‘Then why don’t you turn off the road right now, Luca?’ she whispered.
‘No…’ He stretched the word out with relish. His attention might have switched back to the road, but his hand had fallen into her lap. He was gently caressing the curve of her thigh through her thin skirt. ‘What I have in mind for you needs space and time. I am going to kiss you all over, tesoro, from the tips of your toes to the tips of your fingers, and everywhere in between.’
She moaned again. ‘Luca, stop…I can’t wait…’
He smiled, and pressed his foot to the accelerator. ‘And neither can I. Let’s get home.’
When they got to the palazzo, Luca took her straight upstairs to the bridal suite. There he made love to her with a relish that closed over her like the night. Afterwards, they lay together in the afterglow caressing each other gently. Beth wanted the moment to last for ever. She stretched out in the huge warm luxury of the double bed. ‘Tonight’s experience has been better than anything I’ve known in my whole life,’ she whispered, relaxing into the warm security of his arms. ‘For the first time it felt as though you weren’t holding anything back, Luca. I thought I’d sacrificed the chance to be happy like this.’
He did not reply. With a smile, Beth realised he had drifted off to sleep. So she whispered, ‘I never imagined I could experience actually being loved by you like that, but here I am.’
She woke in darkness, but still in a dream. For the first time, Luca had stayed beside her into the darkness. Until now, he had always left her shortly after sex. The most he ever did was doze for a few minutes, with her in his arms. Then he would leave her. Sleeping together all night would make things too permanent, he said. He always made a point of going back to his own bed.
Unable to bear the thought of him leaving her this time, Beth made herself stay awake. All she wanted to do was snuggle into him, but she resisted the temptation. The moment he tries to leave, I’ll ask him to stay, she thought. But Luca slept on. Tonight, unlike other occasions when she had seen him with his eyes closed, he looked totally at peace. His breathing was slow and regular. When he moved, it was only to mould his body closer to hers.
Luca slept so deeply that eventually Beth’s mind began to lead her astray. When she checked the small travel clock on her bedside table, she saw it was almost four o’clock in the morning. He never stayed this late in any bed. An early riser, he spent the hours before work in his gym, or the length pool. He would probably wake at any moment, ready to swing into his morning routine.
A frisson of excitement dared Beth to do something reckless. What if she anticipated him? She could creep away and slip into his bed. When Luca woke, he would think she had gone into her own bathroom, and leave without disturbing her. But there would be a surprise waiting for him, back in his own room!
Smiling, she eased her way out from within the protection of his arms. Not taking her eyes off him, she reached for her robe and pulled it on before padding out into the silent corridor.
The door to his suite was not locked. Beth walked in, breathing deeply. Masculine fragrances of sandalwood and cypress filled his reception area. Alert to every sound, she stopped once or twice on the way through to his bedroom. Every creak, every rustle made her look back over her shoulder, but she was still alone. Without switching on the light, she crossed to the shadowy rectangle of his bed. Pulses pounding, she launched herself onto it with a gasp of delight, but a sudden rattle and crash almost made her heart stop.
She had knocked his bedside table, sending everything on it clattering to the floor.
She froze, expecting somebody to rush in and confront her. Nothing happened. The loudest sound in the room came from her thundering heart. After waiting for it to steady, she started groping for the bedside light.
Blinking in its glare, she saw a confusion of things lying on the floor where they had fallen. There was a small black box, a fold of paper, and what she took to be a large coin. Climbing off the bed, she knelt to see if she had done any damage.
It was not a coin. It was a medal. Reading the details engraved on the reverse, Beth discovered it had been awarded to Luca for extreme bravery. Unfolding the sheet of paper, she discovered what he had done to deserve it. The first shock was the date mentioned in the citation. It was the same day she left Balacha for the last time. She read on with growing horror. Despite terrible injuries, Luca had gone into a burning building to save one of the rebel soldiers. It must have happened straight after he piled me onto the last plane to leave the airfield, she thought. A place he fought to keep open, so she could survive. Her last image of that terrible time was the sight of Luca, plunging back into the firestorm she was leaving behind.
Everything fell into place. Her blood ran cold. He must still be suffering from the injuries he received that night. It was why he was on medication. At their first meeting in the executive lounge, Beth had been shocked by his pale, drawn face. She had seen the agony in the expressions he tried so hard to hide.
‘I never wanted you to see that.’
Beth jumped violently. It was Luca. He had entered the room quietly, and she hadn’t heard him. The sound of his voice surprised her so much the presentation box almost hit the floor again. Terrified, she looked over her shoulder. He was silhouetted in the doorway, one hand resting lightly on its frame. When he did not shout or rush forward she realised he was disappointed, rather than angry.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about all this, Luca?’ she said softly.
‘I didn’t want it to make a difference. You might have seen me differently.’
Beth didn’t know whether to be relieved or worried by his calm acceptance.
‘But it would have explained such a lot! About those tablets you take, for a start, and I imagined all sorts of awful things when you said you’d left the army. It never once occurred to me you might have been invalided out.’
‘So, now you know.’
‘Yes. Yes, I do—and do you know what? You were right. It does make a difference to the way I feel about you. A very big difference.’
She put the medal back in its box, and replaced it on his bedside table. Then she turned to him, and put all her deepest hopes and dreams on the line.
‘There’s a part of your life you want to keep to yourself. That must be why we’ve always made love in my bed, never yours. And it explains why you’ve never really let me touch you. All I’ve ever wanted is to feel your warm skin against mine. It explains why the lights are always low, or you’ve kept my hands off your body. Why you won’t stay the night in my bed. I thought you wouldn’t let anyone close because I had wrecked your mind. Now I realise what I did to you must have wrecked your body, as well.’
He shook his head. ‘It wasn’t all down to you, Beth. I had a choice about that.’ He nodded towards the medal in its velvet-lined box.
‘Is it very bad?’ she said quietly.
‘Bad enough.’ He sighed, and walked over to the bed. Sitting down on it slowly, he leaned forward and rested his arms on his thighs. ‘Although the headaches are easing off at last.’
‘Is that what the tablets are? Painkillers?’
‘Some of them—others are to compensate for spending my life stuck in an office,’ he finished grimly.
‘That must be why you haven’t needed to take so many since we went to Paris. The pressure wasn’t so bad, away from Venice.’
‘Yes…I suppose so,’ he said.
‘So why do you carry on doing a job you hate?’ Beth challenged him.
He looked at her intently. ‘Because so many people depend on me.’
‘I don’t.’
Still on her knees, Beth worked her way over to where he sat, and reached up to put her arms around his neck. When he turned to her, she leaned her head against his.
‘Once I’ve learned all I can from you, I shall be off, Luca. You won’t need to fret I’m getting too attached to you. That’s one worry off your list, at least. I shall soon be off to England to make my fortune in
the antiques trade—ha, ha,’ she added with irony.
‘You’re really determined to do it?’
Beth found she could not meet his eyes. Moving her head slightly, she buried her face in his hair. She was trying to swallow her desperate need to hear him say the words don’t go.
‘Yes.’ She managed to sound firm, but she was dying inside. ‘I’ve always promised I’ll never need to rely on you again, after this. Although…if you ever feel like telling Francesco Fine Arts where to go, I’ll invite you to England and you can be my gigolo, instead.’ He put his arm around her waist and pulled her close.
‘You,’ he said with slow amusement, ‘have a very vivid imagination—’
Beth nodded, unable to speak
‘And a flair for this work I never suspected,’ he finished.
‘I have to work, Luca. It stops me worrying about you—’
She stopped, appalled. It was the worst possible thing she could have said to a man who valued his independence above everything else. For a split second they stared at each other. Teetering on the boundary between past and present, Beth waited for him to brush off the comment, but it didn’t happen. All she could do was correct herself as fast as she could.
‘I mean—it stops me worrying about whether I’m going to be able to pay off my father’s debts before you sack me for trespassing in your bedroom, Luca,’ she said in a rush, and then tried to laugh.
‘I’m glad you’re not worried about me.’ He eased away from her, and stood up. ‘Because I’m fine.’
‘As long as you are.’
She clambered off the bed, sensing it was time for her to go. ‘My mind started working overtime when you said you’d left the army. I was beginning to wonder what horrible truths you were hiding from me, Luca.’
‘Nothing that won’t keep.’ He glanced at the clock on his mantelpiece. ‘Especially as it’s nearly time to start getting ready for work.’
Neither of them moved. Eventually, Beth could resist it no longer. Reaching out her hand, she laid it on the reassuring bulge of his bicep.
‘In that case…why don’t you take a shower with me now, Luca?’ she said impetuously. ‘We always used to enjoy it so much.’
The room was dim, but she could still appreciate the look in his eyes.
‘So I’m supposed to start taking orders from you, am I?’ he growled.
It had no effect on Beth. She laughed softly.
‘Only this one—and, in any case, since when have you taken any notice of orders? You were told not to take me to Balacha airport that night, but you did. After that, you were told to retreat from the airstrip, but you didn’t, giving our pilot time to get away. You were under orders to stop the rebels, but now I see from the citation that you went inside the burning communications tower to save one of them—’
Luca kissed her into silence.
‘You know your trouble, Beth? You talk too much.’ He breathed against the silken skin of her neck.
She chuckled again. ‘I’ve embarrassed you, and you don’t even know what I’m going to say next!’
‘How can it be any worse than what you’ve dug up already?’ He half smiled, but stopped when he saw the look in her eyes.
‘Come on, Luca. You used to love getting me in the shower.’
She looked at him steadily. His reaction was like quicksilver. He let her go and turned away.
‘No.’
‘It’s because of what happened that night, isn’t it?’ She nodded towards the velvet-lined box on his bedside table.
Beth walked around to face him. Unconsciously, Luca spread one hand across the taut expanse of his tee shirt, drawing it backwards and forwards in an instinctive gesture.
‘All the bits you’ve let me see so far have been perfect, Luca.’
She went closer. Lifting one hand, she began stroking his hair, and then his face. When he did not stop her, she slipped her other hand around to caress the small of his back.
‘I’m in your room. No one else can ever have got this far, or you wouldn’t have left your medal out on the table. Why not let me be the first one to go all the way with you, Luca?’
She looked up at his face. He had his eyes closed. Beth smiled, taking time to savour the majestic lines of his jaw and the dark sweep of his lashes before she spoke again.
‘You don’t need to hide anything any more, Luca. To me, you’re the most irresistible man on earth. And you always will be.’
He did not move a muscle. With a sigh, Beth leaned against him. After a while, she felt him rest his head against hers. They stood in silence. Neither could relax. Beth was too conscious of his taut frame. She knew it was a tension held between her own hands, that only she could release. Sliding her fingers beneath the hem of his white shirt, she began caressing the skin beneath. She soon discovered why he was reluctant to strip right off. At one time his chest and the small of his back had been completely misted with soft dark hair. Now she could feel bare skin slashing it in several places.
‘Does that hurt?’ she whispered to him as she touched the damage lightly, and felt him shake his head.
Taking his hand, she started cautiously towards his bed. To her delight, he followed. They lay down together in the darkness. Rolling his tee shirt up a little bit at a time, she kissed each centimetre she revealed. When she reached his armpits, she stopped.
‘I’ve always told you this thing gets in the way. Why don’t you get rid of it now, Luca?’
He did not react immediately. For minutes on end they lay together in silence. The rise and fall of his chest was the only movement he made for a long time. Then he sat up, pulled the tee shirt off over his head and threw it aside. Beth sat up, too. Curling her body around his, she used her lips to test all the parts of him that he had kept hidden from her until now.
‘You don’t mind, Beth?’
‘When have I ever minded kissing you?’
He made a strange noise, and she looked up sharply.
‘Sorry, did that tickle?’
‘I’m not laughing.’
‘Do you want me to stop?’
‘There isn’t much sensation in the scar tissue,’ he began as she continued her gentle exploration of the pale streaks. ‘Although…that still feels good…’ He sighed into the silence.
‘Shall I start running the shower, or will you?’ She smiled between kisses.
The last taboo had been broached. There were no secrets between them any more. Time whirled past for Beth as Luca taught and guided her during the day, and then took her to heaven every night. His pride in what she was achieving at work was only matched by her respect for his bravery.
Then one day Silvia the housekeeper arrived for work in a worse mood than usual, and Beth plummeted back to earth with a crash.
‘Natale is less than a month away, so I suppose signor will be cluttering up the house with a flock of guests as usual. Me—I’m expected to guess, these days! He hasn’t told me a single thing. Has he said anything to you?’ The housekeeper pierced Beth with a glare.
‘Natale?’ Beth recoiled from a bowl of yoghurt on the buffet and chose a pear and a glass of water for her breakfast instead. It meant Luca would be teasing her again about her ravenous appetite over dinner, but somehow she could never face eating much for breakfast any more.
‘You know, the birthday of the baby Jesus?’ Silvia flapped her hands as she translated her way through more complaints. ‘Not that the seasons mean anything to anyone any more. Beccas put up their window display in October—I’m surprised you never noticed!’
Beth hardly heard, because there was something else she hadn’t noticed—and it was serious. While Silvia grumbled on, Beth sifted through her handbag. Her diary was right at the bottom. Grabbing it, she flicked through its pages first backwards and then forwards. Recently, her stomach had been a bit delicate in the mornings. As she began counting days, and then weeks, it shut down altogether.
There might be a very good reason for the vague symptoms
haunting her. Unusual feelings had been ebbing and flowing through her for a while, but Beth had been managing to ignore them. Now she began putting two and two together—and it made for a disaster.
She had been drinking nothing but mineral water for weeks. Both wine and coffee tasted odd to her now. She was always tired, and veered from starving to queasy. She had been putting it all down to excitement, and not enough sleep. But now her diary was hinting something else. Because she hadn’t seen a period since leaving England.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
AS SOON as she could sneak away to a distant pharmacy, Beth bought a pregnancy-test kit. The result was a formality, and everything fell into place. It explained her exhaustion and the strange feelings she had been experiencing. The thought of carrying Luca’s child made her heart bounce—but only as high as the ceiling of reality. She would have a permanent reminder of Luca to cherish, but her excitement was almost crushed by the thought of having to tell him.
This was totally unplanned and unexpected. Beth had no idea how it could have happened, but she knew exactly how he would react. Time after time, he’d made it crystal-clear he would never be cornered into a relationship. It had taken so long for him to relax in her company again…News like this would destroy all his trust in her, once and for all. She had worked so hard to convince him she wasn’t just another scheming woman, after his fortune. Now nature was doing her best to prove otherwise.
Of all the things that could have happened, this was the one guaranteed to turn Luca against her for ever. Beth had tried to trap him into marriage once before. He would never believe this was a genuine accident.
She sat alone in the reception room of her suite. Staring at the test result without seeing it, she wondered how she could possibly break the news to him. It would wreck the perfect little world they had created together over the past weeks. There were no secrets between them now—except this one, Beth thought hopelessly. Luca had shown her all the damage done to him, that last night in Balacha. With everything out in the open, she had been able to ease his mind that her plans for the future didn’t include hitching a free ride. She had shown him, too, that his physical scars made no difference to her.
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