‘Here you are.’
‘Thanks.’
She watched him pick his up and sip it, and frowned. She had thought that he might have telephoned her last night when he’d finished working. She had been willing to slip over to the hotel to see him—but he hadn’t phoned.
And she had deliberately arrived at the office early this morning—but he had sauntered in after Rupert, and there had been back-to-back meetings all day. All she’d been able to do was look at him with a kind of helpless longing and growing frustration.
She felt as if she was doing a balancing act the whole time—trying to appear cool and not look as if she was some desperado whose world was going to cave in after he’d gone.
But even she had her limits—and surely, as his lover, a few rights, too? She drew a deep breath. ‘So, are you going to tell me what’s wrong?’
‘Wrong?’ Cesare put his cup down, and now Sorcha could see the shadows beneath his eyes and a pang of guilt suddenly hit her. ‘Why should anything be wrong?’
‘I just thought…’ Her words tailed off as she read something in his eyes she didn’t recognise.
He stood up and came towards her.
‘What?’ he demanded. ‘You thought that something might be wrong because for once I didn’t leap up and start tearing at your clothes when you snapped your pretty little fingers?’
‘But I thought that’s what you like to do!’ Sorcha stared at him. ‘You’ve never complained before.’
‘Of course I haven’t!’ he said, in a voice of dangerous silk. ‘Because what man in his right mind would complain when a woman is constantly demanding mind-blowing, erotic, no-strings sex and demanding that he keep it secret?’
‘Presumably you have your reasons,’ she said coolly.
Cesare stared at her in frustration. It was the fantasy that most men dreamed of—and he was fulfilling every sweet, sensational second of it.
He had tried telling Maceo about it over dinner in Rome last week, and the photographer had told him that if he was really complaining he needed to see a psychiatrist, because no-strings relationships were the only ones which worked—and did he think Sorcha might be interested in doing more modelling? Cesare had swallowed a mouthful of wine and told his friend to go to hell.
Cesare studied Sorcha thoughtfully. ‘We never spend the whole night together—never sleep together,’ he observed.
‘That might be a bit of a giveaway, don’t you think?’ she asked. ‘Some bright spark like my mother or my brother might put two and two together and very cleverly come up with the answer of four!’
Cesare knitted his dark brows together. Maledica la donna! ‘And we never eat together,’ he observed.
‘That’s not true,’ she protested. ‘We often have a working lunch.’
Sure they did. Tongue sandwiches in a deserted lay-by.
‘And we had dinner with my family on Sunday—you know we did!’
‘Yes, I know that,’ he agreed dangerously. ‘And when we weren’t being forced to endure a hundred damned wedding photos which all looked the same—you spent the whole time studiously avoiding looking at me except when was absolutely necessary. I will tell you something, Sorcha—if anything is designed to alert them to the fact we’re having an affair, then that certainly is!’
‘Since when did you become such an expert in human behaviour?’ she demanded.
He stared at her. ‘Since I started dating—Dating?’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘Let me rephrase that—since I started having sex with a woman who thinks no further than the nearest erogenous zone!’
She rushed at him with her clenched hand raised to pummel him in the chest, but he caught her easily by the wrist and brought her up close to him.
He could see her eyes dilating so that the green was almost completely obscured by ebony saucers of desire. And he could feel her breath warm against his skin—her lips so close that he could almost taste their sweetness. And how easy it would be. How ridiculously easy.
‘Oh, yes,’ he taunted. ‘You want me now, don’t you, Sorcha? You want me right now.’
‘You know I always want you,’ she answered in confusion. ‘Did you…did you start the row deliberately to….?’ But she saw the expression of contempt in his eyes and knew that her assessment had gone horribly, horribly wrong.
‘You think I wanted to inject a frisson of imaginary conflict into our relationship?’ he demanded incredulously, and he let her hand fall from his as if it was something contaminated. ‘Dear God!’
He walked away from her—away from her sweet allure and her dangerous kind of magic. He looked out of the window at the summer clouds blowing across the sky.
‘My wild little Sorcha, who is always up for sexual adventure,’ he murmured. ‘Anyway, anywhere and anyhow. God forbid that we should just go home to bed at the end of the evening, like any other couple!’
Incredulously, she stared at the formidable set of his back. ‘Is that what you want?’
He turned again and his face was expressionless. ‘It is too late for that, Sorcha—don’t you understand?’
She shook her head, as if trying to dispel the confusion. ‘No, I don’t understand!’
He shrugged. ‘We have forged the pattern of our relationship. It is what it is. We work and we have sex—and now that the work is coming to an end…well, it follows that the sex will, too.’
There was silence.
‘Is that all it’s been?’ she questioned painfully. ‘Sex?’
‘How would you describe it, then?’ he challenged softly.
And suddenly she realised what he was doing. ‘Why are you turning this around on me?’ she demanded, acknowledging how clever he was. Emotionally, he had pushed her away and sought refuge in sex, and now he was accusing her of compartmentalising! She couldn’t win, she thought—or rather Cesare didn’t want her to. There would be only one winner in this scenario, and he was going to make sure it was him.
‘You’re the man who runs a million miles away from feelings!’ she stormed. ‘If I’ve acted this way, it’s only because that’s the way you intimated I should act. What’s the matter, Cesare—are you angry because I’ve actually gone along with it?’
‘That is enough!’ he gritted.
‘No, it isn’t! We never talk about the things which are going on inside, do we? Like we never talk about when you asked me to marry you—’
‘I don’t want to discuss it, Sorcha!’ His voice cracked out like a whip.
‘Well, I do! You wouldn’t listen to me when I tried to explain myself, to tell you that you were frightening me with your list of suitable qualities you desired in a wife. I was eighteen years old, for God’s sake, Cesare, and I really loved you. All I wanted was some love and affection in return—and you couldn’t give it to me.’
She waited, wanting some reaction, some denial, or even a furious justification—but there was nothing. His face was like ice, his expression frozen, and Sorcha let out a shuddering breath. Nothing had changed, not really. Back then he hadn’t been listening, and he wasn’t listening now.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, because she saw now that she had been wasting her time in ever thinking that they could build something new on the rocky foundations of the past.
‘Sorry?’ He was angry. How dared she do this to him? Why should he subject himself to unnecessary emotional pain, when it was easier just to lose himself in the silken-soft sweetness of her body? And, oh, when he was far away from England he would find himself another woman—one who wouldn’t torture him like Sorcha did with all this stuff.
He gave a cool smile—which concealed the decision being made—and he felt a familiar sense of liberation from having made it.
‘Cesare?’ she whispered tentatively.
‘Lock the door,’ he ordered.
Sorcha did as he asked, but something was different—or rather, he was different. He drew down the blinds and shut the world out so that the light in the office was muted and it was as if they had created their
own private world.
And then he took complete control—as if he was giving her a masterclass in seduction. The Latin lover personified, he skimmed his fingertips over her skin, lowering his head to graze his lips over her neck, carrying her over to the leather couch at the far end of the room and laying her down on it.
Her bright hair was tumbled all over her flushed face and he reached down to brush a wayward lock away. Sorcha’s eyes suddenly shot open, for something had changed and she couldn’t work out what it was.
‘Cesare?’ she whispered again
‘Shhh.’
He kissed the tip of her nose, then her eyelids, and then her lips, and it was easy to let her misgivings melt away beneath the expert skill of his touch. She shut her eyes tight as he stroked her and murmured soft words in his native tongue into her ear, and she had to bite back her own desire to tell him how much she—
Her eyes snapped open as he entered her, and he stilled.
‘What is it?’
Sorcha swallowed. ‘Nothing,’ she whispered. She tangled her fingers in his thick dark hair as he moved again, and the sweetness of the act was enough to push crazy and stupid thoughts out of her head.
I don’t love you, she thought brokenly. I don’t want to love you.
Afterwards, they lay there, with Sorcha struggling to get her thoughts back on some kind of normal track, but she felt as if she were trying to wade through treacle as she battled to tell the difference between what was real and what was fantasy.
You don’t love him.
He lifted her off him and began pulling on his clothes again. ‘I’m catching a flight to Rome this evening,’ he said.
‘But you’ve only been back a few days!’
‘I need to have one last look at those figures. And get a few things straight in my mind.’ He gave a brisk, slightly efficient smile—she had seen him use it with the secretaries, but never with her. Never with her.
‘The company is doing just fine,’ he continued. ‘The new factory is up and running—in fact, the relaunch has succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.’
He spoke in the gentle tone of a doctor who was delivering a horrendous prognosis to a patient—a mixture of kindness and resignation. She wanted to grab hold of his broad, strong shoulders and yell, I don’t care about the company—what about us?
But something in his eyes stopped her. Was it a warning? That they could do this in one of two ways—and if they chose the dignified way to end it, then they needed the assistance of their old friend.
Pride.
‘You’re leaving, aren’t you, Cesare?’ she questioned, using every effort of will to prevent her voice from breaking.
‘You knew I had to leave some time.’
Of course she had. ‘And…what will you do?’
‘I’ll go home to Panicale. I don’t want to miss the harvest this year.’
Something in the way he said it made her heart heavy. Her lips framed the question she hardly dared ask, and yet some masochistic urge compelled her to. ‘You sound like a man who has a yearning to settle down.’
‘Well, of course I do, Sorcha—doesn’t everyone? One day I want a family of my own, as I imagine you do, too.’
She saw a glimpse of his future and saw that she had no place in it. So this really was the end. Sorcha swallowed down an impending sense of terrible loss.
She thought about the tips Maceo had given her when he’d been taking her photo. That if you pretended you felt something hard enough, then it would look real to the outside world. And if that was what Cesare really thought of her, then railing against it wasn’t going to change his mind.
‘What time’s your flight?’ she asked.
Cesare’s face did not betray one flicker of reaction, and indeed he convinced himself that the brief twist of his heart was merely surprise at her response. Why, he should applaud her poise and her cool control. How many times had he told a lover that he was leaving only to have her sobbing and begging and pleading with him not to go, or to take her with him?
His mouth curved into a mocking smile. For once, he had met his match—and the irony was that what made them so alike was the very thing which would ensure they had no future together.
‘At eight.’ He lifted his arm to glance at his watch. ‘I want to go and say goodbye to the staff at the factory.’
‘Do you…?’ She gave him a tentative smile, but she wasn’t going to put him in the awkward position of having to reject her. She injected her question with just the right amount of levity. ‘Do you want me to come and do the waving hankie thing?’
It occurred to Cesare that Sorcha Whittaker really must be his nemesis if she could make such a flippant comment when he was walking out of her life for good. Did he really mean so little to her that her beautiful mouth could curve into that cool and unfeeling smile? Damn her…damn her!
He hadn’t intended this, but he knew that he had to do it one last time. Reaching for her, he snaked his arm round her waist and very deliberately brought her up close, so that she could feel the hot, hard heat of his new erection, and he saw her pupils dilate with surprise and pleasure.
‘No need for that,’ he murmured. He unzipped himself and sheathed himself in protection for one last time. ‘Because when I remember you, I want to remember you just like…this.’
Sorcha was glad that he entered her with that great powerful thrust, and glad when he began to move inside her, so that she could pretend her stifled cry was one of pleasure rather than pain.
Maybe it was better this way.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘IS SOMETHING the matter, dear?’
Sorcha put the post down on the breakfast table and looked at her mother with a smile which felt as heavy as her heart. ‘Wrong? No, of course not. Why should there be?’
Virginia Whittaker poured Earl Grey tea into bone-china cups and added a sliver of lemon. ‘You just seem a little…out of sorts?’ she observed delicately.
One sure-fire way of getting over something was not keeping it alive by talking about it, so Sorcha took the cup of tea with a bland smile.
‘Oh, it’s probably all the excitement of my short-lived career as a sauce bottle model,’ she said airily.
‘And nothing to do with the fact that Cesare di Arcangelo has gone back, I suppose?’ questioned her mother shrewdly.
Just the mention of his name brought his dark, mocking face back into her mind with heartbreaking clarity, and yet their farewell seemed to mock her with its cold lack of passion. Two cool kisses on either cheek, followed by an equally cool look in his black eyes.
He had climbed into his sports car with all his stuff—including the brand-new silver beer tankard with his name inscribed on it, which everyone in the factory had clubbed together for and presented to him.
‘Cesare’s been very popular with the workforce,’ Rupert had confided.
Sorcha had ached, and hearing things like that hadn’t helped. The fact that everyone else thought Cesare was Mr Wonderful made her wonder what she had done wrong. She felt as if she had missed out—as if she had played it all wrong with Cesare. Except that relationships weren’t supposed to be a game, were they?
And added to her sense of loss was the certainty that the factory was too small for more than one boss. This was Rupert’s niche, not hers—and now it was too full of memories of Cesare for her to ever be able to settle. She certainly couldn’t carry on living at home like this, but her flat was let out for the whole year. They had offered her a post in the new factory, but she didn’t want to uproot herself and go and live in a part of the country where she knew no one—because that would surely only increase her isolation.
Her mother’s voice broke into Sorcha’s thoughts. ‘And I suppose you must be missing your affair with him?’
The bone-china cup very nearly met an untimely end, and Sorcha put it down with a hand which was trembling.
‘You…you knew? You knew I was having an affair with Cesare?’
Virginia sighed. ‘Oh, Sorcha—of course I knew. Everyone knew. It was as obvious as the nose on your face—even though you did everything you could to try to hide it.’
So all that effort had been for nothing! Her attempts to make it seem as if it were not happening had been totally transparent—and in so doing she had lost the opportunity to spend a whole night with him.
‘Maybe I’m not such a good liar as I thought I was,’ she said, swallowing down the sudden salty taste of tears which tainted her mouth.
‘Are you in love with him?’
‘No.’
‘I agree, Sorcha,’ said her mother wryly. ‘You’re actually a hopeless liar.’
‘Mum, I’m not in love with him. I’m…It’s…complicated.’ She sighed. ‘We’ve got history and, yes, we’re hugely attracted—but he wants the kind of woman who’s docile and will fit in with whatever he wants, while I’m…’
Her voice tailed off. Just what was she? And what did she want? The things which had once seemed so important to her now seemed to have lost their impact. As if she had been seeing the world in a certain way and it had suddenly blurred and changed its focus without her realising it.
‘I’m an independent woman,’ she finished, with a touch of defiance. Someone who neither wanted nor needed anyone else—yet look what had happened, no matter how much she tried to deny it. She both wanted and needed a man who did not reciprocate her feelings.
Her mother sliced through a ripe peach. ‘Has he been in touch?’
Sorcha shook her head. ‘He phoned Rupert after he told him about the small business award we’ve been nominated for.’
‘Well, that’s good news, isn’t it, darling?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘And even if things haven’t worked out with Cesare there are plenty of other men. I can’t tell you how many people have been coming up to me in the village and saying how it brightens their day when they pick up their sauce and shake you all over their omelette!’
Great, thought Sorcha. Nice way to be remembered.
Naturally, being nominated for a small business award was good publicity, and Sorcha was pleased for the company—and even more pleased to see how happy Rupert was.
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