It was the worst meal Sorcha had ever had to endure—and because everyone kept forgetting to speak English she felt more and more of an outsider as every second passed.
But she pushed the food around her plate and tried to keep smiling. At least she was opposite Gino—who was the sweetest little thing and the most amenable of all the guests.
Cesare sipped his wine thoughtfully and stared down the table as she poked a fork uninterestedly at a piece of lettuce. He had never seen her so…
He shook his head. Why was she here? Did she have business in this part of Italy? No, of course she didn’t. He had heard of travelling light—but three pairs of lacy panties and a toothbrush?
His mouth hardened. Had she decided on a whim that she wanted him? Was that why she had turned up out of the blue like this? Had she been hoping to find him alone and act out some wild sexual fantasy of walking in and pretending that he was a stranger and making hot, silent love to him?
Meeting the burning look of censure in his eyes, Sorcha quickly looked down at her plate. How could she have had the temerity to turn up here like this and try to convince him that in the space of a few days she had undergone a massive change? That she had suddenly discovered she wanted to jack in her supposedly precious career and settle down to a life of cosy domesticity with him? Or at least to work out some kind of mid-way compromise. As if he even cared!
Because he hadn’t fulfilled his part in her fantasy. He hadn’t asked her to. He hadn’t been sitting, waiting to fling his arms around her and lift her up into the air, to whirl her round and tell her that he loved her and had missed her.
That was only make-believe.
The reality was that he was sitting, laughing and joking with his friends, and it was like seeing a different side of him. In England he had been her powerful and autocratic lover, yes, but never a permanent fixture in her life—he had just dipped in and out of it as mood and circumstance took him. The dark, enigmatic foreigner who always seemed to stand out like an elusive rare breed.
Whereas here he seemed to have become real—it was as if she was watching a black and white photo suddenly begin to glow with glorious colour.
‘You are staying long, Sorcha?’ asked Letizia suddenly.
‘I…’ Sorcha glanced up at Cesare, sending out a silent appeal that he come to her rescue, but his black eyes remained flinty and obdurate. ‘No,’ she finished.
An awkward silence fell over the table, broken only by a distant low rumble of thunder.
Letizia had succeeded in making her feel like the kind of desperado who would stoop to any means to ensnare a captivating and eligible bachelor like Cesare. The kind of woman who would jump on a plane and turn up announced.
They said that eavesdroppers never heard any good about themselves—well, maybe gatecrashers fared no better. For all she knew, he might have been planning to spend the night with Letizia.
Her face paled as she realised that she was trapped. She had let the taxi go. Beneath the table, her fingers gripped convulsively at the heavy linen napkin. Surely Cesare would not be so insensitive as to put her in one of the spare rooms while he took the luscious Letizia off to his own to spend the night making love to her?
But why shouldn’t he? Whatever he and Sorcha had had between them was over—or at least Cesare thought it was. They were not bound by any word or convention. No promises had been made, nor vows.
The clap of thunder was still distant, but loud enough to startle them. The baby began to cry as the candle flames started to dance manically.
‘Caro, the storm!’ said Pia to her husband.
A drop of rain as warm as bathwater and as big as a euro plopped down onto Sorcha’s hand.
Pia stood up. ‘We must go.’
‘Stay,’ said Cesare. ‘Don’t drive in it.’
‘If we go now we’ll miss it,’ said Luca. ‘It’s miles away.’
‘Not that far,’ warned Cesare, with a glance skywards.
Another drop of rain fell and one of the candles went out with a little hiss—like a villain suddenly disappearing through a trapdoor at the pantomime. And in the urgent scurry with which people began to scramble to their feet Sorcha heard Letizia ask Cesare a question in a low voice.
‘No—va,’ he said to her.
Sorcha was not a betting woman, but she would have staked a fortune on the certainty that Cesare was telling Letizia to go.
Because an unexpected and unwanted guest had turned up?
She said goodbye to them all as the wind began to whip at the tablecloth, but decided to stay behind on the terrace and help Stephan clear the table. At least she could make herself useful—and she wouldn’t have to see whether Cesare was kissing Letizia…
Raindrops were thundering onto the wooden table now, napkins and bread were getting sodden, and as she ran back to the table for a return journey she saw a tall, dark figure appear in the doorway. Her sleeve caught a crystal glass and sent it crashing to one of the flag-stones, splintering into a hundred glittering shards. She bent down towards it.
‘Don’t touch it!’
His voice rang out and was caught up by the gathering wind. Sorcha looked up into his face—his dear, beloved face—which was now as hard and as forbidding as granite. His words sounded as if they were little bits of the stone he had chipped off and flung at her.
He strode over to her and caught her by the wrists, but it was an unequivocal capture—there was no tenderness or softness as his fingers bit into her flesh.
‘And now you’d better start giving me some kind of explanation!’ he ordered.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SORCHA stared at Cesare as the rain came down in great sheets and lashed across their faces, but he didn’t seem to be aware of the weather—nor of the fact that if he hadn’t been gripping her wrists she might have fallen.
All she could see was the whiteness which had appeared beneath his olive skin, and the way the raindrops had made his eyelashes into little points, so that his eyes looked like dark stars. But there was no smile nor welcome on his face, just the glitter of accusation and of challenge.
‘Well?’ he demanded, when she did not answer him.
Her breath was coming in shuddering and painful gulps, and the clouds of jealousy which threatened to engulf her were darker than the stormclouds which were hurling down their contents. She thought about what might have happened if she hadn’t turned up here tonight and she felt faint. ‘Were you going to sleep with her?’ she moaned.
His fingers gripped her even tighter. ‘Who?’
‘Who? Who? Letizia, of course!’
Cesare’s eyes narrowed, and suddenly he wanted to hit out at her—to hurt her back as she had hurt him, and maybe make these feelings go away. The world was a dull and predictable place without Sorcha, but at least it wasn’t full of pain, of torment and uncertainty.
‘What right do you think you have,’ he flared, and even though the rain was striking his face like hammer-blows he barely felt it, ‘to just turn up here out of the blue and ask me questions like that?’
Right? No right at all. She should have done that thing people always recommended when you went to see a doctor—writing all your questions down in some coherent sort of order to avoid wasting time by saying the wrong thing or making a fool of yourself. And yet the question had released something—it was like loosening some dark, dank floodgate which, once open, couldn’t be shut again.
All she could feel was the deluge of raindrops as they thundered down onto the terrace, and the beating of her heart and the terrible wrench of pain there. ‘Would you have done?’ she whispered.
Her words were lost in the storm, but he read them as they were framed by her trembling lips and he hauled her inside, into the dry, where their bodies dripped water into puddles which lay on the wooden floor.
‘Nothing has happened between Letizia and me. But what do you want me to say?’ he demanded. ‘That the thought of sleeping with her hadn’t crossed my mind? Then I�
�d be lying! That she isn’t ready and willing to? Then I’d also be lying! Or that I am going to spend the rest of my life in celibacy because I could never seem to get it right with you? Well, that would be the biggest lie of all, Sorcha.’
Red-hot anguish caught her by the throat so that her words came out like a torrent of lava. ‘Maybe I want you to lie!’
He laughed, but it was a mirthless and bitter sound. ‘That is, as you say…tough,’ he grated. ‘There are many things you can say about our relationship—but at least no one can say it wasn’t honest.’
She heard the tense he’d used. Past tense. She swayed. It was over.
His black eyes flickered over her, but he didn’t loosen his grip. He could feel the rapid thready beat of her pulse beneath the pressure of his fingers. Witch. Witch. ‘You still haven’t told me why you’re here.’
And Sorcha knew then that her jealousy—though agonising and very real—was yet another emotional wall she had been trying to hide behind. And wasn’t that the mark of a woman who wasn’t brave enough to fight for what she wanted?
This wasn’t about pride or possession—not any more. And it wasn’t about social convention either—about a woman never declaring her feelings for a man before he had indicated his, as if matters of the heart were like some kind of bidding war. This was about telling this man how she really felt about him—because she would never forgive herself if she didn’t.
‘I’m here because my life seems empty without you. It’s like you lit something in my world and now the light’s gone out.’ She drew a shuddering breath, because this was the hardest thing of all. To open her heart to him—to leave herself open to the possibility that he might not want her. ‘I’m here because I think I love you.’
Cesare stilled, like an animal in the jungle at the dead of night who had heard the sudden rustle of something unknown in the undergrowth. Love?
He thought of the times women had declared love for him in the past—but never with that conditional word. I think I love you. The word should have made it less believable, and yet somehow it did the exact opposite—for it showed human fragility as well as fearlessness.
He stared at her, at the way her wet hair streamed down around her shoulders, the way her wet dress hugged her body—a water nymph, just like the first time he had ever set eyes on her—and he felt a powerful pull of longing which went bone-deep.
But the barriers he had built around his heart were too high to be toppled by a single word. He lanced her look. ‘Maybe you just miss my body the way I miss yours?’
Sorcha licked a raindrop from her lips. Was that bravado she heard lurking behind the mockery of his words? Or was she crediting him with a softness which wasn’t really there?
She thought of the eighteen-year-old Cesare in Maceo’s photos—of all the hopes and fears in his young face. Of how she’d always thought him strong and invincible and somehow immune to the pain of living. Maybe he didn’t want her. Or maybe he didn’t want her on the level of anything deeper than just good sex. But she would never know unless she had the courage to follow this through. Now.
Sorcha’s heart was beating painfully as she pulled her hands free from his grip and placed one palm softly against his wet cheek.
The candles on the terrace had long been blown out by the wind, but the darkness was illuminated by a fork of lightning, so that everything in the room was silver and black.
Show him, she thought. Just show him how much you care.
‘I think I love you,’ she said again, and she put her arms around him.
She felt him stiffen, but he did not move, and she uttered a silent prayer as she held him closer, tightening her arms around his soaking body. Please know that this isn’t sexual, she prayed. Know that it’s because I love you and I want to cherish you—to comfort and protect you as women have always done with their men—no matter how strong or proud or arrogant they may be.
For a while he just stood there, stiff and unmoving, but gradually he made a little sound in the back of his throat and his arms went round her, like a man who had suddenly caught hold of a lifebelt. But his words contradicted his gesture.
‘You have chosen the wrong man,’ he said harshly, against her wet hair. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
Sorcha felt the salt taste of her tears as she shook her head. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t.’
But Cesare didn’t trust the torrent of feelings which holding her like this was threatening to unleash.
‘You need to get dry,’ he stated matter-of-factly, gently pushing her away from him. ‘Come with me.’
Sorcha could have wept as he led her down a long corridor to an old-fashioned bathroom—but what choice did she have other than to go with him and submit to getting dry? She could hardly claim that she would prefer to catch a debilitating chill if only he would look at her properly.
He was quiet and absorbed as found her a giant warm towel and gave her one of his T-shirts.
‘Put this on,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’ll go and make us some coffee.’
And then he left her, struggling and feeling more than a little foolish as she stripped off her soaking clothes and rubbed the big towel over her shivering flesh. The T-shirt came to halfway down her thighs, and her nakedness beneath it made her feel vulnerable. But she felt vulnerable in other ways too—and the heart was a far less resilient organ than the rest of the body.
She found that he had changed into a dry pair of jeans and was just putting two mugs of coffee onto a tray. He glanced up.
‘You look shattered, cara,’ he said slowly, his voice sounding distant against the still-raging storm.
Their eyes met. Could he read the silent appeal in hers? Or was he simply choosing to ignore it? And if so—what did that tell her? She had come all the way out here, hadn’t she? Her pride would not let her throw herself down and beg him to want her, to offer her something from the heart if he had nothing to give. ‘I am pretty shattered,’ she agreed.
‘Then let’s take this through and go to bed.’
His eyes and his voice and his body language indicated nothing other than practicality. If it was emotion she had been praying for, then it looked as if she was going to be disappointed.
She followed him into a bedroom which was darkened by creaking shutters which rocked in the storm, and he drew her down onto the bed and into his arms, covering them both with a blanket.
For a moment Sorcha held her breath, but even though he was holding her close to his warm chest—as if he were shielding her from the elements outside—she still felt as lost as if she were wandering around outside in the storm.
He hadn’t told her how he felt about her. He hadn’t mentioned anything about whether they had any kind of future—but she told herself that wasn’t the reason she had confessed her feelings. She’d said it because she had needed to—and because he’d needed to hear it. Even if they were destined never to be together she knew she would never have forgiven herself if she hadn’t.
But her heart ached as they lay there while the wind raged and the storm lashed and the sound of thunder split the sky. Tight in his arms, her head on his shoulder while he stroked her hair, Sorcha stared at the dark shapes around the room until her eyes began to grow tired, and then her eyelids drifted down and she slept.
When she awoke, it took a moment or two for her to remember where she was—and with the calmness of morning came a sense of disbelief. Had she really just flown out here on a whim and told Cesare that she loved him?
She looked at the man in the bed beside her and moved a little. But Cesare was still sleeping. She wriggled away from him but he didn’t stir. How ironic it was that she should have longed for so long to sleep with him, and that—when it had finally happened—the reality had been nothing like her dreams. They had shared the same bed with a chasteness which now seemed to mock her.
She went to the bathroom and washed her face and hands, and then, her head and her heart still full of uncertainty, went outside.
In the fresh, rain-washed light of the morning in the aftermath of the wild storm the villa looked exquisite. It was all so very beautiful—and so unexpected.
Sorcha had never imagined that roses could grow close to olive trees—but there were fragrant pale pink roses with water still dripping from their petals as they curved over an arbour which led from the house, and an olive grove glinted silver in the distance. The vineyard lay to the other side of the villa, with its rows upon rows of fruit-laden vines. The grass was green, and so were the huge mountains which provided such a stunning backdrop.
Sorcha felt a lump well up in her throat as she began to walk—because in the clear light of day what had happened yesterday seemed like a strange kind of dream. Almost as if she shouldn’t really be here—that she would open her eyes and find herself back in England, putting on a sharp suit and getting ready to go to work.
She clenched her fists by her sides and willed the tears not to spill from her eyes as she stared out at the beautiful Umbrian countryside.
* * *
Lazily, Cesare stirred.
He had been having the craziest dream.
He stretched his arms above his head and murmured, and then his eyes snapped open as he turned his head to the empty space beside him and the indentation of where her head had lain on the pillow.
Had he dreamed it?
He sat up in bed and it all came back to him, like a jigsaw taking shape as all the pieces were added. Sorcha turning up in the middle of the dinner party. The storm. The broken glass. Sorcha telling him…
His eyes narrowed.
Sorcha telling him she loved him.
And him doing a pretty passable imitation of a clam.
He found still-damp soap in the bathroom, and the plastic bag full of her things still outside on the terrace, but of Sorcha there was no sign. He felt the skin-chill of apprehension—even though logic told him she couldn’t have gone far. That they were out in the middle of nowhere.
But the logic on which he’d relied all his life suddenly seemed hopelessly inadequate—because Sorcha was strong and resourceful. And proud. Who could have blamed her if she’d decided to walk the few kilometres up the mountain into Panicale, where someone would telephone for a taxi to come out to her? What if she had? What if she had?
Hunter's Moon & Bedded for Revenge Page 28