Читать книгу The Secret That Changed Everything - Lucy Gordon, Lucy Gordon - Страница 6

HE WAS there!

After such an anxious search it was hard to be sure at first; aged about thirty, tall, lean, fit, with black hair. Was it really him? But then he made a quick movement and Charlotte knew.

This was the man she’d come to find.

He’d looked different last time, elegantly dressed, smooth, sophisticated, perfectly at home in one of the most fashionable bars in Rome. Now, in the Tuscan countryside, he was equally at home in jeans and casual shirt, absorbed in the vines that streamed in long lines under the setting sun. So absorbed that he didn’t look up to see her watching him from a distance.

Lucio Constello.

Quickly she pulled out a scrap of paper and checked his name. At the back of her mind a wry voice murmured that if you’d sought out a man to tell him devastating news it was useful to get his name right. On the other hand, if you’d only exchanged first names, and he’d left while you were still asleep, who could he blame but himself?

She tried to silence that voice. It spoke to her too often these days.

She began to walk the long path between the vines, trying to calm her thoughts. But they refused to be calmed. They lingered rebelliously on the memory of his naked body against hers, the heat of his breath, the way he’d murmured her name.

There had been almost a question in his voice, as though he was asking her if she were certain. But there was no certainty left in her life. Her family, her boyfriend—these were the things she had clung to. But her boyfriend had rejected her and the foundations of her family had been shaken. So she’d invited Lucio to her bed because—what did it matter? What did anything matter?

He was looking up, suddenly very still as he saw her. What did that stillness mean? That he recognised her and guessed why she was here? Or that he’d forgotten a woman he’d known for a few hours several weeks ago?

When Lucio first looked up the sun was in his eyes, blinding him, so that for a moment he could make out no details. A woman was approaching him down the long avenue of vines, her attention fixed on him as though only he mattered in all the world.

That had happened so many times before. So often he’d seen Maria coming towards him from a great distance.

But Maria was dead.

The woman approaching him now was a stranger and yet mysteriously familiar. Her eyes were fixed on him even at a distance.

And he knew that nothing in the world was ever going to be the same again.