'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 . We...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. 'Mm...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 omelets'
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.
'Cesare gave me the confidence to believe in myself and the business,' he had said quietly. 'And now I do.'
Bully for Cesare, thought Sorcha sourly.
She went through the mechanics of living—presenting to the world a close approximation of what Sorcha Whittaker was like. But inside it was like having something gnawing away at her and leaving a great, gaping hole. Had she once wondered if it was possible to feel as deeply as she had done as a teenager? Now she knew the answer certainly to be yes—but what she had not banked on was the level of pain, the aching deep inside her that she couldn't seem to fill with anything.
And then an invitation dropped through the letterbox—a stiff cream card, heavily embossed with gold, inviting Sorcha to a retrospective of Maceo di Ciccio's work in a prestigious gallery situated on the Thames in London.
'Are you going?' asked Emma, who was almost unbearable to be with—her 'loved-upness' so tangible that it seemed to be emanating from her in waves, even all these weeks after her honeymoon.
'I haven't decided. ’
'Oh, do go, Sorcha—he might have included a photo of you, in your famous gingham apron!'
Very funny.'
'And anyway’ Emma added mischievously, 'Cesare might be there.'
'Oh, do shut up,' said Sorcha crossly.
But he might be, mightn't he?
Was that why Sorcha took such inordinate care about her appearance—even going to the rather devious lengths of wearing a floaty skirt.
Just so he can put his hand up it? mocked the voice of her conscience and she drew herself up short—because, yes, that was the truth of it. Cesare liked women wearing skirts and dresses—he had said so—and here she was, conforming to his idea of what a woman should be. Wasn't that disgraceful?
But she didn't change. Instead she drove into London with a fast-beating heart, and had to park miles away from her eventual destination.
It was a windy day, and the river was all silver as a pale, ineffectual sun struggled to make itself seen.
The gallery was beautiful—vast, with huge windows, and lit with the double dose of light which
bounced off the restless water.
There were photos from every phase of Maceo's development as a photographer. Moody black and white shots of the backstreets of a city she took to be Rome, and countless pictures of the world's most beautiful women. He was good, thought Sorcha wryly.
In fact, he was more than good, she thought as she came across some of the tougher themes he'd handled: war and famine, natural and man-made disasters—photos which made you want to rail at the injustices in life.
And then—nerve-rackingly and unexpectedly—she came across a photo of herself. It was not, as Emma had teased, an advertising shot taken in the ghastly gingham apron, but a close-up taken when she hadn't realised that the camera had been trained on her.
She had been looking up, a look of consternation on her face, her eyes big and lost— as if something had just been wrenched away from her. And she knew just when it had been taken. When she had heard the door slam. When Cesare had jealously stormed out of the studio because Maceo had been getting her to pout and flirt outrageously.
She stared at the picture she made—a picture of longing and uncertainty, of a woman who was on the brink of falling in love again. But Cesare would not have seen that. He would only have caught the split-second before, when her face had assumed a seductive mask to sell a product. Yet here she was without the mask—and, oh, Maceo had managed to penetrate right through to the raw emotions beneath. Cesare was right—his friend had a real talent for seeing what was really there.
'Do you like it? ’ asked a velvety voice at her side, and Sorcha turned her head to see Maceo standing there, studying his own photo intently and then turning his head to look at her with his hard, brilliant eyes.
"It's... ’
'Revealing? ' he murmured.
'Possibly. ’
She thought how edgy he seemed today, in his trademark black, with none of the flamboyant behaviour he'd displayed in the studio. Or was that because she no longer had the protective presence of Cesare in the background?
Suddenly she felt a little out of place. It struck Sorcha that Maceo had his own mask which he donned whenever he needed to. Everyone did. She just wondered what lay behind Cesare's. She looked around. Was there the slightest chance that he might be here?
Maceo raised his dark brows. 'Have you seen him? ' he asked coolly.
If it had been anyone else she might have said, Who?—but it wasn't just Maceo's camera lens which stripped away the artifice, Sorcha realised, as those black eyes pierced through her.
'You mean he's here?' she questioned, her heart leaping with painful hope in her breast.
His mouth curved into an odd kind of smile. 'No. He isn't here. I meant his photo.'
Sorcha shook her head. 'No. No, I haven't.'
His eyes had narrowed and he seemed to be subjecting her to some kind of silent assessment. 'Come with me’ he said softly.
Sorcha followed him across the silent polished floor of the gallery, aware from the glances and the little buzz of the spectators that he had been recognised, but a small phalanx of assistants walking at a discreet distance kept any fans at bay.
He took her into a room that she hadn't noticed, a smaller one, with family photos— obviously his—and Sorcha had to bite back a gasp as she saw the terrible poverty in which he had grown up.
And then her gaze alighted on a group shot of some teenage boys in singlets and jeans, all with their arms folded, gazing with suspicion at the camera.
She saw Cesare immediately—to her prejudiced eye he looked the fittest and the strongest, and of course the most stunningly handsome of the lot. But how young he looked—extraordinarily young. And something else, too...
'How old was he when this was taken? ' she questioned slowly. 'Eighteen. ’
Eighteen. The age she had been that summer, when he had come to the house, when she'd felt so mixed and jumbled up inside, so frightened of the future and all the consequences of her choices.
Yet here on Cesare's face was the similar uncertainty of youth—the sense of standing on a precipice and not knowing whether you should step back to safety or take that leap of faith into the unknown. Had she imagined that he had never known a moment's uncertainty or doubt—even as a teenager?
Yes, of course she had. When she had met him he had been in his mid-twenties— polished and sexy and supremely confident. But that was just the external packaging.
What lay beneath?
When she'd turned down Cesare's proposal of marriage she had known that his pride had been wounded—but what about his heart? She hadn't even considered that, because she had only thought about how she felt. Why had she never credited him with having feelings like she did—of pain and hurt and fear of loneliness?
Just because he behaved in a shuttered way and didn't show his emotions, it didn't mean he didn't have them, did it? Why, she had never even stopped for a moment to wonder just why he behaved that way. She had never dared try to explore the substance of the man under the brilliant patina of charisma and success.
She had never allowed herself to consider that there was a chance that somehow they could be happy. And would she ever forgive herself if she didn't find out?
She stared at the photo of the teenage boy, knowing that she had to be willing to put her feelings on the line and run the risk that she might be rejected. The risk which Cesare had talked of didn't just apply to businesses, but to relationships, too. It was part of life. But this time a rejection would be final. A clean break. A sharp and terrible hurt, but one from which she could allow herself to heal properly and rid herself at last of the terrible ache of regret.
She turned to the photographer. Thanks, Maceo, ' she said, a little shakily. He shrugged. 'Ciao, bella’ he said coolly.
He doesn't approve of me, thought Sorcha suddenly, and wondered what it was she was supposed to have done. But she wasn't going to let Maceo's opinion of her distract her from what she knew she had to do.
She rang the airline from her mobile and learned that there was a flight to Rome later that afternoon. Grateful to a college lecturer who had once told her to always carry her passport with her 'just in case', she booked it. Well, why not? she asked herself. What was the point in delaying?
She drove to Heathrow and parked, and there was time before the flight to buy some
underwear, toiletries and a phrasebook—it wasn't until she was mid-air that Sorcha began to realise that this was pretty rash. But it felt better just doing something instead of moping around at home. Regrets were terrible things. They ate away at you and eroded your chances of finding peace and contentment.
But by the time she found a delighted taxi driver who was willing to take her out to Panicale, she was seriously beginning to question the wisdom of her actions.
Was she mad?
The motorway cut through huge patchwork mountains where toffee-coloured cows grazed and fields of sunflowers became more muted as the sun set and nighttime began to fall.
The driver was obviously labouring under the illusion that his cab was a sports car, and Sorcha tried to distract herself by staring out at the cloudy sky and wondering if she should have phoned Cesare to tell him she was on her way.
No.
She needed to see his face, his first instinctive reaction to her. Some heated things had been said in their conversation before he'd left—words which he might or might not have meant—just like some of the things she'd said.
And how was she going to explain her sudden bizarre appearance? She would be guided by him—if he scooped her up into his arms and told her that there hadn't been a moment when he'd stopped thinking about her...
She leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes. Oh, please. They would hold each other tight, and she would have to show him that she did have a heart that loved and yearned and beat like a drum only for him.
And if he didn't?
That was the risk she ran—and anyway, it was too late to back out now, because the car was squeezing through a narrow stone arch o
ver a track which seemed to bump upwards for ages. But there were the lights of habitation in the distance, and Sorcha's heart was in her mouth as the cab drew to a halt.
'Quanto e esso, per favore?' she asked.
The driver gave her a price, and it was expensive—but then the journey had taken close to two hours.
Sorcha remembered the other word she had learned on the plane. 'Per favore...attesa?' Because she needed him to wait in case Cesare wasn't there—or in case the unthinkable happened and he didn't want to see her. Or he was with another woman.
'Si, signorina.'
The air was heavy and close, and Sorcha thought she heard the distant rumble of thunder. Tiny beads of sweat sprang up on her forehead and her hands were literally shaking as she walked across the soft grass towards the villa, where she could make out splashes of light which shone through an abundance of trees.
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