by Jennie Lucas
But where?
* * *
It wasn’t an excuse for the way he’d behaved, Tina thought, as she hurried along the shadowed calles, even if it helped explain his actions. But it still didn’t excuse them. To go the lengths he had gone to get back a house simply because in other circumstances it might one day have been his—it made no sense.
Lamps were coming on around her. She looked up at the darkening sky, thinking that she’d stayed much longer at her mother’s than she’d intended to, so arriving back at Luca’s palazzo much later than she’d expected, the tiny horse tucked safe and sound in a stiff shopping bag Carmela had found for her.
She buzzed the bell on the gate and it clicked open, and it wasn’t Aldo who greeted her at the door, but Luca.
She swallowed. After the bitter way they’d parted earlier, she wasn’t sure how happy he’d be to see her.
And after what she’d learned about him, she wasn’t sure she knew what to say. He saved her from having to decide.
‘Have you been shopping?’ he asked, looking at the bag in her hand, and after the way they’d parted she couldn’t help but notice a tense note in his voice; couldn’t help but feel a tinge of resentment that there would be something wrong if she had gone shopping. ‘Aldo said you’ve been gone for hours.’
‘No.’ She started working herself up into righteous indignation. ‘As it happens, I’ve been helping Lily pack some things. I didn’t realise I was expected to ask for permis—’
‘You were at your mother’s the whole time?’
She blinked up at him. ‘Do I know another Lily in Venice?’
He regarded her through eyes half-shuttered, assessing. ‘You surprise me, Valentina. You constantly surprise me. You seemed so vehemently opposed to meeting with your mother.’
‘I don’t know why you should be so surprised,’ she said, hitching up her chin as she made a move to walk past him. ‘We’re practically strangers. You don’t know the first thing about me.’
‘Don’t I?’ he asked, lashing out a hand to encircle her wrist, blocking off her path with the subtle shift of his body, a body built for sex, the subtle movement enough to remind her of all the heated moves it was capable of. ‘And yet I know how to make the lights in your eyes explode like fireworks. I know how to turn you molten with one flick of my tongue. I know what you like and I’m thinking that’s probably slightly more than the first thing about you, wouldn’t you agree, Valentina?’
He was so intense. Too intense, the way his words worked in concert with his eyes, getting under her skin and worming their way into her very bones. She could scarcely breathe in his presence, so focused was his gaze upon her, the fingers wrapped around her wrist so tightly clenched.
‘You can call me Tina, you know,’ she whispered, desperately needing a change of subject, her words almost crackling in the heated air of his proximity. ‘You don’t have to do the whole Valentina thing every time. Tina works for me just fine.’
He blinked. Slowly. Purposefully. ‘Why would I call you something short and sharp, when your full name is so lush and sensual? When your full name holds as many seductive hills and valleys as your perfect body?’
She couldn’t answer. There were no words to answer. Not when instead of counteracting his intensity, she had inadvertently ramped it up tenfold.
‘No,’ he stated, with an air of authority that both infuriated her and rocked her to the soles of her feet as he pulled her close for his kiss, ‘Tina does not work for me at all.’
They dined in that night, but only after they’d made love late into the night. She couldn’t tell whether it was anger or relief that tinged his love-making but, whatever it was, it gave yet another nuance to the act of sex. Worst of all, it gave her reason for not hating the fact she had to be here.
Later, when still she couldn’t sleep worrying about it, she slipped from the bed to stand in the big salone and look out through the set of four windows overlooking the Grand Canal, watching the reflection of light onto water. Watching the seemingly endless activity of a water-borne society while her mind wandered and wondered.
What was happening to her?
She’d spent one night with him three years ago and she hadn’t seen him since. After what had happened, she hadn’t wanted to see him again. But sex with Luca was like an addiction that had been suppressed, a drug refused, and one taste had sent her back to that feverish place where need was paramount and hunger would not be denied.
And maybe, if she was honest with herself, she hadn’t lived those three years at all.
Maybe she’d only existed in the shadow of one perfect night, one perfect night that had all too rapidly turned toxic.
Maybe she’d only barely survived.
* * *
Despite her misgivings, they seemed to slip into a routine after that. Tina would go and help her mother sort her belongings in preparation for the upcoming move. Some days Lily would be more receptive to her help than others, but she felt that finally they were building some kind of fragile rapport as they worked room by room through the maze of glass.
She still couldn’t forgive her mother entirely for landing her in Luca’s bed, but neither could she honestly say she wasn’t enjoying the experience—at least a little.
Well, maybe more than just a little.
There was something about being with Luca that made her feel alive and sexy, vibrant and feminine, and all at the same time. It was no hardship to be seen on his arm, to feel the envy from other women, envy she enjoyed all the more because she knew it would be short-lived. It was no hardship to feel his heated glances and know what was on his mind.
And the sex was good too.
Just sex, she’d remind herself, putting the lid back on that imaginary box and tucking it under the bed when Luca went to work in the mornings.
Just sex. And in a few short weeks she would return home and it would all be a distant memory. Why shouldn’t she enjoy it while it lasted?
* * *
A week after she’d arrived in Venice, she turned up at her mother’s house. She heard Lily the moment she entered the rapidly emptying palazzo. The echoing torrent of French coming from upstairs almost had her turning her back and fleeing, until she realised from the few impassioned words she could understand that it wasn’t fury her mother was radiating, but delight.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked Carmela, peering suspiciously up the stairs as she peeled off her jacket.
The housekeeper took it to slide over a hanger. ‘She’s talking to the gallery owner, the one who has agreed to take her glass on consignment. There must be good news.’
Lily came bounding down the stairs a minute later, her eyes bright, looking more like a schoolgirl than a fifty-something woman. But then she’d changed her hair too, Tina realised, so that now it framed her face more softly, stripping years from her face.
‘What is it?’ Tina asked.
‘You’ll never guess. Antonio has a contact in London. They’re doing a display of Venetian glass and they want everything I can send. Antonio thinks it will make a fortune!’
‘Antonio?’
Her mother actually looked coy, her hands tangling in front of her. ‘Signore Brunelli, of course, from the gallery handling the sale.’
Tina glanced across at the housekeeper, who gave a quick nod before bustling back in to pack up the last of the kitchen, and suddenly her mother’s change of mood in the last few days made some kind of sense.
And even though that was what her mother did, finding her next partner with unerring precision, Tina couldn’t help but smile at seeing her so happy. ‘That’s great, Lily.’
‘That’s not all,’ her mother continued, her eyes sparkling. ‘He wants me to come to London with him. He says I will be the bridge between the Venetian and the British, unifying the c
ollection and giving it purpose. He’s taking me to dinner tonight to talk about the details. He thinks we should be there for a month at least.’
She took a deep breath, looking around her as if trying to work out what she’d been up to before the call. ‘Well, I guess we should get to work. It will be such a relief when it’s all done.’
Relief? The one hundred and eighty degree change in her mother’s mood from when she’d first arrived in Venice would be something worth celebrating if only Tina wasn’t left with a bad taste in her mouth. Where was her relief? Where was her upside?
She’d been the one to make the sacrifice here—forced to spend a month with a man she hated while her mother not only got on with her life but prospered. Where was the justice?
‘Don’t you mind about the move any more? When I came here, you were so angry with Luca, with me, with your situation—with everything! How can you be so happy now?’
‘Don’t you want me to be happy?’ There were shades of the Lily of old in her question, shades of indignation that once would have been the spark set to combust into something more.
‘Of course I do, Lily. It’s just that—’ She threw her hands out wide in frustration. ‘It’s just that I’m still stuck with Luca while you seem to be getting on with your life now as if this is nothing but a minor inconvenience.’
‘Oh, Valentina.’ Her mother nodded on a sigh. ‘Please don’t be angry with me. Sit down a moment.’ She pulled her down alongside her on a sofa. ‘I have something I should say to you—Carmela will tell me off if I don’t.’
She frowned. The idea of Carmela reprimanding her mother was too delicious. ‘What is it?’
Lily shook her head and took her daughter’s hand. ‘I know we haven’t always been close, but I do know I treated you appallingly when you arrived. Even before you arrived. But I was so scared,’ she implored, ‘don’t you see? I had nobody else to turn to and Luca was threatening to throw me out onto the streets and I believed him. I had no idea he would come up with the apartment—he never hinted. I believed he would do his worst.’
Tina nodded. ‘I know.’ And it was good to be reminded of how afraid they’d both been; of how Luca had ruthlessly manipulated them both to get what he wanted. It was such a short time ago and yet just lately it had been so much harder to remember. ‘It’s okay.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t say anything. This is hard for me and you have to listen. I’m sorry I haven’t been a better mother to you. I’m sorry I got you involved in all my mess. But please don’t begrudge me this slice of happiness. It’s been so long since I felt this way about a man.’
‘I’m happy for you, Lily, truly I am. But please be careful. You’ve only just met the man, surely?’
Her mother smiled and shrugged, looking into the middle distance as if she was seeing something that Tina couldn’t. ‘Sometimes that’s all it takes. Little more than a heartbeat and you know that he’s the one.’
‘Is that how you felt with Dad, then? And Eduardo and Hans and Henri-Claude?’
Lily dropped her head and sighed. ‘No. I’m ashamed to say it’s not. I’m not proud of my track record, but this time it’s the real thing, Valentina. I know it. And what I want for you is to know this same happiness. Is there no chance that you and Luca—’
Tina stood, unable to sit, needing to move. ‘No. None.’
‘Are you sure? Has he said nothing about staying?’
‘Of course I’m sure, and no he hasn’t. Because he won’t. He’s not a man to change his mind, Lily, and I don’t want him to. In fact, I can’t wait for this month to be over. I can’t wait to get home and see Dad again.’
‘Oh. I see. It’s a shame, though. Especially after what you’ve been through, losing his baby and everything. Surely he realises he risks putting you through all that again.’
‘He doesn’t know!’ she said, wishing to God she’d never told her mother about her baby. ‘And he won’t know. There’s no point in him knowing. It’s...history.’
‘But surely it’s his history too.’
‘It’s too late for that,’ she said, running her hands through her hair and pulling her ponytail tight, pulling her fraying thoughts tight with it and plastering a smile on her face that touched nowhere near her heart. ‘Now, where do we start today?’
* * *
‘You didn’t have to blackmail me to get my mother out of the palazzo, you know.’
Luca and Tina had made love long into the night and now they lay spooned together in that dreamy place between sex and sleep while their bodies hummed down from the heights of passion.
He pulled her closer and pressed his lips to her shoulder. ‘What do you mean?’
‘All you had to do was wave that gallery owner, Antonio Brunelli in front of her nose and she would have done anything you wanted in a heartbeat.’
He stilled alongside her. ‘Lily and Antonio Brunelli? Is that so?’
‘I suspect she already believes herself in love with him. So you see, you could have saved yourself all this trouble if you’d just introduced her to Antonio in the first place.’
He breathed out on a sigh, warm air fanning her skin. ‘I never realised it would be that easy or maybe I would have.’
It irked her that she felt deflated. She shouldn’t feel deflated. She hadn’t wanted to be here after all. ‘So maybe you should have.’
‘Ah,’ he said softly, cupping one breast so tenderly in his warm hand, ‘but then I wouldn’t have you.’
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to sort out the tangle of her thoughts. He meant he wouldn’t have her for sex, he meant. Nothing more.
It was ridiculous to imagine he meant any more than that when his intentions had always been so clear from the start.
All the same, she wished she hadn’t pushed him. She wished she’d left him saying maybe he wouldn’t have bothered. She wished she didn’t secretly yearn for things to be different.
And she wished to hell she understood why she wanted them to be so.
CHAPTER TWELVE
TINA checked her watch and pulled her new computer onto her lap. As much as she’d protested when Luca had given it to her, she loved what it could do. Talking face to face with her father for one. It would be around eight p.m. at home now and Mitch would be finished work and hanging around the study waiting for her call. It was good to hear how everything was going on the farm. It grounded her, and made her realise how much a fantasy her life in Venice was.
They talked of the now completed shearing, which had gone better than anticipated and Tina was already calculating what the bales of wool would bring in when she heard it in the background—a female voice.
‘Who’s there with you, Dad? I didn’t know you had company or I wouldn’t have called.’
‘Oh, it’s just Deidre, love. By the way, when are you coming home?’
‘Deidre? Deidre Turner, you mean? But surely the shearing’s finished. Why’s she still there?’
‘She’s...er...she’s helping out with the cooking, just while you’re away. Now, when are you coming home?’
‘Oh Dad,’ she said, distracted by thoughts of Deidre Turner and what might really be going on at home while she was away. Deidre was a widow, she knew, her childhood sweetheart husband of twenty years killed in a tractor accident a few years back. She’d never so much as looked at another man. Or so Tina had thought. But maybe she was looking now.
She smiled as she framed her next question. ‘Are you sure you really want me home?’ adding before he could answer, ‘Don’t worry, Dad. There’s ages yet. I’ll let you know when I’ve booked.’
‘Tina, you’ve already been away three weeks. If you don’t book a flight soon, you won’t get one.’
Shock sizzled down her spine.
Three weeks?
That couldn’t be right, could it? No. Surely it was more like two?
But when she looked at the calendar she saw he was right. Eight days she had left.
Eight nights.
And then she would be free to leave, her end of the bargain satisfied.
‘Tina? You okay?’
She blinked and turned back to her father. ‘Sorry, Dad,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Of course you’re right. I’ll book. I’ll let you know.’
She ended the call, stunned and bewildered. How could she have so lost track of time? When she’d first arrived in Venice she couldn’t wait to get away. But now—when she could count the days and nights remaining on her fingers—now the thought of leaving ripped open a chasm in her gut and left her feeling empty and bereft.
One month she’d agreed to and now that month was nearly up and, as much as she looked forward to seeing her father again, the thought of leaving Venice...
Leaving Luca...
Oh God, no, she thought, don’t go there. She’d always been going to leave. She’d been the one to set that condition and Luca had agreed. He expected her to go. Clearly she was simply getting used to dressing up in beautiful clothes and living as if she belonged here. But she didn’t belong here. She didn’t belong with Luca. She would book her flight home and think about how good it would be to see her father again. She’d feel better once she’d booked.
She was sure she would.
* * *
‘I booked my flight home today.’
Luca stilled at the cabinet where he was pouring them both a glass of sparkling prosecco. The pouring stopped. This wasn’t how he’d planned tonight to go. The trinket in his pocket weighed heavy like the ball in his gut. ‘So when do you go?’
‘A week tomorrow. I was lucky enough to get a seat. Flights are pretty fully booked this time of year.’
Lucky.
The word stuck in his throat. Was she in such a goddamned hurry to leave? He’d thought she was enjoying their time together. She’d certainly given him that impression in bed.