When Jack wandered back, he was carrying a dusty bottle of red wine. ‘I found this in the cellar. I thought your meal deserved something better than beer.’
Lizzie forced a smile.
‘You’ll join me, won’t you?’ he said, reaching into an overhead cupboard for wine glasses.
‘Um…I’m not drinking alcohol at the moment.’
Jack’s green eyes widened. ‘This retreat of yours requires abstinence?’
‘Yes.’
With a puzzled grin, he held out the bottle. ‘But this is a great vintage, and it’s Italian vino.’
‘I’m sure it’s lovely, Jack.’ She forced lightness into her voice. ‘But you can’t tempt me to the dark side. I won’t have wine tonight, thanks.’
He turned the bottle in his hands, frowning at the label. ‘I don’t want to drink it alone. Guess I’ll stick with beer.’
‘I’m sorry. Normally, I’d love a glass of wine, but I’m—’
The word pregnant died on Lizzie’s lips.
Annoyed with the situation, she picked up a fork from the table and rubbed at it against a tea towel as if she were removing a spot.
‘No worries.’ Jack was as easy-going as ever.
But Lizzie was worried. She shouldn’t feel bad simply because she hadn’t told Jack about her pregnancy. He didn’t need to know. It wasn’t any of his business. Except…unfortunately, she knew there was another reason she was clinging to her secret.
Her news would kill the playful warmth in his eyes, and, for reasons that made no sense at all, she didn’t want to break the bewildering thread of attraction that thrummed between them. She hadn’t felt anything like it for ages. She didn’t want to feel anything like it. She’d deliberately distanced herself from such feelings.
And yet, even though she knew this attraction was highly inappropriate, it was also spectacularly thrilling.
She set the casserole dish on a mat on the table and lifted the lid.
Jack let out a soft groan. ‘This is too good to be true.’
‘What is?’ She was tense as a violin string. The flash of heat in his eyes seemed to scorch her, but it disappeared as quickly as it had come, and he offered her a lopsided smile.
‘Beauty, brains and a talent for cooking. You’re quite a package, Senator Green.’
‘Don’t be too rash with the compliments until you’ve tasted the meal.’
Using a serving spoon, she lifted two ossobucci smothered in vegetable sauce onto Jack’s plate. The smell was the same rich and appetising aroma she remembered from her grandmother’s kitchen, and even though the meat probably wasn’t young veal, it was tender and falling away from the bones, just as it should.
With a sense of relief Lizzie sat down to eat, but she couldn’t completely relax until Jack had taken his first bite. To her dismay, he sat staring at his plate.
‘Is something wrong, Jack?’
‘No.’ He picked up his knife and fork and sent her another crooked smile. ‘I wondered where these bones had got to.’
‘These bones?’ she repeated in horrified alarm.
Jack grimaced, clearly embarrassed, and he shook his head. ‘Don’t worry. It’s nothing. Shouldn’t have mentioned it.’ Immediately, he began to eat. ‘Mmm. Lizzie, this is amazing.’
‘But what were you saying about bones?’ She couldn’t eat until she knew.
‘Don’t worry about it. I shouldn’t have said anything. Just relax and enjoy the meal. You’ve gone to a lot of trouble and it’s sensational.’
‘But I shouldn’t have used these ossobucci, should I?’
Jack dropped his gaze to his plate. ‘Well, I’ve never heard them called that before,’ he admitted.
‘What do you call them?’
His eyes were apologetic. ‘Shin bones. We—er—usually keep them for the dogs.’
Caro Dio. Lizzie clasped a hand over her mouth. Tears stung her eyes.
‘Lizzie.’ Jack reached across the table and touched the back of her hand. ‘It’s OK. The meal’s fabulous.’
‘But you wanted the bones for your dogs.’
She sniffed. It would be ridiculous to cry.
‘I didn’t realise you could make a meal out of tough old bones, and, heaven knows, the dogs don’t need them. Don’t give it another thought.’
Jack’s eyes sparkled at her, enticing from her an answering smile.
‘I suppose it serves me right,’ she admitted. ‘I was trying too hard.’ She gave a shaky laugh and a roll of her eyes. ‘All those pots and pans.’
‘This meal is worth every one of them,’ Jack said, tucking in.
Lizzie ate, too, and she had to admit that the food tasted very good, but she could have saved herself an awful lot of work if she’d cooked something simple like spaghetti.
Why was it so hard for her to remember that she’d stepped out of the political circus ring? She didn’t have to compete any more. She was here to relax. To slow down. Loosen up. Let go.
As they ate Jack encouraged her to talk, but, while most people expected her to talk about some aspect of her political work, he wanted to know more about her childhood in Italy, and she found herself unwinding as she recalled those happy times.
Many of her memories involved her little sisters, Jackie and Scarlett, and when she let her mind roll back she could almost hear the echoes of their laughter bouncing off their neighbours’ houses as they chased each other down the cobbled streets. She could hear their girlish squeals as they ran up the hill, brushing past bushes of rosemary, catching its scent in their skirts, ducking beneath thorny branches in the lemon grove.
She told Jack about the sky in Monta Correnti, the unbelievable deep, deep blue of hyacinths, and the buttery sunlight that fell on ancient stone walls as she walked to school, clutching her mother’s hand. She told him about the tangle of wild olive trees on the mountainside, the winding paths rimmed with autumn crocuses, her grandmother’s cat asleep in the ivy.
Suddenly, she realised that Jack was staring at her, no longer easy-going, or relaxed, or smiling, but with an emotion that set her pulses racing.
‘So beautiful,’ he said softly.
Lizzie swallowed a gasp. She was almost certain he was talking about her, but this attraction thing was getting out of hand. She found it undeniably exciting, but it was wrong. Misplaced. She shouldn’t allow Jack to speak to her like this.
‘Yes, Italy’s beautiful,’ she said, pretending that she’d misunderstood him. ‘But Australia’s beautiful, too. Every country’s beautiful in its own way.’
By now they’d finished their meal, and Lizzie stood to take their plates to the sink.
With a wry half-smile, Jack stood, too.
To her relief, he didn’t try to repeat his compliment.
‘Thank you,’ he said instead. ‘That was a memorable meal.’
‘I’m glad you enjoyed it. I really liked your stroganoff last night.’ Lizzie set the plates in the sink. ‘I thought men were supposed to be messy cooks but you tossed that meal together so easily, and you only used one pot.’
From the sink, she threw a glance back over her shoulder to see Jack’s reaction to this admission, was surprised to find him looking sheepish.
‘Maybe that’s because I only had to reheat the stroganoff,’ he said.
Lizzie frowned. ‘Excuse me?’
Standing there, with his hands shoved in his pockets, he looked like a little boy caught out for cheating in a spelling test. ‘Bill, the cook, left the stroganoff in the freezer. I just had to heat it up.’
Lizzie’s jaw dropped. ‘But you let me think you’d made it from scratch.’
He shrugged. ‘I didn’t actually say I’d cooked it, but you seemed so impressed and I was happy to leave it that way.’
‘Jack!’ She couldn’t believe he’d tricked her like that. How annoying.
Jack sent her a teasing smile. ‘I should have known you’d turn the meals into a competition.’
‘But I didn’t!’
‘Of course it was a competition, Lizzie.’ Jack was moving towards her now. Laughter shimmered in his eyes as he came slowly, easily, across the kitchen, closer and closer. ‘You can’t help being competitive.’ His voice was slow, deep, and teasing. ‘Your mother named you after the Queen, and now you have to be top dog in everything.’
‘That’s not true.’ As protests went, it was very weak. Lizzie threw up her hands in frustration.
Jack caught her wrists and held them fast.
Her breath was trapped in her throat. He was holding her by her wrists alone, and yet she felt pinned against the sink by the sheer force of his sexy masculinity. Looking up at him with a kind of fascinated awe, she could see that he wasn’t smiling now.
She recognised the serious intent in his eyes. She’d seen it before, in other men, and she knew he wanted to kiss her. Oh, heavens, Jack was so very attractive and she could feel herself weakening, but she couldn’t allow it. She was pregnant, for heaven’s sake.
Their situation was precarious—a man and a woman alone in the middle of nowhere with a dangerously simmering attraction. Lizzie felt poised on a tightrope, about to fall, but she had to cling to common sense. She couldn’t afford this kind of complication.
‘Jack, you’re invading my personal space.’
‘Are you objecting?’
‘Most definitely.’ She spoke in her steeliest senatorial tones.
The light in Jack’s eyes died. He let her wrists go and took a step back from her. For tense moments neither of them spoke, but they stared at each other, unhappily aware that a thrilling but reckless opportunity had been offered and rejected.
‘So,’ he said quietly, ‘what would you like to do now?’
‘I have to wash up.’
‘You’ve washed up. It won’t take a moment to throw these few things in the dishwasher. What then? Do you want to watch TV?’ His mouth tilted in a half-mast smile. ‘I’m assuming you’d like to keep up with the news.’
Lizzie imagined watching television with Jack, pictured him sprawled on the sofa, jeans stretched tight over solid, toned thighs. She knew she would spend the evening checking him out, and then he would know for sure how impossibly attracted she was.
She should keep her distance, calm down, get her head straight. The news of the world would have to wait. She could always keep up with it via the Internet.
‘No TV tonight, thanks,’ she said as she headed for the door. ‘I need to catch up on my emails.’
CHAPTER FOUR
SHE’D almost let Jack kiss her.
She’d wanted him to kiss her.
She’d very nearly jumped into his arms.
Lizzie stood at the doorway of her room, looking out across the front veranda to the quiet paddocks and the silvery trunks of gum trees, shocked by how close she’d come to wrecking her careful plans.
She’d come to Savannah to escape the pressures of the city, mostly to escape the pressure of journalists who’d just love to discover her pregnancy and turn it into a scandal. Yet tonight she’d been on the brink of creating a hot, new scandal.
With Jack.
She could imagine the headlines.
‘Senator’s Outback Love Nest.’
‘Senator Takes a Cowboy.’
She’d wanted Jack to kiss her. Heaven help her, she’d practically prayed for amnesia. She’d wanted to forget her political responsibilities, and to forget she was forty and off men, and that she always picked the wrong men anyway. She’d wanted to forget that she was only here for a few short weeks, forget that her focus was on becoming a mother to an anonymous man’s baby.
She’d wanted to forget everything…except the sexy sparkle in Jack’s eyes and the alluring promise of his lips.
How scary it was to know she was so hopelessly weak. After years of self-discipline and hard work, after carefully weighing the pros and cons of single motherhood, tonight she’d wanted to risk it all while she carried on like a reckless, hormone-crazed kid.
Thank heavens nothing had happened.
She had to look on that encounter as a warning, and to be forewarned was to be forearmed. Now that she knew she was susceptible to Jack she would be much more careful in future.
On the back veranda, Jack stared out into the black night, idly stroking the springy fur between Cobber’s ears while his mind replayed the scene in the kitchen.
He’d been so close to kissing Lizzie. Her mouth had been mere inches from his. He’d been able to smell her skin and the hint of lemony shampoo in her hair. He’d been about to taste her.
You’re invading my personal space.
Are you objecting?
Most definitely.
‘What do you reckon?’ Jack asked the dog softly. ‘Was that a stinging rejection? Or a lucky escape?’
Lizzie dreamed she was a child again. Wearing a blue dress and sandals, legs brown and bare, she wandered along the familiar, cobbled streets of Monta Correnti where purple petunias spilled from sunny balconies and washing hung from lines strung between windows.
Wherever she went, she could hear the church bell ringing the angelus from the top of the mountain, and she felt wonderfully safe.
But then, in the haphazard way that dreams changed, Lizzie was in her uncle Luca’s kitchen where dried red peppers hung in loops from the ceiling and an old timber dresser held glassware and thick, blue and white plates. The fragrant aroma of tomato sauce, rich with basil and oregano, drifted from a pot on the stove.
Her cousins, Luca’s twin boys, Alessandro and Angelo, were there in the dream, too. The three of them were eating spaghetti from deep bowls, slurping happily.
The scene changed again to a hot summer’s night, and Lizzie and the twins were lying on the terrazzo balcony of her uncle’s house, hoping for a cool breeze, while they looked up through stone arched windows to the jasmine-scented moon.
Suddenly, Isabella burst into the scene, but she was an adult, crying to Lizzie that she didn’t know about the boys, and demanding to know where they’d come from.
When Lizzie woke the dream still felt real, even though Alessandro and Angelo had left Italy so very long ago—so long ago that Isabella and Lizzie’s sisters hadn’t even known about them.
Most of Lizzie’s memories of the little boys were vague, but she could clearly remember their shiny eyes and cheeky smiles. She could definitely remember being in trouble with her mother for visiting Uncle Luca’s house, and she remembered later being given strict orders never to speak to the rest of the family about the boys. Lizzie had never understood where they’d gone and she’d almost forgotten about them until her recent visit home.
With a heavy sigh, she rolled over in bed, cringing as she thought again about the terrible row that had erupted during her visit to Monta Correnti.
She’d gone to Italy full of her exciting baby news and she’d been even more excited about Isabella’s engagement to Max, but she’d left hurt and bewildered, struggling to understand why her mother had so suddenly and angrily exposed the long-held secret that Luca had kept from his children.
Lisa was full of her own news because she’d just come back from New York where she’d seen a photo in the paper of Angelo, one of the twins who was a baseball star now. But… But it seemed incomprehensible to Lizzie that her mother would choose Luca’s birthday to reveal the dark secret he’d kept from his children. Of course, the sudden news of the twins’ existence had blown the family apart, but Isabella had been hit hardest of all.
But now that she was fully awake, Lizzie tried to shake off the dream. Last night, she’d reminded herself that she’d come to Savannah for a break, to focus on her pregnancy and on the changes that lay ahead. And yet here she was, still finding something to worry about.
By the time Lizzie arrived in the kitchen Jack had already breakfasted and gone, so she ate quickly, and returned to her room, carrying her mug of tea, where she downloaded her emails and discovered a brief message from her mother.
I’m too bu
sy as always, but the restaurant is doing very well, so can’t complain. I hope you’re looking after yourself, darling. Do remember to take your iron tablets.
Lizzie knew she shouldn’t have been surprised by the message’s brevity. She should be used to her mother’s ways by now.
Still, Lizzie longed to hear news of peace between her mother and her uncle. Perhaps it was too much to expect the brother and sister to kiss and make up. Just the same, she was worried. And there was still no message from Isabella. She’d sent her cousin several emails now, but Isabella was yet to reply.
There was every chance, of course, that Isabella was extremely busy. She’d always worked harder than anyone else, taking care of her smaller brothers after their mother died. Even now, when she was engaged to a wealthy Italian prince, Isabella was still working hard in the family restaurant.
Given Isabella’s devotion to her family, it was no wonder she’d been especially upset by the news of Alessandro and Angelo in America. And it was completely understandable that she’d resented the fact that Lizzie had known about her brothers all along.
Thinking about it now, Lizzie felt as if she were almost as guilty as her mother was, which was pretty silly. She’d been a child, after all, and she’d promised to keep the secret without understanding any of it.
A sudden knock on Lizzie’s door interrupted her thoughts. She whirled around, saw Jack standing there, sunburned and smiling in his dusty work clothes, and she was overcome by another astonishing burst of pleasure, as if someone had lit a flame inside her.
‘How are you?’ he asked.
‘Fine, thanks.’ Was she grinning foolishly?
‘I was wondering if you’re madly busy.’
Normally she would have responded automatically that of course she was terribly busy, but this morning she recognised how much like her mother that sounded.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘I was hoping you could lend me a hand again. Another quick job. I need to get feed to the newly weaned calves, the ones not included in the muster.’
Executive: Expecting Tiny Twins Page 5