An old memory surfaced: sleeping on his sister’s bedroom floor while his father had made a bed and wardrobe for Massimo’s room. All the materials were old, reclaimed stuff but his father had made the entire lot himself right down to painting them in a colour of Massimo’s choosing.
That had been his first practical exposure to the idea that something could start out as one thing and then be turned into something completely different.
Just as he was thinking that he’d finally found the root of his love of engineering and science, another memory surfaced, of the time his father found an old bicycle at a central rubbish-collection point. He’d brought it home, serviced it and painted it. By the time he presented it to Massimo—a gift for him to run his errands on—the bike looked brand new.
A wave of affection washed through him and he embraced his parents tighter than he usually did. For all the resentment he’d once felt at growing up poor, he’d never had to sleep with one ear alert to danger. He’d never had to worry about his sister being seduced into a life of crime.
After a cuddle with his niece, it was time to say goodbye to his grandfather. He sent a silent prayer that this would not be for the last time.
He watched them sail away with a weighted heart and a lump in his throat.
Beside him stood Livia, waving vigorously at his departing family.
However hard he tried to blur her from his vision she remained solid. Beautiful.
The lump that felt like granite in his throat grew. He felt all disjointed.
Abruptly, he turned on his heel and strode back down the jetty, scanning the sky for signs of the Cessna, which had taken the last of the party guests to Viti Levu and should be back by now to take Massimo and Livia to Nadi International Airport where his flight crew were waiting for them.
‘Massimo?’
He closed his eyes and drew in a breath, slowing his pace enough for Livia to catch up with him.
The last thing he wanted was a long, protracted goodbye with his wife. He had enough tumultuous feelings ripping through him.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve hardly spoken to me since we got out of bed. Do you regret last night?’
That was Livia. Straight to the point, as always.
‘I don’t regret it. I just don’t see any point in talking about it.’
‘We spent the night making love. I would say that gives us lots to talk about.’
That was Livia too, always so keen to discuss feelings, as if feelings mattered a damn.
‘Last night...’ He closed his eyes again and sucked in another breath, fighting the heat that spread through his veins to remember how incredible it had been. ‘I’m not saying it was a mistake but, with hindsight, it shouldn’t have happened.’
‘Why not?’
‘We’re getting divorced, Liv. I know we’re going to wait for my grandfather to...’ He couldn’t vocalise the words. They were waiting for his grandfather to die before they went ahead with the legalities. ‘It won’t be long,’ he finished. He didn’t know if it was his grandfather’s imminent death or the final severance of their marriage that caused his heart to constrict.
Dark brown eyes held his. ‘Don’t you have doubts?’
‘Doubts?’
‘About whether we’re doing the right thing.’
‘None.’
She flinched but didn’t drop her stare. ‘I do.’
‘How can you have doubts?’ he asked incredulously. ‘This was your idea. You left me.’
Her slim shoulders rose. Her lips drew together before she said, ‘I want to try again.’
His heart made a giant lurch. He took a step back and stared hard at her. ‘One night of sex doesn’t mend a broken marriage and our marriage was broken.’
‘But we never tried to fix it. We were always too busy arguing...’ She held her hands in the air. ‘I was always too busy arguing. You refused to argue. It doesn’t matter who did what, the truth is we never sat down and talked and tried to find a way to fix things. We just gave up.’
‘Some things can’t be fixed. Our marriage is one of them and you were right to leave me. I’m sorry if last night has caused you to have doubts but—’
‘Last night made me see the truth. We gave up too easily.’
‘It changed nothing for me.’
Her burst of laughter sounded hollow. ‘You liar.’
‘I can’t be the husband you want me to be.’
‘You don’t know what I want.’
‘You screamed it in my face every day.’
‘Then maybe you should have listened.’
‘I’m not going to rehash old wounds.’ He put his hand out, palm facing her; a visual sign to back up his words that he wanted this conversation to end. ‘You wanted a divorce and I accepted it. It is the right thing for us to do. I’m going back to America and you’re going back to Italy. That’s it. Over.’
He started walking again.
‘I knew you’d run away as soon as I brought the subject up.’
Ignoring her, he continued, craning his head to the sky again for sign of the plane. It should have been here thirty minutes ago.
‘It’s not coming.’
He stopped in his tracks.
‘The plane. You keep looking out for it. It’s not coming back today.’
Livia folded her arms across her chest and braced herself.
When he turned to look at her, his face was dark. ‘What have you done?’
‘I’ve cancelled the Cessna until tomorrow. We need to talk.’
‘No, we need to go home. I have work and you have your brother waiting for you. I thought you were keen to see him and convince him that he’s done the right thing in leaving.’
‘He’s safe,’ she countered, ‘and as long as he’s got a gaming thing to play on and a mountain of food to eat, which he has, he won’t be going anywhere. To save you time making wasted phone calls, I might as well confess that I’ve sent your flight crew on a sailing trip on your yacht. Even if you manage to get another Cessna to take you from the island to the mainland, you’ll find it hard to leave Fiji itself.’
‘What the...?’ He swore loudly.
Bad language didn’t faze her. She’d grown up in a home where every other word was punctuated with a curse.
His jaw clenching hard enough to snap, he pulled his phone out of his back pocket. ‘I don’t know what game you think you’re playing but it won’t work. My crew take orders from me, not from you.’
‘When we married you told all your staff, flight crew included, that they were to take my orders as seriously as they took yours. Have you changed those orders?’
If looks could kill she would be dead on the ground beneath her.
‘Call them if you want but you’ll find they’re already on the yacht drinking the champagne I ordered for them. They won’t be fit to fly.’ Massimo might be the undisputed brains in their marriage but when it came to planning, Livia could beat anyone. If she had any chance of getting him to stay on the island a little longer, she had to cut off all his options to leave.
Glaring at her, he punched his fingers against the screen of his phone. ‘I shall charter another plane to take me home. You can stay here and rot.’
‘You think you’ll be able to charter a plane today? You’ll be lucky to get one for tomorrow.’
‘I’ll take my chances.’ He put his phone to his ear. A moment later he swiped it with another curse.
‘If you were calling Lindy then I’ve already spoken to her. It’s Saturday in Los Angeles...’ The time difference had taken a while for Livia to get her head around but thankfully she’d found it worked in her favour. ‘She’s taking her daughter out for the day and keeping her phone switched off.’
‘Lindy was never given instruct
ions to obey you.’
‘I asked her a favour and she agreed. It’s her own private time so she’s not in breach of her contract with you.’
There was a long pause of venom-filled silence.
Livia held her breath.
Then he smiled. His eyes remained blocks of ice. ‘I don’t need Lindy to charter a plane for me and I don’t need her to book me into a hotel for the night if you’re right that it’s too short notice for me to charter a plane. You lose.’
‘No, we lose,’ she called to his retreating back. ‘One extra day, Massimo, that’s all I’m asking for. Call the flight company and have another Cessna flown in to take you off the island and check into a hotel while you wait for your flight crew to get back from their trip, or stay here with me and see if we can try and fix this marriage.’
‘I am not willing to waste my energy fixing something that’s beyond repair.’
‘How can you say that when you’ve dedicated your working life on solutions for the greatest problems facing this earth that people said were beyond repair?’
‘Those are problems that can be fixed by science and engineering. Our problems are fundamental.’
‘I thought that about us too but now—’
Suddenly he stopped and spun round. If she hadn’t stopped walking too she would have careered into him.
‘But now, nothing. What you have done is deplorable. I need to be back at the facility first thing Monday. We have the prototype to test...’
‘Why does it have to be you?’ She strove to keep her voice steady but could feel the all too familiar anger rising. ‘You employ four thousand people. Are you telling me not one of them can test the prototype for you? Why can’t the project manager do it?’ It was an argument she’d made countless times about all the different aspects of his business.
‘It’s a controlled environment that I need to oversee.’ It was a variation of an answer he’d given countless times too.
‘The only controlled environment is your heart,’ she finally snapped.
His face contorted. ‘I don’t have to listen to this.’
‘Oh, yes, you do. If you hadn’t noticed, you’re stuck on an island with me. There’s nowhere for you to escape unless you pay someone to get you out.’ Seeing he was about to walk away again, she grabbed hold of his wrist and took a deep breath to calm her rising temper and tremulous heart. The heavy thud of his pulse against her fingers gave her the courage to continue. ‘Please, Massimo, give me this one day. The Cessna’s scheduled to pick us up in the morning. When it gets here, if you still want us to go our separate ways then I’ll accept it but if I ever meant anything to you, and if our marriage ever meant anything to you, please, give us this chance.’
Her tight chest loosened a fraction to see a softening in the icy gaze boring into her.
He dropped his gaze to her hand and gently prised her fingers from his wrist.
‘Seeing as the options you’ve left me mean I’m going to be a day late getting home, I need to make some calls.’
‘You’ll stay?’ She hardly dared to hope.
He met her stare again, his expression now inscrutable. ‘I’ll stay but only because of the situation you’ve engineered. I’m not staying for us. I have no wish to be cruel but I’m not cut out for marriage. It took our marriage for me to see that.’
* * *
Massimo, sitting on the veranda at the back of the chalet, ended his final call and rubbed his fingers over his head. The testing on the prototype he’d spent the last year working on had been put back twenty-four hours, the first time he’d ever deferred anything to do with work. Livia had smashed his carefully planned schedule on its head.
Why was she doing this? Revenge for all the late nights he’d spent in his facility? This devious streak was a side of her he’d never seen before.
Surely she wasn’t serious about them trying again? After everything they’d been through and everything they’d put each other through, she wanted to patch their marriage back up? The idea was ludicrous.
They had tried, for two long years. He couldn’t make her happy then so why did she think he could make her happy now?
He pushed away the thought that the first year of their marriage had been the best of his life. That was easily explained by the high levels of dopamine and other hormones induced by great sex.
He should never have made love to her last night. That was what had brought all this stupid, devious behaviour from her on. The hormones released by their lovemaking had messed with his head too but in the bright light of day the fog his brain had succumbed to had cleared and he could see with clarity again.
He hoped his blunt parting words had given her some much-needed clarity too.
A burst of frustration shot through him and, without thinking, he threw his phone onto the veranda’s terracotta tiles. If not for the protective case around it, it would have shattered.
Scowling at the phone as if it were its own fault that it was on the ground, he got off his chair and reached down to pick it back up. As his fingers closed around it a pair of bare feet with pretty painted toenails appeared before him. Attached to the feet was a pair of smooth, bare legs, a scar running along the calf of one, attached to a curvy body wrapped in a sheer pale blue sarong beneath which Livia was very obviously naked. Her newly cut and highlighted chestnut hair was piled high on top of her head, locks spilling over a large pair of aviator shades.
He straightened, his foul mood deepening at the spark of response that flashed through his loins and darkening to see the bucket she carried under her arm, which had a bottle of champagne in it, and the two champagne flutes she held by the stems.
Seemingly oblivious to her presence being unwelcome, she placed everything carefully on the table without speaking and poured the champagne into the flutes. Then she had a large drink from one and removed her shades. Her eyes didn’t even flicker at him.
Still not speaking, she then turned around and walked to the steps that led down to their private garden and pool. Before going down the steps, she paused.
He held his breath.
The sarong dropped to the ground.
He clamped his lips tightly together to smother the groan that formed in his throat.
What was she playing at now?
Whatever it was, he would not play along.
But he could not tear his eyes from the nymph-like form.
Her naked bottom swayed gently as she made her way slowly...seductively...down the steps to the thick, green lawn. When she reached the pool she dipped a toe in the water, then entered the pool, wading into it from the wide, gently sloping steps in the arch of the shallow end until she was waist deep. And then she began to swim, a slow breaststroke.
There was no suppressing the groan from his throat at the first frog kick of her legs.
Livia swam to the end of the pool and stopped. The water being only chest deep here, she pressed her hands together on the pool’s ledge, rested her chin on them and stared out at the softly rippling waves of the ocean lapping only metres from the edge of the private garden and enjoyed the feel of the sun baking her skin.
Massimo’s reaction to her entrapping him on the island hadn’t surprised her but it had still hurt. But, whatever he’d said about not being cut out for marriage, she wasn’t about to raise a white flag and admit defeat. She knew he still had feelings for her. She just had to break down his barriers for him to see that, with a little compromise and a lot of effort, they could have the life together they’d once dreamed of.
The barriers she’d erected to protect herself had been demolished in one blissful night. What did she have to lose?
Being here this weekend, with the man she loved and with the family she wished she could have had for her own... It had brought back everything she’d wanted for them, everything they’d had at the beginning of their marriage.
Gentle teasing. Mutual support. Fun. Laughter. Love.
If she failed, at least she could look herself in the eye and say she’d tried. At least she’d be able to move on rather than being stuck in the awful limbo she’d spent the past four months existing in.
She sensed movement behind her before she heard it. Her heart began to thud but she didn’t move, not even when the water rippled around her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MASSIMO FELT AS if he’d been drugged.
He’d kept his gaze fixed on Livia, telling himself again and again that he wouldn’t play her game.
He’d still been telling himself that when he’d stripped his clothes off.
He’d still been telling himself that when he’d stepped into the water and swum to her.
She made no effort to acknowledge him, not even when he stood behind her.
His hands working of their own volition, he reached into her hair and pulled the pin holding it together out.
Her right shoulder made the smallest of movements but she still didn’t acknowledge him.
Her hair tumbled down.
He smoothed it with his hands then pressed his nose into the fragrant silk while dragging his fingers down her back and then sliding them around her waist. ‘Why did you cut it?’ he murmured.
She leaned back into him with a soft sigh and moved her hands to slide them over his arms. Her nails scratched through the fine hairs of his forearms as her bottom wriggled provocatively against his arousal.
He slid his hand over her ribcage and cupped a weighty breast. His blood had thickened so much that even his heart felt sluggish within the heavy beats.
The small hands pulled away from his arms and reached up behind her shoulders, her fingers groping for him. And then she twisted around to face him.
Her breasts brushed against his chest, her abdomen pressed against his arousal, her hands cupped his neck.
Colour heightened her face, the dark eyes black with desire, the plump lips parted...
Those lips...
A Passionate Reunion in Fiji Page 11