Читать книгу The Platinum Collection - Эбби Грин, Maisey Yates - Страница 41

CHAPTER TEN

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, with her heart beating very fast, Lizzie studied a test wand, relieved that she had taken the opportunity to discreetly buy a pregnancy kit some weeks earlier.

And there it was straight away, the result she had both feared and craved: she was pregnant. It changed everything, she acknowledged in shock, and she walked out to the bedroom and unlocked the door she had locked the night before. Cesare would need access to his clothes but had she cared about that last night when her dream world had collapsed about her ears? No, she had not.

But now that she knew for sure that she was carrying Cesare’s baby, she had to look to the future and beyond the business agreement they had originally made. She could not afford to be at odds with her child’s father. That would only foster resentment between them and their child would suffer in that scenario. Unfortunately that meant that she had to be a bigger person than she felt like being just at that moment. She had to rise above what had happened, bury the personal aspect and stick to the rules from here on in.

He’d broken her heart. Well, she’d recovered from Andrew; she would eventually recover from Cesare. Of course, she had never loved Andrew the way she loved Cesare; consequently getting over Cesare would be more of a challenge. Andrew had hurt her self-esteem and damaged her trust but Cesare had torn her heart out. To think of living even one day without Cesare somewhere nearby tore her apart, teaching her how weak and vulnerable her emotions had made her.

Yes, Lizzie acknowledged, tidying her hair, adding more concealer to hide the redness of her eyes, she had a long, long way to go in the recovery process. But now that she knew about the baby, it would have to start right now. She would have to put on the act of the century. She couldn’t afford to show the smallest interest in what was going on between Serafina and him. He had made it clear that she had no right to ask such questions and she would have to respect that.

Had Cesare behaved badly? She thought he had. Scrapping the business-agreement-based marriage had been his idea, not hers. But honesty forced her to acknowledge that he had suggested at the time that they would have to see how well their marriage worked. In short, their marriage as such had been on a trial basis. And obviously, while it had worked incredibly well for Lizzie, it had not worked at all for Cesare. That hurt; that hurt her very much. It was a complete rejection of everything they had shared in and out of bed over the past month and it made her feel such an idiot for being so deliriously happy with him while failing utterly to notice that he did not feel the same way.

Lizzie went downstairs for breakfast, Archie at her heels. The instant the dog saw Cesare, who spoiled him shamelessly and taught him bad manners by feeding him titbits during meals, Archie hurried over to greet him. Cesare vaulted upright the minute she appeared. Unshaven, noticeably lacking his usual immaculate grooming, he still wore the same jeans and shirt. He raked a long-fingered brown hand through his tousled hair, looking effortlessly gorgeous but possibly less poised than he usually was.

‘I won’t lock the bedroom door again,’ Lizzie promised, her heart-shaped face as still as a woodland pool. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think about what I was doing but the room’s free now.’

‘I’ll get a shower before we leave for the airfield,’ Cesare countered, his dark golden gaze scanning her expressionless face as if in search of something. ‘Lizzie, we need to talk.’

Already having foreseen that he might feel that that was a necessity, Lizzie rushed to disabuse him of that dangerous notion. The very last thing she needed in her current shaky state of mind was a rehash of the breakdown of their relationship the night before. It wouldn’t smooth over anything, wouldn’t make her feel any better. How could it? Essentially he was dumping her and nothing he could say would ease that pain.

‘That’s the very last thing we need,’ Lizzie told him briskly. ‘All that needed to be said was said last night and we don’t need to go over it again.’

‘But—’

‘What you said made sense to me when I thought it over,’ Lizzie cut in, desperate to shut him up. ‘This is business, nothing else. Let’s stick to that from now on and I’ll keep to my side of the bargain while your grandmother is staying with us on the island. I see no reason why we shouldn’t bring this...er...project to a successful conclusion.’

Cesare blinked, disconcerted by the sound of such prosaic language falling from her lips. He was relieved that she was calm and grateful that she now intended to accompany him to Lionos for Athene’s sake but he didn’t agree with a single word she was saying. While, uniquely for him, he hesitated in a frantic inner search for the right approach to take with her, Lizzie took the wind out of his sails altogether.

‘And that successful conclusion I mentioned?’ Lizzie continued, a forced brightness of tone accompanying her wide fake smile. ‘We’re almost there because I’m pregnant.’

‘Pregnant?’ Cesare exclaimed in almost comical disbelief, springing back out of his seat again and yanking out the chair beside his own for her use. ‘Madre di Dio...sit down.’

Taken aback by his astonished reaction to her news, Lizzie sank down on the chair. ‘It’s not earth-shaking, Cesare. Women get pregnant every day.’

‘You’re my wife... It’s a little more personal than that for me,’ Cesare parried thickly, stepping behind her to rest his hands down on her slim, taut shoulders.

Alarmingly conscious of that physical contact, Lizzie froze in dismay. ‘Could I ask you not to do that?’

‘Do what?’

‘Touch me,’ she extended in an apologetic tone. ‘I’ll understand if you’re forced to do it when your grandmother’s around to make us look like a convincing couple but we’re alone here and there’s no need for it.’

Off-balanced by that blunt response, Cesare released her shoulders and backed away. He was thinking about the baby and he was fighting off an extraordinarily strong urge to touch her stomach, which he knew was weird, not to mention an urge destined to go unfulfilled.

‘Forgive me,’ he breathed abruptly. ‘My immediate response was to touch you because I am full of joy about the baby.’

He had never looked less full of joy to Lizzie. In fact he looked a little pale and a lot tense, eyes shielded by his ridiculously long lashes, wide, sensual mouth compressed. She wanted to slap him so badly that her hands twitched on her lap. Like a magician pulling a white rabbit out of a hat, she had made her unexpected announcement, depending on it to wipe away the awkwardness lingering after their confrontation the night before. She had just let him know that he would never have a reason to touch her again because she had conceived. He should have been thrilled to be let off the hook when he didn’t deserve it. Instead, however, a tense silence stretched like a rubber band threatening to snap.

‘I didn’t think it would happen so...fast,’ Cesare admitted half under his breath.

‘Well, it saves us a lot of hassle that it has,’ Lizzie pronounced with as much positive emphasis as she could load into a single sentence. Hovering on the tip of her tongue was the highly inappropriate reminder that, after the amount of unprotected sex they had had, she thought it was more of a surprise that they hadn’t hit the jackpot the first week.

‘Hassle?’

‘If we’d had to go for the artificial insemination, it might have been a bit...icky,’ she mumbled, momentarily losing her grip on her relentless falsely cheerful front.

Icky, Cesare repeated inwardly. It was a pretty good description of how he was feeling. Icky. He had suffered a Damascene moment of revelation while he was with Serafina the previous night. A blinding light that even he could not ignore or sensibly explain away had shone over the events and emotions of the past month and he had finally understood how everything had gone so very wrong. Unfortunately for him, since Lizzie had joined him for breakfast, he had realised that ‘wrong’ was an understatement. He had dug a great big hole for himself and she was showing every intention of being perfectly happy to bury him alive in it.

Cesare went upstairs, ostensibly for a shower but he wanted privacy to make a phone call. In all his life he had never ever turned to Goffredo for advice but his father was the only touchy-feely male relative he had, who could be trusted to keep a confidence. His sisters were too young and out of the question. Each would discuss it with the other and then they would approach Lizzie to tell all because she was one of the sisterhood now and closer to his siblings than he was. Goffredo had one word of advice and it was an unpalatable one. Heaving a sigh, he then suggested his son imagine his life without her and take it from there. That mental exercise only exacerbated Cesare’s dark mood.

* * *

Lizzie wore a floaty white cotton sundress to travel out to the island and took great pains with her hair and make-up. She knew that in the greater scheme of things her appearance was unimportant but was convinced that no woman confronted by a beauty like Serafina could remain indifferent to the possibility of unkind comparisons.

Close to running late for their flight, Cesare strode down the steps, a cool and sophisticated figure in beige chinos and an ivory cotton sweater that truly enhanced his bronzed skin tone and stunning dark eyes. Climbing into the car, he barely glanced at Lizzie and she knew all her fussing had been a pathetic waste of time.

Archie sat right in the middle of the back seat, halfway between them like a dog trying to work out how he could split himself into two parts. To Lizzie’s intense annoyance, her pet ended up nudged up against a hard masculine thigh because Cesare was absently massaging Archie’s ear, which reduced her dog to a pushover.

By the time they reached the airfield and boarded the helicopter, Lizzie was becoming increasingly frustrated. Cesare’s brooding silence was getting to her and she wanted to know what was behind it. How could he simply switch off everything they had seemed to have together? It hadn’t ever just been sex between them. There had been laughter and lots of talking and an intense sense of rightness as well. At least on her side, she conceded wretchedly.

His long, powerful thigh stretched as he shifted position and a heated ache blossomed between her thighs. That surge of hormonal chemistry mortified her. She reminded herself that that side of their marriage was over, she reminded herself that she was pregnant and she still ended up glancing back at that masculine thigh. Suddenly she was remembering that only the day before she would have stretched out a hand and stroked that hard male flesh, taking the initiative in a way that always surprised and pleased him. How had they seemed to be so attuned to each other when they so patently could not have been? Had she deceived herself? Had she dreamt up a whole fairy tale and tried to live it by putting Cesare in a starring role? Was this mess all her own wretched fault?

With such ideas torturing her and with a companion, who was almost as silent, it was little wonder that Lizzie had been airborne for over an hour when she was jolted by Cesare simply and suddenly turning round from the front passenger seat of the helicopter and urging her to look down at what he called ‘her’ island.

‘And Chrissie’s,’ she said unheard above the engine noise, stretching to peer over his broad shoulder as the craft dipped. She saw a long teardrop-shaped piece of land covered with lush green trees. ‘That’s Lionos?’ She gasped in astonishment for it was much bigger than she had expected. In her head she had cherished a not very inviting image of a rocky piece of land stuck in the middle of nowhere, for her mother had not made it sound an attractive place. At the same time their inheritance had never seemed very real to either her or her sister when they could not afford even to visit it.

Within minutes the helicopter was descending steeply to land in a clearing in the trees and for the first time in twenty-four hours a feeling of excited anticipation gripped Lizzie. Ignoring Cesare’s extended hand, she jumped down onto the ground and stared up at the white weatherboard house standing at the top of a slope. Like the island, it was bigger than she had expected.

‘Athene told me that her father built it in the nineteen twenties and she had five siblings, so it had to be spacious,’ Cesare supplied as he released Archie and the dog went scampering off to do what dogs did when they’d been confined for a long time. ‘Primo says it really needs to be knocked down and rebuilt but he’s done his best within the time frame he’s had.’

‘He’s frighteningly efficient,’ Lizzie remarked, mounting the slope, striving to ignore and avoid the supportive hand Cesare had planted to the base of her spine and a little breathless in her haste.

‘Take it easy. It’s hot and you’re pregnant,’ Cesare intoned.

‘For goodness’ sake!’ Lizzie snapped. ‘I’m only a tiny bit pregnant!’

In silence, Cesare rolled his eyes at that impossibility. He had all the consolation of knowing that he was reaping what he had sowed. Lizzie was not naturally either moody or short-tempered. In fact, in spite of her troubled childhood she had a remarkably cheerful nature, he conceded grimly. At least she had had a remarkably cheerful nature until he had contrived to destroy everything in what had to be an own goal of even more remarkable efficacy.

Primo greeted them at the front door and spread it wide. ‘Workmen are still finishing off the utility area,’ he admitted. ‘But I believe the house is now presentable.’

Wide-eyed, Lizzie drifted through the tiled hall, which had been painted white, and moved on into a spacious reception room furnished with pieces that were an elegant mix of the traditional and the more contemporary. French windows draped with floral curtains opened out onto a terrace overlooking a secluded sandy cove. The view down the slope of a path through the trees to the beach was incredibly picturesque and unspoilt.

She walked through the house and as she peered into rooms some of her tension began to evaporate. In the wake of her mother’s unappreciative descriptions, she was surprised to discover that it was actually a very attractive house and full of character. A room with a bathroom had been prepared for Athene’s use on the ground floor. Lizzie mounted the stairs, which had wrought-iron ornamental balusters and a polished brass handrail. A bedroom had been sacrificed to provide en-suite bathrooms. Everywhere had been freshly decorated and kitted out, fabrics stirring softly in the breeze through open windows.

‘What do you think?’ Cesare asked from his stance on the landing.

‘It’s magical. I can understand why your grandmother never forgot this island. It must’ve been a wonderful house for kids,’ she confided.

‘Soon our child will follow that same tradition,’ Cesare said gruffly.

‘Well, possibly when he or she is visiting you. I won’t be here as well,’ Lizzie pointed out, quick to puncture that fantasy.

Cesare hovered in the strangest way, moving a step forward and then a step back, lashes suddenly lifting on strained dark golden eyes. ‘And what if I wanted you to be here as well?’

‘But you wouldn’t want that,’ Lizzie countered with unwelcome practicality. ‘You will either have remarried or you’ll have a girlfriend in tow.’

‘What if I don’t want that? What if I want you?’ Cesare shot at her without warning, unnerved by that veiled reference to the divorce that would be required for his remarriage.

Lizzie lost colour, wondering what he was playing at, wondering if this was some new game on his terms. ‘But you don’t...want me, that is. You made that quite clear last night.’

‘I do want you. I want to stay married,’ Cesare bit out almost aggressively. ‘Last night, you took me by surprise and I was confused. I made a mistake.’

Lizzie shook her pale head slowly and studied him in angry wonderment, temper stirring from the depths of the emotional turmoil she had been enduring since he had blown all her hopes and dreams to dust. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this. First you ask me for a business-based marriage, then you ask me to give our marriage a try and then you tell me we don’t have a real marriage. As I see it, that’s pretty comprehensive and not open to any other interpretation!’

She swivelled on her heel and deliberately walked past him to enter the room on the other side of the landing.

‘I’m trying to say I’m sorry and you’re not even listening!’ Cesare growled from behind her.

‘You can’t apologise for what you feel...neither of us can,’ Lizzie parried curtly as she lodged by a window, hoping to look as though she were entranced by the view when in actuality all she could think about was escaping this agonising going-nowhere conversation with Cesare, who seemed not to have the first clue about how she might be feeling. ‘I’m going to get changed and go off and explore.’

‘Alone?’ Cesare exclaimed.

‘Yes. I like my own company. I had to—I worked alone for years,’ she reminded him doggedly, walking past him on the landing, relieved when she saw the cases being carried upstairs into the master bedroom. ‘I realise once Athene arrives tomorrow it’ll be “game on” or whatever you want to call it...but could we...please not share a bedroom tonight?’

‘Why are you not listening to anything I’m saying?’ Cesare demanded in apparent disbelief. ‘You won’t even look at me!’

Lizzie had only felt free to look at him when he was hers. Now that he wasn’t any more, she didn’t want to fall victim to his essential gorgeousness all over again. Not looking was a form of self-defence, she reasoned wildly.

‘Lizzie...’ he breathed in a driven undertone.

Lizzie stiffened, tears prickling behind her wide eyes. ‘I can’t afford to listen to you. You upset me a lot last night and I really don’t want to talk about that kind of stuff. It’s pointless. I’m not really your wife. I may be living with you—’

‘Expecting my child!’ Cesare slotted in with greater force than seemed necessary.

‘But you didn’t choose to marry me because you cared about me, therefore it’s not a proper marriage,’ Lizzie replied as she reluctantly turned back to face him. ‘And in your own immortal words everything else we’ve shared can be written off as “just sex”.’

Cesare flinched at that reminder, his pallor below his bronzed skin palpable. ‘I care about you now. I want to keep you.’

‘I’m not a pet, Cesare...’ Lizzie stared at him and frowned. ‘Are you feeling all right? You know, you’re acting very oddly.’

Goffredo’s one-word piece of advice returned to haunt Cesare. ‘I’m fine,’ he said brusquely, lying through his teeth.

All of a quiver after that pointless exchange, her nerves jangling, Lizzie vanished into the bedroom, closed the door and opened her case to extract a sun top and shorts. She needed to blow the cobwebs off with a good walk. Cesare was nowhere to be seen when she went downstairs again and she went into the kitchen where Primo reigned supreme and eventually emerged with Primo’s luxury version of a picnic meal and a bottle of water. With a little luck she could stay out until dark, then dive into bed and wake up to a new day and the big show for his poor grandmother’s benefit.

Cesare was furious when he discovered that Lizzie had left the house. He strode down to the beach but there was no sign of her and not even a footprint on the pristine strand to suggest that she had come that way.

Several hours later, sunburned, foot weary and very tired after her jaunt across Lionos, Lizzie returned to discover that Cesare had gone out. Thankful, she settled down to supper as only Primo could make it. Sliding into her comfortable bed, she slept like a log.

Athene arrived mid-afternoon the next day. Cesare decided to be grateful for that because it brought Lizzie out of hiding. It had not once crossed his mind that she could be so intractable that she wouldn’t even give him a hearing and then he thought of all the years she had slaved for her unappreciative and critical father and realised that she would have needed a strong, stubborn backbone.

Relaxed and colourful in a red sundress, Lizzie ushered Athene into her former childhood home. Tears shone in the old lady’s eyes as she stood in the hall, gazing down the slope at the beautiful view. ‘I thought it would all be overgrown and unrecognisable.’

‘You showed me a photo once. I had the trees cut back,’ Cesare told his grandmother softly. ‘Shall I show you around?’

‘Yes, this is your home and Lizzie’s now,’ Athene said a little tearfully and fumbled for a tissue. ‘I have so many memories of my brothers and sisters here and now that they’re all gone...’

Lizzie watched Cesare mop up his grandmother’s tears with a deft touch and the right words and, minutes later, Athene was laughing as she recounted a childhood adventure with her brothers. She accompanied them on the official tour and Primo served afternoon tea out on the terrace, apparently an old tradition that Athene loved.

‘Primo is an absolute treasure,’ Athene told Lizzie as Cesare murmured an apology and withdrew to answer his phone before walking back into the house.

‘And even better he cooks, which I’m not very good at,’ Lizzie admitted, topping up the older woman’s tea.

‘Have you and Cesare had a row?’ her companion asked without warning. ‘I’m not an interfering old woman but I can feel that something’s wrong.’

Lizzie felt that even an award-winning actress would have been challenged to carry off a smile at that point. ‘A hiccup,’ she downplayed studiously, her cheeks burning tomato-red as if the lie might be emblazoned on her forehead.

‘My grandson has a remarkable brain, which serves him well in business. He’s not quite so good at relationships,’ Athene remarked wryly, gentle amusement in her warm brown eyes. ‘There’s bound to be hiccups as you call them. He’s set in his ways and you’ll challenge him. That’s good for him. After all, anyone with eyes can see how deeply attached you are to each other.’

Lizzie’s opinion of Athene’s shrewdness nosedived at that pronouncement but the awkward moment passed over and she managed to relax again. The old lady eventually nodded off in the shade and Lizzie went back indoors.

‘I need to warn you,’ Lizzie almost whispered round the corner of the door of the room Cesare had set up as an office. ‘Athene thinks we’ve had a row but that that’s normal, so not really anything to worry about...but we’ll need to make a real effort to impress.’

‘Wouldn’t it be easier simply to talk to me?’ Cesare suggested, rising from behind his desk, all sleek Italian designer style in his tailored oatmeal-coloured casuals.

Lizzie continued to hover defensively in the doorway. ‘I just don’t think we have anything to talk about.’

‘Do you know what time I went to bed last night?’

Lizzie blinked in confusion. ‘How would I?’

‘I was out tramping round the island looking for you. Primo couldn’t raise a signal on my cell phone until midnight and I only found out then that you had returned to the house hours earlier!’

Lizzie dealt him an astonished look. ‘But why were you looking for me in the first place? I wasn’t lost.’

Cesare studied her as if she were irretrievably dim. ‘There are all kinds of hazards out there. Fast currents in the sea, steep drops, dangerous rocks...’

Definitely behaving oddly, Lizzie labelled as she breathed in deep. ‘Cesare, I’m not some little fluffy woman who can’t look after herself. I’m an outdoors woman, used to working in all weathers and accustomed to constantly considering safety aspects on the farm.’

‘But I was worried about you!’ Cesare shot back at her in furious frustration.

Lizzie tossed her head, platinum-blonde hair shimmering across her slight shoulders in the sunlight, green eyes wide and wary. ‘Well, you didn’t need to be. I should’ve thought you would’ve been more worried about how Serafina is managing while we’re together here when you belong with her.’

‘I do not belong with Serafina!’ Cesare raked at her so loudly, she jumped.

‘No?’

‘Do I strike you as being an idiot? I was a boy when I fell in love with her and full of romantic idealism but I’m all grown-up now,’ he completed grimly.

‘Well, you went rushing over to that palazzo fast enough the other night,’ Lizzie argued in a less aggressive prompt. ‘That was where you went, wasn’t it?’

His stunning gaze widened to smouldering gold eyes of challenge. ‘You think I went over there to be with her?’

‘What else was I supposed to think?’ Lizzie asked tightly. ‘You left me in anger...’

‘I wasn’t angry with you, I was angry with her!’ Cesare exclaimed in full-volume contradiction and Lizzie hastily backed to the door to close it firmly shut. ‘How dare she have the insolence to approach my wife with the tacky details of an affair that happened a decade ago? I’d never heard such rubbish in my life and I was determined to finally have it out with her.’

Tacky details scarcely dovetailed with Serafina’s suggestion that the barn episode had been a very precious memory for them both. Furthermore Lizzie was transfixed by the idea that he had rushed out of the house in a rage because Serafina had dared to approach his wife. Lizzie went pink over her misreading of the situation. ‘And did you have it out with her?’

‘Sì...I said a lot that she will not forget in a hurry. If she wasn’t so vain, she would have accepted a long time ago that I would sooner chew off my own arm than have anything to do with her again. How could you think that of me?’ Cesare raked at her in apparent wonderment. ‘A woman who walked out on me because I wasn’t rich enough? A disloyal, deceitful woman with the morals of a whore... She first offered herself back to me three years after she married Matteo and she did it again last night, which outraged me.’

Lizzie was so astonished by what she was finding out that she was rooted to the floor where she stood. Not only did he no longer care about Serafina, he evidently despised her and her eagerness to get him back. There was nothing fake about the driving derision he exuded. ‘And of course you said no?’

‘I never thought about her again after that first incident,’ Cesare admitted flatly. ‘By that stage I was grateful that, by marrying her, Matteo had saved me from making a serious mistake. No sane man would want a treacherous woman but, unfortunately for him, Matteo was besotted with her.’

Lizzie nodded slowly.

‘Serafina won’t be bothering either of us again, I assure you,’ Cesare spelled out. ‘She told me that she’s bored with the countryside and will be moving back to her home in Florence.’

Lizzie was thinking about him having spent hours searching for her the night before because he was concerned that she might have met with an accident. Even though she was a seasoned outdoorswoman, she could not help but be touched by his naive assumption that she required his protection. She had made so many silly assumptions about Serafina and suddenly it was obvious that she had been listening to an extremely vain and spoilt woman spouting her belief that she was both irresistible and unforgettable. Cesare, on the other hand, had recovered from Serafina’s betrayal by appreciating what a narrow escape he had had. That, she recognised, was absolutely in line with his character while rushing off to be with Serafina while he was married would not have been.

‘I’m glad she’s moving...I didn’t like her,’ Lizzie confided in a case of severe understatement. A light-headed sensation engulfed her and she gripped the back of a chair. ‘Sorry, I get a bit dizzy now and again.’

‘Is that like being only a tiny bit pregnant?’ Cesare enquired, scooping her up as she swayed and planting her carefully down into the armchair. ‘You need to be taking more rest and eating more food.’

‘And what would you know about it?’ Lizzie mumbled, momentarily giving way to the heaviness of her body and slumping into the depths of the chair like a sagging cushion.

‘Possibly as much as you,’ Cesare dared. ‘I contacted an obstetrician for advice.’

Her lower lip dropped. ‘You did...what?’

‘It’s my baby too,’ he countered defensively. ‘I had no idea how to look after you properly. It made sense to consult someone with the relevant knowledge.’

Her eyes stung again. Against all the odds, he was making such an effort to put across the point that, although he didn’t want a real marriage with her, he did care about her welfare and their child’s. Her throat convulsed. The tears she had been holding back were gaining on her, no matter how hard she tried to hold them back.

As Cesare stared across the barrier of his desk he saw two tears rolling down Lizzie’s cheeks and his last defences fell to basement level. He had caused this fiasco. He had made her unhappy.

‘I’m sorry...I’m so sorry,’ Cesare told her gruffly.

Lizzie opened her wet eyes to find Cesare on his knees at her feet, stunning dark golden eyes stricken. ‘Sorry? What about?’

‘I’m sorry I hurt you. For years I had this set of rules with women,’ he breathed raggedly, grabbing both her hands and crushing them between his. ‘I never got involved. I never got involved with anyone after Serafina. And then I met you and I...I thought it would be the same with you and I tried to stick to the same rules but you were too much for me, only I didn’t see it...’

‘Slow down...’ Lizzie begged, struggling to work out what he was telling her in such a rush. ‘What are you saying?’

‘That I’m mad about you, that I love you and I never want to lose you,’ Cesare told her, crushing the life out of her poor fingers, his physical intensity as great as the emotional intensity now clear in his eyes.

Her lashes fluttered in bemusement. ‘But you said—’

‘Forget what I said. I was still trying to stick to my rules but it was idiocy,’ he told her with a fierce fervour that was in itself impressive. ‘I drove to Serafina’s in a rage because she’d dared to try and upset you and I was driving back, thinking about what a vicious witch she is and thinking about you too...and that’s when I realised.’

‘That you love me?’ Lizzie probed numbly, unsure what to believe, her thoughts spinning.

‘I think I was scared to deal with what I was feeling for you, so I avoided thinking about it altogether...’ Cesare hesitated. ‘You know, I’m not much like Goffredo. I don’t spend much time thinking about feelings and stuff.’

Lizzie was pleasantly surprised to learn that he had spent any time thinking about feelings but she couldn’t smile when she was in shock. For the first time ever outside the bedroom she was seeing Cesare without the cool front he wore to the world and he wasn’t half as smooth with words in the emotional category as he was with other things. Yet there was something hugely endearing about that inept surge of sentiment and confession because every syllable of it rang with raw honesty.

‘So, you think you love me?’ she pressed a little shakily, scared to hope, scared to dream, scared he didn’t yet know his own heart.

‘I know I love you. I only had to think of how warm and happy everything has seemed since we got married. I only have to think of being without you to know that what I feel for you is so much more than I ever felt for Serafina,’ he confessed huskily.

A huge smile suddenly lit up Lizzie’s face as she finally dared to really look at him again, scanning the superb bone structure, the straight nose and the perfect mouth. This time around, she revelled unashamedly in his essential gorgeousness because for the first time ever he felt like hers.

‘I didn’t want to fall for you either. Mum made so many mistakes and she was never really happy. I was afraid of falling for you,’ Lizzie admitted, freeing a hand to brush his thick black hair off his brow in a gesture that came very close to an adoring caress. ‘I really did think we were going to go the business route and then...my goodness, I couldn’t stop thinking about you, couldn’t take my eyes off you, couldn’t keep my hands off you. You’re sort of addictive but I didn’t want to get hurt.’

‘I hope I will never hurt you again.’

‘Why are you still on your knees?’ Lizzie whispered, genuinely bewildered.

‘I rang my father for advice. I didn’t give him details,’ Cesare stressed when she looked at him in dismay. ‘I just admitted that I’d said some very stupid things and he had only one word of advice...’

Lizzie viewed him expectantly.

Cesare bit the bullet and confided, ‘Grovel.’

‘Seriously?’ Lizzie giggled, tickled pink.

‘I’m only going to do it once because I’m never ever likely to screw up as badly with you again, amata mia,’ Cesare delivered, springing back upright without any loss of presence to open the door before striding back to scoop his wife up out of her chair. ‘I’ve learned a lot from this experience.’

‘Have you?’ Lizzie asked curiously, resting back against his broad chest, sublimely happy just to be in his arms again, breathing in the delicious scent of him and free to think about all the wicked bedroom skills he was undoubtedly about to unleash on her.

‘For a whole month I took you for granted. I’ll never make that mistake again. I love you. My family loves you.’

‘Even my father said that you were a sensible man,’ Lizzie inputted with amusement.

‘Very sensible. You’re a wonderful woman, cara mia.’ Cesare lowered her the whole formidable length of his lean, hard body to the landing floor and kissed her with hungry, driving passion.

Lizzie was more than ready to drown now in his potent fervour to reconnect with her. Excitement laced her happiness with a heady sense of joy and quiet security. She simply knew that she had a glorious life ahead of her with her husband and her child.

On the ground floor, Athene was in a self-congratulating mood.

‘I do hope I’ve sorted them out. Cesare’s stubborn but his wife is soft. As if I would simply fall asleep in the middle of a conversation!’ Athene chuckled as she took over Primo’s kitchen to make her grandson’s favourite cake. ‘I think we’ll have a rather late dinner tonight, Primo...’

* * *

Three years later, Lizzie relaxed on the front veranda of the house on Lionos while she awaited Cesare’s return from a business trip. Her children were with her. Max was two, a toddler with the unusual combination of his mother’s pale hair and his father’s dark eyes. He was industriously racing toy cars on the boards beneath her feet and making very noisy vroom-vroom sounds. In a travel cot in the shade a dark-haired six-month-old baby girl slumbered, sucking her thumb, while Archie dozed on the front doormat.

Gianna had not been planned, Lizzie reflected, her eyes tender as she bent down to try and extract her daughter’s thumb from her rosebud mouth. She managed it but even in sleep within minutes the thumb crept back. She gave up when she heard the distant beat of the helicopter’s approach, sliding upright to get a better view over the bay.

Max abandoned his cars and joined her. ‘Papa...Papa!’ he exclaimed, well aware of what that sound presaged in his secure little world.

Lizzie stroked her son’s silky head and smiled dreamily. She always enjoyed the sunshine and the peace on Lionos but it would soon be disrupted by Cesare’s forceful, exciting presence and she couldn’t wait; she really couldn’t wait. Three years had not dimmed the chemistry between them.

Athene spent spring to summer on the island, preferring her Rome apartment and its greater convenience in the winter. Lizzie had grown to love her husband’s grandmother as much as she loved the rest of his family. He had been so blessed by all that love and warmth and to give him his due becoming a parent had made Cesare more sensitive towards his own relatives. He was much more relaxed with his large and convivial family than he had once been and his father and his sisters were frequent visitors to their homes in London, Tuscany and Lionos. Lizzie often teased her husband that she had stayed married to him because she couldn’t bear the thought of losing his family.

Sadly, since her marriage she had seen much less of her own father and sister. Brian Whitaker came on occasional visits but he didn’t like flying or foreign food or even people talking their own language in his vicinity. Lizzie had purchased a compact home for the older man in the village where he had grown up and he seemed as happy there as he would be anywhere. She had taken him to see a consultant for his Parkinson’s disease and he was on a new drug regimen and showing considerable improvement.

Disconcertingly, although Chrissie regularly hitched a flight home with Cesare when he was in London on business, she had become fiercely independent and now had secrets she was reluctant to share. Lizzie had watched anxiously from the sidelines of her sister’s life as things went badly wrong for the sibling she adored and troubled times rolled in. Cesare had advised her to let Chrissie stand on her own feet and not to interfere when Lizzie would more happily have rushed in and tried to wave a magic wand over Chrissie’s difficulties to make them vanish. She had had to accept that Chrissie was an adult with the right to make her own decisions...and her own mistakes. That said, however, she was still very close to her sister and very protective of her.

The helicopter finally appeared in the bright blue cloudless sky and descended out of sight behind the trees. Max was jumping up and down by that stage and clapping his hands. In a flash he was gone and running down the slope to greet his father with Archie chasing at his heels, shaggy ears flying, tongue hanging out.

‘Go ahead,’ a voice said softly from behind Lizzie. ‘I’ll sit with Gianna.’

Lizzie flashed a grateful smile at Athene and raced down the slope after her son like a teenager. Cesare took one look at his wife, pale hair flying, cheeks flushed below brilliant green eyes full of warmth and welcome, and set Max down again to open his arms.

‘I really missed you!’ Lizzie complained into his shoulder. ‘You’re far too missable.’

‘I’ll work on it,’ Cesare promised, smoothing her hair back from her brow, wondering whether or not he should admit that he had worked night and day to get back to her within a week. He missed his family more every time he left them behind and planned complex travel schedules that minimised his absences.

‘I shouldn’t be whingeing,’ Lizzie muttered guiltily, drinking in the familiar musky scent of his skin, her body quickening with the piercingly sweet pleasure-pain of desire that made her slim body quiver against his long, lean length.

‘It’s not whingeing. You missed me...I missed you, amata mia,’ Cesare said huskily. ‘We are so lucky to have found each other.’

They walked slowly back up the slope, Max swiftly overtaking them, Archie lagging behind. Cesare stilled to turn Lizzie round and curve loving hands to her cheeks to gaze down at the face he never tired of studying. ‘I’m crazy about you, Signora Sabatino.’

‘And me...about you.’ Beaming in the sunshine, Lizzie linked her arms round his neck and tilted her head back invitingly.

She slid into that kiss like melting ice cream, honeyed languor assailing her in the safe circle of his arms. Cesare was home and a rainbow burst of happiness made her feel positively buoyant.

* * * * *