Читать книгу Modern Romance March 2019 5-8 - Ким Лоренс, Dani Collins - Страница 15

IF HE HAD shown any hint of smug complacency she would, Flora decided, have slapped him.

But he didn’t. There was zero reaction on his lean, dark face as, without missing a beat, he angled a speculative brow and said, ‘How does forty-eight hours sound?’

Her hands, which had been clenched into fists, relaxed but she was mystified by his question. ‘Sound for what?’

He gave a sardonic smile. ‘To organise things this end.’

Her eyes flew wide, her lashes fluttering like trapped butterflies against her cheek. ‘So soon? But I thought that...’

‘I’d give you time to change your mind?’

Her lips tightened. ‘I agreed!’

‘And your word is your bond. Good to know. However, the situation is somewhat urgent. Salvatore is dying.’

The obvious response to this reminder was—when?

He couldn’t see the thought but he could see the guilt that followed in its wake move across her transparent face.

This was a woman who should never play poker.

Her being too nice to press the issue worked well for him because the truth was he didn’t know. The truth was Ivo would be more shocked to learn that his grandfather was really dying than if it turned out to be another of his imaginative manipulations.

His factory setting was extreme scepticism where Salvatore was concerned, but he would deal with any surprises once he got Flora and Jamie to Italy.

‘Look, I’ve got some things to keep me busy in London—you just organise you and the baby and I’ll be back for you.’

He made it sound ludicrously simple, as if you could just walk away from your life and it would be waiting for you when you returned. ‘But this place.’ With a shake of her head she looked around the room. ‘The bookings We have an arrangement with local artists and artisans...’

‘Yes, I’d noticed. Good marketing. Symbiotic. I’ll buy everything—how will that work?’

She blinked at the casual way he said it. ‘That sculpture over there.’ She nodded towards the window embrasure where a stone carved otter stood.

He nodded. ‘Nice.’

‘And expensive. Neil has five more works displayed around the place.’ The local sculptor had some of his larger pieces of work displayed in government buildings.

‘It looks good there.’

‘So is that your plan? If there’s a problem throw money at it.’

‘Do you have a problem with that?’

She lowered her eyes, knowing that if she said yes she could be accused of hypocrisy—after all, she wasn’t complaining about the money he was throwing at her.

‘Just so long as you know.’

‘Fine, then just email me the details and I’ll arrange refunds and throw in an expenses-paid break later in the year. I can’t see many people complaining.’

He was knocking down her objections like skittles before she even had a chance to line them up. Before she had a chance to think through the implications of what desperation had led her to so recklessly agree to.

The desperation hadn’t gone away, she reminded herself.

Could he genuinely not see problems or was he just ignoring them? she wondered, her frustration growing at his leave-it-to-me attitude. She didn’t like leaving it to anyone. Flora took responsibility for her own decisions. ‘But how are we going to explain closing?’

His broad shoulders lifted in a negligent elegant shrug. ‘A full refurbishment?’

‘We don’t need refurbishing!’ she protested indignantly.

‘I’ll think of something, don’t worry.’

She bridled at the verbal-pat-on-the-head attitude; she could almost see him moving on in his head. Well, no one could accuse him of letting the grass grow, that was for sure!

‘Right, I’ll be back Friday.’ Moving towards the door, he turned back. ‘I almost forgot.’

He strode back towards her. Unprepared for the action, she didn’t resist, and he caught her wrist, turned her hand over and one by one curled her clenched fingers open to reveal her palm.

Flora was conscious of a strange, breathless sensation as she looked at his brown fingers against her own. The breath caught in her chest escaped in a long, slow, sibilant breath when he tipped up a velvet pouch and a ring landed in her palm.

Her eyes lifted to the lean dark face of the man bent over her hand. ‘What’s that?’ she asked, her voice a throaty whisper.

It invited a sarcastic comeback but he didn’t accept the invitation.

Ivo took hold of the ring and slid it onto her extended finger. ‘Believe you me, cara, this is something I never thought I’d be doing.’ Never wanted to, and yet even though his feelings were not involved, the symbolism—yes, it had to be the symbolism—made things shift inside him. ‘I suppose I should be looking to you for guidance?’ Why should the thought of another man putting a ring on this finger make him feel so...? Not jealous, that would have been absurd, but he just felt angry because she hadn’t seen her ex for the loser he clearly was.

She stared from the finger that held a gleaming diamond to Ivo’s face for a moment and back; her confusion was not feigned. For a moment she had no idea what he was talking about and then she realised... Callum!

She clenched her fingers and pulled her hand back. The ring glittered against her skin.

It wasn’t as if she had forgotten, or the moment hadn’t seemed special at the time, but quite crazily she remembered nothing approaching this heart-pounding shock, even though Callum had proposed prettily.

Callum’s proposal had been like a well-rehearsed and smoothly stage-managed love scene in a play. And yet, perfect hadn’t made her feel dizzy, just self-conscious and slightly nervous that she’d miss her cue and say the wrong thing to spoil the prettiness.

The irony was, Callum had been pretending. Ivo wasn’t pretending he was giving her anything other than a prop; he didn’t do love.

Then the disturbing realisation hit her, granted what she was feeling had nothing to do with love...couldn’t have anything to do with love. No, this was about chemical attraction, and the attraction she felt for Ivo was a billion times stronger than anything she had felt for her ex-fiancé!

‘So, do you always carry around a chunk of diamond in your pocket?’

‘I like to be prepared.’

‘Perhaps I should proofread this file? You might have got some things wrong,’ she snapped waspishly.

‘Oh, if you have trouble sleeping I’d recommend it.’

‘I suppose your life is fascinating.’

‘You’re about to find out, cara.’

He watched her expression change as the reality came crashing in. ‘You’ll be ready to leave.’

It wasn’t a suggestion and Flora couldn’t let the order—any order—pass unchallenged. You gave in to an arrogant man drunk on his own power and self-importance once and he’d walk all over you—helped in no small part by her hormones, unless she took control!

She was no longer that silly romantic girl, but maybe a lustful woman was more dangerous?

‘Thursday suits me better.’ But it didn’t, did it? It didn’t suit her at all.

The moment the words left her lips, Flora wished them unsaid, but, the damage done, she fought to keep the dismay from showing. She’d established she was no pushover but that token gesture had given her one day less to prepare—unless he was difficult, in which case she could concede with dignity.

Please be difficult!

He studied her, a flicker of a smile moving across his face, though when he responded it was with perfect solemnity. ‘Absolutely, whatever you say, cara.’

Flora took Jamie to say goodbye to her mum, leaving herself plenty of time to be back in the time that Ivo had said he’d arrive.

Flora, feeling guilty as hell for lying to her mother, had gone for the partial-truth option.

When Flora had explained the situation her mum, being family orientated herself, had agreed that of course Flora must take Jamie to meet his Italian family, even though she would obviously miss her grandson but, as her sister was coming to visit from Australia, she wouldn’t be lonely.

It wasn’t until Flora was making her last farewells that she realised she might have spoken more than she realised about Ivo Greco.

‘I know you were hurt, Flora,’ her mum said quietly, ‘by that wee idiot, Callum, but not all men are alike.’

Startled, Flora finished strapping Jamie in his car seat and turned back, one hand on the door.

‘I’m not, Mum. What made you say that?’

‘The way you were talking about Bruno’s little brother.’

Flora hurriedly did a mental review of their conversation. Had she been talking about him...that much? ‘Oh, Mum, he’s not little. He’s—’

‘Fair enough, and it’s true I’ve never met the man, but in my experience there is a big difference between an arrogant man who loves the sound of his own voice and can’t stop boring you with how marvellous he is, and a man who is quietly confident and listens to your opinion.’ Balanced on the one crutch she had been promoted to, she hugged her daughter.

* * *

Some people listened to music when they drove, some people liked company. Ivo liked neither. He enjoyed the solitude of driving, the fact that he could legitimately ignore an email or phone, and call it being a considerate law-abiding driver.

If he’d actually been travelling with the woman he was to marry he supposed that he might have felt obliged to make conversation, but he wasn’t.

Basic civility required that he respond if she spoke but he had no intention of encouraging conversation, and definitely not initiating it!

The baby had fallen asleep almost the instant he’d been strapped into his baby seat in the back, and Flora had been totally silent.

There was more than one sort of silence.

This one was not relaxing. He recognised the perversity of his reaction when he even started feeling irritated by the fact she seemed to feel no need to break it.

‘Are you all right?’

Flora started, her head whipped around his way, the fat, shiny plait she had her hair confined in today landing with a thunk on her shoulder. ‘Yes.’ She glanced at the baby in the back, before training her eyes once more on the side window, wrapped up in her own thoughts.

He let the monosyllable lie another ten minutes before the compulsion to prod her into a response overcame him. It was not about hearing her voice, although the light accent was pleasing on the ear.

‘Babies don’t travel light.’ The boot of the car was capacious but it was full to the brim of clutter that was apparently essential for babies. Loading it in had been like a military operation. There had barely been room for the small bag that Flora had brought—either she did travel light, which would make her a very unusual woman in his experience, or she wasn’t expecting to be staying long.

‘No.’ This time she didn’t even turn her head.

His jaw clenched as the conviction the silent treatment was deliberate grew.

He didn’t speak again until they had passed a sign that said the airport was another ten miles. They’d made good time. ‘I’m beginning to think you’re ignoring me, cara?’

Flora almost laughed...ignore!

As if there were any way in the world she could have ignored six feet five of vital masculinity in this enclosed space. Air-conditioning or not, she could feel the warmth of his skin and smell the warm clean male scent of his body. The combination did not make for a relaxing journey.

‘You usually have a lot to say for yourself.’

Callum had once said something similar, accusing her after a meeting with friends that she had hogged the conversation. The irony hadn’t struck her until later that Callum liked talking about himself so much that she rarely got to contribute to any conversation. She didn’t have to. He enjoyed worshipful silence.

And she’d been stupid enough to supply it!

Her eyes slid to her travelling companion. While Ivo Greco’s arrogance entered a room before he did, he could not be accused of bragging, but her mum was wrong. The fact that any personal information had to be dragged out of him didn’t mean he couldn’t have taught lessons in arrogance.

‘I was thinking, wondering, if I’m not doing the most stupid thing I’ve ever done in my life.’ She’d also been trying to figure out a way of asking how long her stay was likely to be without making it sound as if she were wishing for his grandfather’s death.

So far she hadn’t come up with one.

His brows lifted. ‘I suppose, cara, it depends how stupid the most stupid thing you’ve done previously was.’

Her lips moved in a whisper of a smile, which vanished like smoke as she admitted ruefully, ‘It was pretty stupid.’ Falling for Callum was stupid. Believing he’d loved her was even more stupid.

A bit of hero worship, at fifteen, was one thing. She wasn’t the only local girl who’d had the local boy who’d become an international football legend on her bedroom wall. She wasn’t the only one to compete for a glimpse of him on his rare visits home to see his parents who still lived in the house he’d grown up in.

But she was the only one who had bumped into the sporting hero a few years later in Edinburgh. She’d been flattered when he’d recognised her and in a state of disbelief when he had invited her to dinner.

One short month later he’d proposed. Walking on air, she’d accepted, but even before she’d had a chance to share the news, it had been over. At least the humiliation had been private.

Her gaze flickered to the man beside her. How many hearts had he broken? she wondered. Did he keep count? she mused cynically. Did he even remember their names?

A pothole in the road that jolted her made her realise how long she’d been staring at him, in a way that could, to the casual observer, be confused with drooling. Ashamed and a little alarmed at the conscious effort it required to drag her gaze from his patrician profile, she rubbed the ring finger on her left hand hard.

It was only at the last minute that she had remembered to take off the ring Ivo had produced and slipped onto her finger before he’d left. She’d just managed to stuff it in her handbag before her mum had appeared from the pottery.

Handbag! She experienced a flurry of panic...hadn’t she?

The noise of Flora scrabbling in her handbag drew his attention sideways for long enough to register the panic on her face.

‘What’s wrong?’

Heart thudding with trepidation, Flora shook her head and dumped the entire contents of her handbag onto her knee.

‘The ring...was...is it real?’ She aimed for casual and produced shrill panic.

‘You mean is it fictitious?’

Irritated, she cut across him. ‘I mean, is it a real diamond?’

He arched a brow. ‘You’re worried I’d fob you off with a fake?’ He shook his head in an attitude of mock hurt. ‘You think I’m cheap.’

‘I think you’re...’ She inhaled a deep relieved breath and sank back weakly in her seat as her fingers closed around an object that had slipped into a hole in the bag lining. A moment later it was in her shaking hand. ‘Thank God!’ she breathed in fervent relief as she slipped the rock onto her finger.

‘It fits well.’

‘Yes, but I’d feel a lot happier if it was in a bank vault,’ she said darkly.

‘It looks better on your finger.’

Flora, who was repacking the collection of female essentials that had spilled onto her lap, turned her head. ‘I thought I’d lost it. I nearly had heart failure.’

‘It’s just a ring.’

‘Oh!’ An explanation for his relaxed attitude occurred to her. ‘Is it insured?’

‘I hadn’t got around to that.’

The pucker between her feathery brows that had been sitting there all morning deepened as she remembered her mother’s comments. She was not ready to admit that there wasn’t any commonality between the two of them, but on the subject of expensive rings the two reacted very differently.

Callum had had no hesitation accepting the ring that she had slid off her trembling finger after he’d dumped her. She could still hear the moral indignation in his voice as he’d accused her of tricking him, of hiding the truth from him.

‘I mean, kids, a family, what other reason does a guy get married for?’

‘Oh, I don’t know—love?’

He’d laughed, actually laughed at her then, explaining the way you did to a small child or someone not very bright, ‘There are plenty of girls out there for love. A wife is different—a man puts her on a pedestal.’

She didn’t know about the pedestal but he had put the woman he had married two months after he’d dumped Flora in a mansion, several, actually, and, just as he’d said, there were still plenty of girls out there giving Callum love...or at least sex. Callum had never had any intention of changing his lifestyle for something like marriage...he believed he could have it all, and he did.

The wife had to know about the girlfriends. It wasn’t as if Callum was discreet, and there were always cameras and phones around to record any social-media-worthy action of an ex-premier-league footballer, but did the beautiful blonde know that the ring she wore had once been on someone else’s finger? Flora wondered, staring down at the diamond glittering on her own finger.

She had been devastated at the time but Flora appreciated now that she’d had a lucky escape. She only wished it was good judgement and not a biological failing on her part that was responsible.

‘Stop worrying.’

Her eyes lifted and made fleeting contact with Ivo’s dark stare. He can’t read your mind, she soothed herself, managing a huff of scornful laughter.

‘Easy for you to say!’

At the wheel Ivo stiffened in response to being snapped at. The women in his life purred and smiled, and the novelty value of having this redhead snarl up at him had limited novelty value. Before he could react in kind there was a grumpy snuffling sound from the back seat, followed by a wail.

‘See what you’ve done now,’ she reproached, ignoring his indignant growl of, ‘Me!’ as she twisted around in her seat and murmured soothingly, ‘Hush, Jamie, we’re nearly there.’

Actually, they were there.

It took seconds for him to park up in the small terminal.

There was no struggling with bags this end; what appeared to be an army of people arrived and began to unpack the luggage. Their progress through customs was equally swift and effortless and it felt like moments later that they were on the plane with no airline logo, though inside Greco was discreetly evident from the headed notepaper to the coasters on the table.

Ivo told her to make herself at home and vanished, leaving her to cope with the baby. She’d have liked to call him selfish but there were several hovering staff offering her assistance.

Having read up on travelling by air with a baby, Flora spent take-off and the next part of the journey feeding Jamie, who didn’t appear to suffer any problems with the change in pressure. She had just got him changed and back to sleep when Ivo appeared.

He wasn’t alone.

‘This is Cristina.’ The young woman smiled. ‘She’s one of the nannies.’

It would have made less sense to Flora if he had said the woman was part of a boy band. ‘What do you mean, the nannies?’ The plural part hadn’t passed her by.

‘Well, Nanny Emily is getting on, though don’t let her hear me say it.’ The young woman beside him smiled. ‘And—’

Flora cut him off mid-sentence. ‘If you think I’m handing Jamie over to anyone, you are off your head!’

After scanning her angry face, Ivo turned to the young woman and said something in Italian that made her vanish. ‘I’m trying to make your life easier here,’ he said, struggling to hang onto his temper.

Flora flung back the plait, and shook her head, causing stray red curls to drift across her face. Ivo, distracted by those golden-tinted wisps, fought a strong compulsion to push them back.

‘No, you are trying to take over my life. Jamie’s life.’ Give him an inch and she’d be asking his permission before she decided what dress to wear. This man was so typical of the breed, she decided, forgetting she had ever imagined for one second that she had misjudged him.

‘Where is the harm in having a nanny?’ Not accustomed to considering anyone’s convenience but his own, Ivo had rationalised the efforts he had made to make the journey and stay as comfortable and stress-free for Flora as possible by telling himself it had nothing whatever to do with sentiment, it was simple practicality.

The last thing he wanted was her gratitude. He just wanted Jamie. Admittedly they came as a package but that, he hoped, was a temporary situation.

Not gratitude, but the last thing he had expected was her spitting fury!

Flora compressed her lips. ‘No harm at all if you live in the nineteenth century,’ she agreed with a smile that aimed for provocation, and if the tightening of the muscles around his mouth was any indication she succeeded.

‘Ever heard of delegation?’

‘Ever heard of consultation?’ she retorted, planting her hands on her hips as her chin lifted another defiant notch. ‘Ground rules, Ivo, where Jamie is concerned I make the decisions. Is that clear?’

The look of astonishment that flickered across his incredibly handsome face might have been funny in other, less fraught, circumstances.

‘Was that an ultimatum?’ he grated, clinging to his temper.

‘Excellent,’ she approved. ‘You’re catching on. It’s possible you’re not as stupid as you look.’ About halfway through she sort of knew she’d gone too far, but she was on a roll and couldn’t stop. She knew she was shaking; it was always that way when she let her anger get the better of her.

He didn’t say a word, he just looked down at her. The colour that had flamed in her face had faded, leaving it washed pale; her eyes were blue pools, the defiance in them now tinged with wariness. With no warning his anger snuffed out.

She looked so tired but she was so stubborn. In his head an image materialised of him holding her until the stiff rigidity in her shoulders dissolved, she dissolved against him, warm and... He gave his head a sharp jarring shake to dislodge the image and the emotions that went with it.

‘I was trying to help, but if you enjoy being in a state of permanent exhaustion—fine!’ he said, wrapping up his misplaced concern in irritation. ‘Your choice. But for God’s sake sit down before you fall down!’

Flora did, not because she was grateful for his reminder that she looked awful, but because her knees were shaking in reaction to the emotional confrontation. Probably the first of many, Flora girl, so you need to toughen up.

‘I should have discussed it with you.’

The concession made her eyes widen.

‘But I just assumed...’

‘What, that babies have an army of nannies and live in nurseries?’

‘I did,’ he said.

‘And look how well that turned out!’

He responded to her soft taunt with a grin that literally took her breath away. Wow, if Ivo Greco decided to seduce a girl she’d be seduced, Flora realised, no if, but or even maybe.

In her anxiety to push away the thoughts and the insidious warmth unfurling low in her belly and confusing rush of feeling that came with it, she said the first thing that came into her head, a question that was already there but she’d never intended actually to ask.

‘How old were you when your parents died?’

His smile vanished to be replaced by a more familiar hauteur. She bent her head, waiting; she could almost smell the chilly put-down coming her way.

It didn’t come.

‘I was a few months old when my mother died.’ Her head came up with a snap. ‘She was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was pregnant, but she delayed treatment until after I was born... So you could say I killed her.’

His father had.

He’d apologised the next day, tears streaming down his face as he’d said over and over, ‘I didn’t mean it.’

It was not a memory he accessed voluntarily, though the smell of stale alcohol on someone’s breath always brought the moment back.

‘Only if you were a total idiot!’ she retorted, hotly indignant—furious! Surely no one would allow a child to think that? To potentially carry that sort of guilt through life and into adulthood?

Eyes misted, she turned her head sharply, embarrassed by the emotions that threatened to find release in tears, emotions that only intensified as her eyes drifted towards the figure of the sleeping baby.

She might never know what it felt like to hold her own baby but she could imagine—imagine being willing to give anything for the life you had created.

‘I remember my dad,’ she said to fill the silence that was growing. ‘Though it’s hard to know when the memories are mine and when they are stories mum and Sami told me, if you know what I mean.’

‘Our father didn’t tell us stories. He drank and he wept, spent weeks in bed and then he killed himself because he couldn’t live without her.’ And you are telling her this why, Ivo?

The fact that this tragic information was delivered in a tone that was totally devoid of any emotion made it all the more shocking.

Flora’s tender heart ached in her chest; she hurt for the boy he’d been, the pain real.

‘Poor man,’ she whispered, thinking of poor boys left to be brought up by an army of nannies and a grandfather who, if the Internet opinion of him was even half true, was not exactly warm and cuddly. Flora was really trying hard to reserve judgement, but it wasn’t easy.

‘Poor man...’ Ivo ground out the words as he surged to his feet.

Flora sat still and silent. His intimidating height advantage was emphasised even more than normal by the confined environment. ‘I just meant—’

‘Weak man,’ he bit back in a clear, cold, contemptuous voice before dark lashes veiled the anger and pain she had glimpsed in his eyes and he delivered the abrupt addition. ‘To allow a child to find him—’ He stopped, an arrested expression stealing across his face as if he had just realised what he had said.

‘You...you found him?’

His face was wiped clean of all emotion as he met her tear-filled gaze; everything inside him rejected the one thing he hated above all else: pity. ‘I have work. Anything you want...’

And he was gone, striding into the next compartment of the private jet, leaving Flora wondering about the revealing moment and the little boy scared by seeing something no child should.