by Liz Fielding
She put her shopping away. The wine in the fridge. Ar ranged the grapes on a small glass dish so that stalk where she’d plucked one didn’t show. And felt like Eve standing in front of the tree, hoping that Adam wouldn’t notice that she’d picked an apple.
Her phone rang. The heart-leap betrayed her, but it wasn’t Matteo. It was the Headmaster of Maybridge High.
‘Sarah Gratton.’
‘Sarah. It’s Giles Morgan. How are you settling in? Are you enjoying the job?’
‘Fine. Thank you.’
‘Good, good. I just thought I’d give you a call. I realise that perhaps I was thoughtless, expecting you to write a blog for us when you have so many more interesting things to do.’
Her mouth dried. She’d hoped that no one had seen the ridiculous blog she’d posted last night. Giles Morgan’s emphasis on the word ‘interesting’ suggested that it was a hope unfulfilled.
‘I just thought I’d let you know that I’ve removed the link from the school website.’
Oh, well, it wasn’t all bad news.
‘Whatever you say, Giles,’ she said, using his first name, rather than his title. He wasn’t her Headmaster, she would never be going back to Maybridge High and, instead of filling her with sadness, the realisation that she was totally free was liberating. ‘If that’s all?’
‘Er … yes.’
‘Then if you’ll excuse me, I have a date.’
She ate another grape, then rushed off to shower, apply just enough make-up to make it look as if she’d made an effort, not enough to look as if she was trying too hard.
Did the same with her clothes. Lace against her skin where it wouldn’t show. On top a simple silk shirt the colour of clotted cream, a pair of plain black trousers that relied only on cut and fabric to make a statement. A pair of glove-soft pumps.
Simple, go anywhere clothes.
She fastened her hair back at the nape of her neck with a antique tortoiseshell clasp that had belonged to her great-grandmother. Barely had time to check her reflection, panic that she’d played it down to the point of invisibility, when there was a rap at the door.
She took a deep breath, opened it.
Matteo was leaning against the far wall as if, having knocked, he’d taken a step back. Put the maximum distance between them.
He said nothing, did nothing. All he did was look at her with those intensely dark eyes.
It was like being touched.
Her face, her lips. And too late she discovered that the silk shirt had been a mistake. It wasn’t simple. It floated against her skin with the lightest of touches until every nerve-ending was shimmering with arousal.
Then, when she thought she might burst into flames if he didn’t touch her, might burst into flames if he did, Matteo offered her a spray of pale yellow roses that he’d been holding at his side. And still he hadn’t said a word.
‘Thank you …’ Her mouth went through the motions but it was as if all the air had been sucked out of her. She tried again. ‘Come in. I’ll … um …’ She lifted the roses in a soundless indication of what her dry mouth was incapable of saying. She didn’t wait, but stepped back, spun around, retreated swiftly to the safety of the kitchen, giving herself air to breathe.
She turned on the tap, considered sticking her head beneath it. Instead, she grabbed a jug, holding her fingers under the water while she filled it, taking deep breaths until she was nearly fainting from the rich, heady scent of the roses.
She cleared her throat, feathered the velvet softness of the petals as she placed them, one by one, in the water.
‘These are beautiful,’ she called, when she finally trusted her voice. She sounded hoarse. She cleared her throat. ‘And thank you for the wine.’ She picked up the jug, took another breath, ordered her feet to take her into the living room. ‘The grapes …’
Matteo had ignored her invitation to sit down, but had followed her and was now leaning against the door frame, watching her.
The jug wobbled and he took a step forward, rescued it, put it down, then looped his arm around her waist and pulled her hard against him. His gaze locked onto hers. Dark, storm-filled, thunder and lightning, daring her to defy him.
‘I don’t trust you,’ he said. ‘I don’t trust myself.’ And then he kissed her. There was no shimmer. Nothing dreamy or figment-of-the-imagination, shall we shan’t we, teasing. No tenderness. Not a hope in hell of fooling herself that this wasn’t happening.
His mouth plundered hers with a fierce, predatory hunger that should have been shocking, repellent. Instead, the heat of it surged through her veins like lava, burning away everything but her need for him.
Basic, physical, it had nothing to do with white lace and promises. Happy ever after. Till death us do part.
It was raw, primal, but above all honest and she took his kiss, gave it back with everything she had, leaning into Matteo as if she would make herself a part of him. As if she could make him part of her.
It was the jug that brought the moment crashing to a halt as he turned urgently to fit their bodies closer together. It toppled as his hip caught the table, smashing on the tiles in a tide of cold water and roses.
For a moment he stared at the broken shards, the spreading pool of water, then, clamping his hand around her wrist, Matteo said, ‘Out.’
‘But …’
‘Out. Now,’ he said.
She looked back helplessly at the mess, but he headed for the door and she barely had time to scoop up her bag and cardigan before they were through it and heading down the stairs.
‘Where are we going?’ she gasped as they burst into the warm evening and, as if coming to his senses, he finally let her go. Pushed his hands deep into his pockets.
‘Anywhere. Nowhere. Just out.’ He glanced at her as they headed down the cobbled hill. ‘Did I hurt you?’
‘No.’
He stopped, looked at her.
‘No,’ she repeated, with a gesture that was pure Roman. ‘I’m not being “nice”, Matteo,’ she said, walking on, leaving him to follow.
‘I believe you,’ he said, falling in beside her. ‘Nice girls don’t kiss like that.’ He rubbed at his lower lip. Smiled a touch ruefully. ‘You bit me.’
She’d bitten him?
He was right. She didn’t kiss like that. At least she hadn’t until now. But then she’d never felt like that. Been so completely out of control.
‘Do you expect me to apologise?’ she asked.
‘I wasn’t complaining.’ He glanced at her. ‘Do you want me to?’
‘Complain?’ she said, choosing to misunderstand.
‘Apologise.’
Her turn to stop. ‘No, Matteo.’ She was free, unencumbered by any responsibilities except to herself. ‘I don’t want anything from you that you can’t give me naked.’
‘Let’s go back …’
‘I want a lover,’ she said. ‘A man who will make memories to keep me warm when I’m old. Memories that will shock my grandchildren. Make me smile when I’m dying.’
‘We should definitely go back …’
She was trying to be cool, but he had this way of getting beneath her skin and she was fighting a losing battle against a smile. Who wouldn’t want a man who couldn’t trust himself alone in a room with her?
Any woman would smile.
‘No, you’re fine,’ she said. ‘You’ve already passed the physical—’
He practically choked. ‘You are outrageous.’
‘Am I?’ He was right, she was. Tom would not have recognised her. She scarcely recognised herself. ‘It’s your bad influence. You are turning me into a diva.’
‘I admit only to liberating the diva within. A role you appear to have taken to with genuine enthusiasm.’
She looked at him sideways from beneath her lashes. ‘If I’m shocking you, you can withdraw at any time.’
‘That, amore mio, is an offer you may live to regret,’ he said, not bothering to hide his amusement as she blushed.
Matteo reached for Sarah’s hand, laced his fingers through hers and continued down the hill.
He’d followed through on her invitation to a no-commitment affair, something light-hearted, amusing.
Instead, he found himself perilously on the edge of something much more dangerous. That he couldn’t control.
From the moment she’d opened the door, the cool, laid-back let’s-play-lovers routine had been history.
When she had opened the door it was as if a draught of pure oxygen had been applied to his banked-down libido. Casual, light, amusing had burnt away in the heat of desire.
Only the smashing of the jug had brought him to his senses. Given him precious seconds to pull back from the brink.
And then, in the middle of giving a very fine performance as a sophisticated woman of the world, she, too, had lost her cool, blushed like a schoolgirl and he found himself … charmed.
‘You do realise that an interview is a two-way dialogue?’ he said, hauling himself back from the threshold of something he couldn’t control. ‘It’s not simply for me to persuade you that I can deliver everything you need. You have to convince me that the position is worth having.’
She regarded him with a slightly baffled expression. The fact that he could see right through Miss Sarah Gratton when she was putting on an act was, if he’d needed reassurance regarding her probity, all he needed.
‘Sex without commitment. What’s not to like?’ she asked, oh, so carelessly.
She had a point. He’d given a fair impression of a man with nothing more pressing on his mind but she had responded with equal impetuosity.
That they were not naked right now was down to clumsiness rather than design.
‘If that’s all you wanted,’ he replied, responding in the same vein, ‘you could go to one of the clubs in the Testaccio any night of the week and find a dozen young men happy to oblige.’
‘If I’d wanted a one-night stand I wouldn’t have had to come to Rome,’ she snapped, and he laughed as the real Sarah Gratton showed up.
‘Brava, carissima. I stand corrected.’
She stopped, took a breath. ‘No. You’re right. Hands up, you’ve got me. I’ve never done anything like this before,’ she said, the bold diva morphing into someone much less certain of herself.
‘That, cara, is obvious.’
While he had done it too many times. The flowers, the little notes, all the tender little touches that made a woman melt.
‘So? What do I have to do?’ she asked. ‘To persuade you.’
‘To have an affair with you?’
Was she serious?
Was he?
What on earth was he doing here? Cynical, suspicious, unfeeling, she could not have chosen a worse man for the kind of light-hearted affair with which to heal her broken heart.
Or maybe not.
He had once known exactly how to make a woman feel adored. She’d seen the evidence for herself when she’d searched the Net, looking for him. As he’d looked for her. The playboy Conte, following in the family tradition of making the gossip magazine editors’ day. ‘Why don’t you start by telling me three things about yourself that I don’t know?’ he began.
She frowned. ‘What sort of things?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Oh, I see. Psychological games.’
‘Isn’t that what makes a relationship interesting? The games we play with each other?’ He felt a tiny shiver run through her. ‘Don’t think too hard,’ he warned.
‘My middle name is Florence,’ she offered. Playing safe.
‘You were named after Florence Nightingale?’
‘No, after my grandmother. Although, since she was the first person to be called that, I suppose technically we are all named after her.’
‘Florence Nightingale?’
‘Yes. She was born in Florence. People thought it very odd of her parents to name her after the city, but they’d already done it with her sister.’ She paused. ‘She was born in Naples.’
‘It’s fortunate that she didn’t become the legend, then, or your middle name would be Parthenope.’
She dug her elbow in his ribs. ‘That was my line.’
He grinned, took her arm and tucked it beneath his so that they were closer. ‘Next?’
‘I’m allergic to spinach. It contains some chemical that makes me sick.’
About to tell her what it was, he thought better of it.
‘You must be inconsolable,’ he said, easing her towards a pavement café.
‘Very nearly,’ she said seriously, but her eyes were laughing.
How could he have ever doubted her sincerity?
It was early and a hovering waiter whipped out a chair for her. He ordered wine, mineral water and the man left the menus and melted away.
‘What is your third unknown?’
‘I’m left-handed.’
He shook his head. ‘I already knew that.’
‘Did you?’ She was clearly surprised that he should have noticed.
‘You were holding your phone in your left hand when I first saw you,’ he said. ‘Sitting on the wall, your face lifted to the sun.’
She curled her fingers into her palm self-consciously and he took her hand, smoothed it flat across his palm with a sweep of his thumb across her fingers.
‘It might have been chance,’ she said.
‘You took the roses I brought you with your left hand,’ he said.
‘Poor things. I should have picked them up, put them in water.’
‘If we had stayed in your apartment you wouldn’t have been thinking about roses.’
Her lids swept down over her eyes, a touch of colour returned to her cheeks. ‘No,’ she admitted.
‘And it was your left hand that you raised when I kissed you,’ he said. ‘The fingers of your left hand that curled around my neck, that slid through my hair.’
Her left hand that had held him as she’d leaned into him, pressing her breasts against his chest, fitting her hips into his.
Cradled in his, her hand trembled. Or was it his?
‘You have excellent observational skills,’ she said with remarkable control, but nowhere near as bold as she would have him think.
Maybe.
Or maybe he’d been looking too hard. Seeing everything and seeing nothing. Looking for complication when there was only simplicity. For lies when there was only truth. As once he’d seen truth when there were only lies.
‘Try again,’ he invited, wanting to know everything about Sarah Gratton.
She looked at him for a long moment, then shook her head. ‘Why don’t you trust me, Matteo?’
He didn’t reply.
‘I’m a teacher,’ she went on, when he didn’t immediately answer. ‘You know that. You’ve used the internet to check for yourself that I haven’t made it all up. And yet you still said, “I don’t trust you …”’
‘I also said that I didn’t trust myself,’ he reminded her. ‘Before I kissed you.’
Remind her of that. The intensity of it. The passion. They would have been in bed now—always assuming they would have made it that far—if he hadn’t hauled her out of the flat.
She shook her head. ‘That is different.’
His silence conceded the point.
‘You said you would tell me why,’ she pressed when he didn’t answer.
‘I did,’ he admitted. ‘I had intended that we would sit on your little terrace this evening, drink a glass of wine, eat an olive or two like civilised people and I would tell you the whole sordid sorry story.’
Then she’d opened the door, slightly flushed, breathless, the gossamer-fine silk of her shirt moulding itself to her body in the movement of air, and his careful plans had gone right out of his head.
‘I’ll tell you now.’
‘No. Wait.’ She looked down at the table. At their intertwined hands. ‘First I have to tell y
ou the most important thing you don’t know about me, Matteo.’ She lifted her head, looked straight at him, her clear grey eyes swirling with mist. ‘I lied about why I came to Isola del Serrone.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS
Eating out in Italy is an event with entire families, from grandparents to the youngest babies, gathered around a restaurant table. They talk, they gesture, they laugh, sharing precious time together.
Young people meet their friends, have an espresso or a glass of wine, or even a bowl of chips at a small street café. It is one of the great civilising pleasures of a climate where rain is the exception rather than the rule …
MATTEO’S thumb, which had been rubbing gently at the back of her fingers, stopped moving. Everything stopped moving. The traffic. The noise and movement around them in the café. His heart.
‘Lied?’
Yes. No …
Everything he knew about her screamed a denial. And yet, despite all the truths he had uncovered, he had always known that there was more to Sarah’s visit to Isola del Serrone than a day trip on the recommendation of a friend.
‘So?’ he asked, his voice steadier than the pulse thrumming through his head. ‘Why did you come?’
‘Lex did tell me about the village,’ she began, ‘and I wanted to see it. Wanted to be able to tell him what it looks like now. That it is a good place.’ Her words came out in a rush. ‘But I came to find the house, too. Your house.’
His hand tightened around hers, as if to hang on to the promise of something sweet that was slipping away …
But she was looking at him across the table, her eyes so grave, so beautiful. Her mouth full, swollen from the passion of the kiss they had shared and right at this moment he was wishing that he had stayed in her apartment. Followed that kiss through to its inevitable conclusion. That he was in bed with her, where words had no meaning beyond the moment they were uttered.
‘It’s why I climbed the hill,’ she said. ‘I thought if I was high up, I could look down on the village and I would see it.’
‘You were right,’ he said, hearing the calm detachment with which he spoke. So at odds with the painful thumping of his heart. Unfeeling? Did he think that he was unfeeling? He had been feeling from the moment he’d surprised Sarah, kissed her. Had been thinking about her for more than a week. Then last night … It was hardly surprising that he’d gone off like a firecracker the minute he’d set eyes on her.