serving food and laying tables, working lots of overtime…’ She’d needed the money. ‘After a couple of months he asked me to join the permanent staff.’
Leon had been impressed by her quickness, her reliability and her initiative. She remembered the inordinate thrill his praise had given her. ‘I could see,’ she went on, ‘that some clients would have liked more than food. Someone to organise invitations, publicity, venues—take care of the details of running a successful affair.’
‘You could see?’ Zito tilted his head.
That wasn’t disbelief, Roxane told herself. It’s just interest. Don’t be touchy.
‘Yes,’ she said firmly. ‘So I ran the idea past Leon and he said, “Let’s try it,” and put me in charge.’
‘Just like that.’
‘Just like that,’ she confirmed, and tried not to look smug. ‘I’m very good at what I do, and now I have the salary to prove it.’ Soon she would be able to afford new furniture and a few luxury items.
‘Congratulations.’
‘It’s small beer compared to the Riccioni empire, but so far we’re a roaring success.’
‘Deloras isn’t an empire, it’s a family business,’ Zito argued testily.
‘A family business worth millions.’ Maybe billions. She had never been privy to financial details.
‘That isn’t a crime. We all work very hard.’
‘I know you do.’ It was true of the men in the family anyway. The women weren’t expected to take part directly, as had been made very clear to her.
She was to keep house, which in practice meant ‘ordering’ a staff of three experienced people for a household of two, preside at parties and formal dinners for which the catering was performed by Deloras chefs and waiters, and attend functions that often seemed to have no other purpose than to allow the Deloras men to parade their success in the form of the clothes, jewels, beauty and breeding of their womenfolk.
At one of these extravaganzas, she’d complained to Zito that she felt about as useful as the magnificent carved ice centrepiece that graced the table before them. He’d smiled down at her and said, ‘You’re far more beautiful, and not nearly as cold.’
His eyes gleaming wickedly, he’d folded her into his arms and swung her onto the crowded area of polished floor where other couples were dancing under dimmed coloured lights to a slow, romantic tune.
Swaying rhythmically to the music, his cheek resting against her temple, he murmured to her reminders of the heat that they generated each time they came together as man and woman, his wonderfully sexy voice thickening as he described to her in explicit detail how she had reacted to him only the night before, how her responses had delighted him, how much he had enjoyed watching her total abandonment to pleasure. And what pleasure she had given him in return.
‘Zito, don’t!’ she’d finally begged him, embarrassed by the flush that burned in her cheeks, indeed over her entire body. ‘This is a public place.’
‘No one can hear,’ he assured her, bringing her even closer to him as he looked at her with glittering eyes. He had succeeded in arousing himself as much as he had her, she realised. His lips inches from hers, he said, ‘Shall we find somewhere private?’
She was trembling. ‘Here?’ The function was held in the ballroom of one of Melbourne’s historic houses. The whole ground floor was in use, and the upstairs region had been cordoned off.
‘Outside,’ Zito whispered. He leaned forward a little more, his lips barely touching hers for half a second. But instead of drawing away he bent to press another kiss to the smooth skin just behind the delicate silver and diamond pendant, one of his many exquisite gifts to her, that hung from her earlobe. The tip of his tongue traced the tiny groove, and every one of her nerve ends came alive.
Her teeth bit into her lip to stop a telltale moan escaping her throat, where her heart seemed to have lodged, a wave of sensation racing from the sensitive spot he’d teased, all the way to her toes, throbbing between her legs. For a horrifying moment she was afraid she would climax right there on the dance floor.
Pulling away, she looked at him with glazed eyes, her voice low and hoarse. ‘Find somewhere.’
Without a word he turned her, a hand on her waist just below the daringly dipped back of her bronze chiffon gown. He cut a ruthless swathe through the dancers and the chattering groups gathered at the edge of the room. Someone spoke to them and Roxane tried to smile in response, her facial muscles stiff, her cheekbones heated.
Zito curtly returned the greeting but didn’t slacken his stride, his arm sliding further about her waist and urging her forward.
Then he’d found a door and they were outside, where a few couples holding champagne flutes stood about on a narrow terrace lit by rows of coloured lightbulbs. It was cooler here, but not cold.
Zito didn’t hesitate, plunging down a shallow flight of steps and along a brick path that narrowed as it entered a darkened thicket of shrubs and trees. Behind them Roxane heard a woman laugh, a man rumble some remark.
‘Zito,’ she hissed. ‘People are going to guess what we’re—’
‘Let them.’
‘Zito…’ She made an effort to slow, stop.
Zito halted, both arms going about her. ‘Do you care?’ He kissed her quickly, thoroughly, his mouth covering hers, making her open it to him, his tongue feathering the roof of her mouth before withdrawing. His teeth gently nipped her lower lip.
‘No,’ she confessed recklessly, when he left her an inch between their mouths for her to reply.
Not speaking again, he propelled her further along the path, and they came on a small, unlit summerhouse. Inside Roxane saw the flutter of a light-coloured dress, heard a man’s slow voice and a whispered feminine answer.
Zito gave a smothered laugh and steered Roxane off the path between a couple of white-starred shrubs, the perfumed flowers brushing her arms and leaving a subtle sweet scent on her skin. They crossed a small moonlit lawn sheltered by surrounding growth, and under the
shadow of a huge old tree he paused. The night was black here, the egg-shaped half moon that hung in the sky nearly obscured by leafy branches overhead.
He kissed her again, long and deep, and his fingers found the short zipper of her dress. It was the sort of dress that didn’t allow a bra, and when he slid it from her shoulders it fell about her feet.
Roxane gasped, and Zito bent, one hand still on her body, skimming down her back, and picked up the light, flimsy thing to drape it over a nearby branch.
‘Are you cold?’ he asked her, his hands touching her, caressing.
‘No.’ She was shivering, but her skin was on fire, her blood hot and heavy.
‘These next,’ he muttered, and her skimpy satin and lace panties joined her dress in the tree. Even through the increasing clamour of her senses, screaming for release, she was dimly grateful for his care of her clothing. Feeling silly wearing nothing but her high-heeled shoes, she slipped out of them, and a thin carpet of fallen leaves cooled her bare feet.
Somehow that added to the eroticism of this mad sexual escapade.
‘You’re incredibly beautiful,’ Zito told her. He stood only a breath away, but not touching.
Her eyes were adjusting to the night, and she could dimly discern the contours of his face, see the glint of his eyes. ‘You can’t tell,’ she argued shakily. ‘It’s dark.’
His hands came to rest on her hips. ‘There’s moonlight.’
There was, filtering in moving shards through the breeze-ruffled leaves overhead. His shirt glimmered in shifting patterns of white contrasting with his dark jacket and trousers. The fact that she was naked and he was still fully dressed in formal evening clothes was suddenly a fierce turn-on. Unfair but unbelievably sexy.
‘You’re a nymph,’ he said. ‘A naiad. Something out of a fairy tale.’
But Roxane knew she was all too human, her body was telling her so, loudly. Surely he could hear the singing in her veins, the roaring tide of desire that made her temples throb, shutting out all sound but her own quickened breathing and the seduction of his voice.
