Paolo raised dark eyebrows. ‘What, we are no more on first name terms?’
He pushed away from the door and stepped into the room, his sombre and powerful figure suddenly crowding the space around Venetia, invading her privacy. This man has real gall, she thought, as she looked away from his demanding gaze.
‘I’ll join you in the meeting room in a few minutes, if you just let me prepare myself.’
Ignoring her words, Paolo sauntered across to her and, capturing one of her quivering hands, smoothed a thumb across the back of it. His eyes were now serious.
‘You’re cross with me, cara, yes?’
Venetia attempted to pull away, but the touch of the firm brown fingers, so dark against her skin, had an absurdly sensuous penetrating warmth. She had dreamt so often of those strong, masculine hands upon her that she couldn’t help a suppressed excitement that began to simmer.
‘We mustn’t keep Signora Lombardi waiting,’ she argued, turning her head a little to evade his Mephisto stare.
‘I’ve already had my meeting with Signora Lombardi.’
‘I was told I had a meeting in room number five.’
‘Yes, that’s so, but I asked the permission of Signora Lombardi to have the meeting with you outside the office over a cup of… hot chocolate?’
‘I see,’ Venetia said coolly. ‘And, as always with you, I suppose I have no say in the matter.’
Paolo ignored the jab. ‘You seemed surprised to see me.’
‘I was amazed,’ she answered stiffly.
He stepped closer. His half smile returned, though his eyes searched hers. ‘Are you going to send me away?’
‘I should,’ she retorted shortly, pulling her hand from his grasp.
With the tips of his finger and thumb, Paolo lightly took hold of Venetia’s chin and turned her face towards him. ‘I’m sorry, cara. I know I behaved badly.’ His voice was low and husky, its rich timbre overlaid with a hint of sadness, but sexy nonetheless. ‘Mi sei mancato, I’ve missed you. You see, tesoro mio, I tried, but I couldn’t stay away. You’ve bewitched me with those expressive, fiery eyes of yours,’ he murmured, his gaze challenging her before briefly sweeping downwards, ‘… and your eloquent body has already said so much more than words can tell me.’
They were so close now. He was looking at her with a brooding expression and although Venetia stood as still as a statue, tiny nerves seemed to chase each other over the pit of her stomach. Silence hung between them. Her heart thundered as his brilliant, feverish gaze travelled to her mouth. She felt her stomach clench, sending an urgent heat inside her. Kiss me, Paolo, she thought, kiss me now. She felt him go tense.
Still holding her chin, staring at her mouth, his other arm closed around her like a vice, and her body was crushed close to masculine muscles and impulses. One hand moved back to cradle her head, while the other held her mercilessly to him. His eyes were now burning into hers, searching her depths, silently provoking her. She leaned back a little and lifted her face, offering her mouth wantonly to him. The all-consuming blue irises held hers a moment longer, and then his raven-black head bent towards her.
Venetia felt the rush of his warm breath across her skin and a cry of relieved surrender escaped her lips as Paolo took them with desperate voracity. A raging thrill coursed through her veins and through her bones like quicksilver as the wild searching caress of his mouth, the raw passion in his wandering hands, ignited flame after flame through every part of her starved body. Venetia’s arms moved upwards, encircling his neck. Her lips clung to his as though she would die if he stopped those deep, heated kisses; her breasts, now hard and painful, pressed against the wall of his chest, yearning for his caress. A long-denied hunger was driving her, all her senses aroused; she needed to touch him. From the muscled strength of his nape, her fingers moved over his back, down his ribcage and were then dexterously unbuttoning his shirt, craving the feel of him.
He was murmuring loving words into her ear, his lips moving over her eyelids, her cheeks, and her throat with erotic featheriness. The room was reeling and the nerves beneath Venetia’s skin were alive as never before. Her legs felt weak, her flesh dissolving against him with molten languor, her soul trembling inside her burning body like an autumn leaf in the wind, a prisoner of the passion she saw smouldering in his eyes and could feel radiating from his powerful body.
From some dim recess of her mind she was remembering, recognising similar earth-shattering sensations and feelings that now resurfaced and invaded her – the echoes of an old passion once driven to a peak of expectancy, before leaving, shuddering in despair; a love that she had wrenched from her heart and buried in a deep well of oblivion.
‘Oh, I’m sorry…! I didn’t realise that you were still here. The door was open…’ Francesca breathed, before scurrying away.
The redhead’s apologetic exclamation jerked the lovers apart. As Paolo released her, Venetia swayed a little on unsteady legs and she automatically put out a hand to grasp the edge of his jacket. Paolo covered it with his, turned it over and gazed at the palm before bringing it to his lips.
‘La mia cara piccola strega, my treasured little witch. You have breathed life into a body that has been dead for a long time,’ he murmured without looking at her, a wistful smile touching the fine outline of his mouth. His eyes, so dark and inscrutable, now vacantly fixed on some point beyond the walls of the room, like a night without hope of stars. Venetia stared at him in astonishment; his words mirrored her own feelings, but she kept her thoughts to herself.
Tidying herself up, Venetia silently watched the back of Paolo’s imposing figure. As he moved away from her and across to the window, while doing up his shirt and then adjusting his tie, he appeared to be a million miles away. Once more she was struck by the disconcerting resemblance of his bearing to Judd’s. She wondered at the sadness that seemed to dwell so deep in this man – an imposing body with a vulnerable soul. A twinge of jealousy pinched her heart as the image of the beautiful young girl who had accompanied him to the restaurant swam before her, and she recalled the gossip Francesca had related. Still, Paolo had kissed her with a kind of banked-down passionate hunger, as though the obscure tide of feeling that had run like a resurrected, fluid fire through her own veins had touched him too. She pulled on her jacket, suddenly remembering something he said: I tried, but I couldn’t stay away. So he had been avoiding her since Torcello, but why? That strange look in his eyes when they parted had been unmistakeable. What was Paolo about? Why did she feel as if she had known him forever, and yet he was shrouded with so many unanswered questions? Perhaps this was her chance to find out. Once more, he had woven his magic over her, and she felt her anger slip away into curiosity and the dark pull of her attraction.
Paolo turned abruptly and beamed at her. ‘Andiamo, shall we go and find that hot chocolate? Or maybe you’d prefer a glass of wine or a shot of grappa? We have some business to discuss.’ Gone was the sadness from his eyes, gone were the shadows across his face; the enigmatic, slightly sardonic mask was back, as though those poignant emotions in his distant gaze had been a figment of Venetia’s imagination.
They made their way through the deserted office block, and Paolo took her hand in his. Venetia thrilled to the feeling of his strong palm pressed against hers, and ignored the quizzical look the night porter gave them as they left the block. In the three years she had been working at Bianchi e Lombardi, she had made it a rule never to leave the premises after working hours with a man. Venice was a comparatively small place and rumours, true or false, made the rounds of the city in no time.
As they strolled along the waterfront towards Piazza San Marco, hardly a ripple moved the reflections of the palazzi, the street lamps and the moon; they hung, drowned and immobile, in the middle of the dark canal. The city’s historical buildings seemed to rise to a greater and nobler span, their elegant lines highlighted against the curtain of the p
urple night. The stars shone like golden pendant balls, so close in appearance that it occurred to Venetia that an outstretched hand could almost pluck them down. Suddenly she was shy and confused, not knowing how to react to the intimacy between them.
‘Where are we going?’
Paolo glanced at her as they walked, as if wondering how to take her question, then gave a sideways, wistful smile. ‘If I had it my way, I would take you to my palace in the moon, where the stars shine always bright, and the angels sing all night a beautiful lover’s hymn.’
She shot him back a playful smile of her own. ‘What about the sun? Do the angels also sing there in daytime?’
‘Alas, cara, my palace in the moon knows only night. Sunshine would be too dazzling and would eclipse the ethereal magic and poetry of the moonlight.’
So why did Venetia get the impression that there was a double entendre of real melancholy behind his words? ‘Your palace must be very cold without the rays of the sun.’
‘That’s why, amore mio, I need a passionate queen to warm the shadows and disperse the clouds with the flames of her love.’
He stopped and leaned over suddenly, lifting her face to his, and then his lips were on hers. It was not a demanding kiss, rather a kiss with all his heart in it, she thought; a kiss with a message that she only partly understood.
Paolo released her and Venetia took a breath, half in amazement and half in disbelief. A storm of feelings rioted inside her. This was no game; it wasn’t just pretence. With that kiss, Paolo had added another unspoken dimension to his words to bring home his intentions. The imploring intensity of it made her head spin. She couldn’t let this go any further… or could she?
As though sensing her troubled thoughts, he put an arm around her shoulders almost in a brotherly fashion, and pulled her gently back into a walk, laughing. ‘Come now, cara, don’t look so serious, it’s nice to dream from time to time, to make up stories, no?’
After the heartfelt potency of his kiss, the flippancy of Paolo’s tone jarred upon Venetia. It was as if he didn’t know on which foot to dance with her. Besides, she was no storyteller and liked to think of herself as a down-to-earth young woman. It was a way of being that she had forged out of necessity. Over the years, she had taught herself not to waste time on empty dreams, a tendency that had been difficult to curb and with which she still struggled sometimes. With Judd, their brief love had been the poetry of two souls in complete accord and she had dreamt of a perfect ending; but she’d learnt the hard way that some poems don’t rhyme. She found Paolo’s idiosyncrasies, his mercurial presence in her life – his ability to blow hot and cold almost in the same breath – disturbing, and she felt threatened.
Looking up at him, Venetia managed a short laugh. ‘I’m too pragmatic for that sort of talk.’
Paolo stopped and stared down at her upturned face in the dimness. He lifted his hand and brushed away a tendril of silky hair from her forehead, his features taut. ‘Maybe envisioning things in an ideal form is preparing for disappointment, but don’t you ever have a longing for something other than down-to-earth reality, Venetia?’
She coloured. His playfulness was gone again. He had uttered those words as though they had been torn from him. There was a fierce light in his blue eyes that she had never seen before. Her heart misgave her, turning weak and soft in spite of herself. When he spoke like that, when he looked like that…
No words were said and they began to walk again until they came to the Piazza San Marco.
‘We’re going to take a gondola,’ Paolo announced as he steered them towards the Bacino Orseolo, where dozens were bouncing gently in the water.
‘Sounds great! I’ve been living in Venice for over three years, and I’ve never taken one,’ she remarked with a bashful laugh.
‘Then we must immediately remedy this considerable oversight on the part of your previous boyfriends.’
Venetia noticed the humorous lift at the corners of Paolo’s mouth. She chose not to answer – it would just encourage a conversation that she knew he would leap into with both feet, and which she wanted to avoid at all costs. Things are already going too quickly, a voice at the back of her mind nagged. Do you know what you’re getting yourself into?
Paolo approached a group of gondoliers in striped shirts who were standing around laughing and swapping stories: a habitual event in the evening after they had parked their craft in this wide spot of the canal, cupped by the curving yellow walls of a hotel with red awnings.
Venetia managed to step down into the swaying black cockleshell boat without faltering, and without Paolo’s help. The night was unusually warm and balmy and they reclined upon the inviting plush velvet cushions that lay on the two seats at the far end of the gondola.
‘We’re going to a small restaurant, La Lanterna. It’s one of the best-kept secrets in Venice. I’ve not been there for a long time, but I think that you’ll like it. Tonight, cara, I will show you a face of Venice that you’ll never forget.’ He sounded excited, like a child about to show off his new toys.
Turning her head, Venetia met Paolo’s burning gaze and turned swiftly away again. That familiar feeling of confusion stole into her mind once more, as the little voice inside her head started whispering its warnings to pull back from him. And yet she couldn’t help herself. His exhilaration was infectious, and he was disturbingly close. She felt the thudding increase of her heartbeat; if she leaned back a fraction she would be resting her head on his arm, which he had stretched out behind her.
The sleek black, slightly crooked boat headed out of the parking lot into the lagoon. There was a kind of breathtaking mystery to the scenery contemplated from this lazily moving romantic boat, differing completely from the experience of watching it from a vaporetto or a motorboat. The Grand Canal was floodlit, throwing a dramatic greenish glow over the ancient buildings, making it look like a theatre stage with palazzi standing transfixed in the limelight. And as they glided on the glistening canal, neither time nor place held any meaning for Venetia. The romance of the setting, the hour, and the aura of the man sitting beside her all contributed to a wonderful dream, a tremulous, glittering, fragile dream from which she had no desire to awaken. Something opened with a sigh inside her; an obscure chord in her mind was touched and she felt a choking sensation, as though she wanted to cry because of the sheer beauty of it.
‘Is anything wrong? You’re very quiet, cara,’ Paolo remarked, leaning his head towards her.
Venetia caught her breath. ‘I’m moved by the scenery of your beautiful country. It’s the most marvellous sight in the world! It’s strange, but looking at the same view from a gondola gives a totally different perspective.’
‘The gondola is very special to the Venetians. There are many legends about it.’
Venetia looked up, her amber eyes sparkling with gentle mischief. ‘And you’re dying to tell me one, aren’t you?’ she teased.
Paolo threw back his head and burst out laughing. ‘Sì, sì cara, stai cominciando a conoscermi, you’re starting to get to know me.’
He looked happy and carefree now. His shifts of mood would never cease to amaze her. Venetia did not understand him, but then she supposed she could hardly expect to do so on such short acquaintance.
She raised her eyebrows expectantly. ‘Well? What are you waiting for? I’m all ears.’
‘I wouldn’t like to bore you.’
‘One thing you could never be, Paolo, is boring.’
He hesitated, and then smiled; he looked rather pleased. ‘Very well then! The legend says that a crescent moon plunged into the sea to provide a shield of darkness for two young lovers to be alone together. That is the reason for the black colour of the gondola, caused by the abrupt immersion of the phosphorescent body in cold water, and the reason for the silvery lustre of the prow and the stern, which remained out of the water.’
‘Wonderful! Our Nord
ic legends talk about druids, mostly catastrophes. Greek legends are full of revenge of the gods, and death. But Italian legends are always about lovers.’ She laughed. ‘Italy is definitely the most romantic country in the world.’
Paolo smiled at the look of delight on Venetia’s face and stroked her cheek tenderly with the back of his fingers as she gazed out over the dark water.
‘I love the rippling sound of the oars, that mysterious music,’ she continued. ‘It’s so soothing. You don’t have that when you’re roaring along the canal in a motorboat.’
‘You’re right, there’s no sound more peaceful than the sob of oars in the silence, especially at night.’
‘But oars don’t sob, Paolo. They tickle the water and make it laugh.’ Venetia glanced up at him, laughing herself, her whole face illuminated with inner joy. She felt light-hearted and carefree.
He surprised her by answering gravely. ‘Only people who grow old in heart hear the oars’ sob as they float down the river of years. You must keep your heart young, tesoro del mio cuore, and then you’ll hear laughter all the way.’ Paolo scanned Venetia’s face, his eyes blazing with an intensity that looked almost painful for him, and with a muffled oath he pulled her into his arms.
His mouth on hers this time was savage and unrestrained. Like the bursting of a dam too long under pressure, the power of his passion erupted and Venetia gave a small gasp against his lips, allowing his tongue access and feeling it claim her possessively. She was captured, engulfed and drowned by the currents of pleasure that surged through her. She didn’t care that their intimacy was in full view of the gondolier and other passing boats; she was in Italy, the land of love.
Venetia was alive to the heat radiating from Paolo, the thunder of his heart beating against her breast. His unintentionally cruel grip caused her rapturous pain, which melted into tenderness as he controlled his initial powerful deluge, turning it into a delicious stream of whispered endearments, caresses and featherlike kisses.
The Echoes of Love Page 11