‘I could help wash the dishes,’ she offered, but he shook his head.
‘My machine will do that. I shall not be long.’
Laura was standing at one of the tall windows, looking down on the busy waterway, when Domenico came in with a tray. She turned to him with a smile. ‘What a priceless view!’
‘I am often told I would make much money if I rented my apartment to visitors.’
‘You don’t like the idea?’
He shook his head as he poured coffee. ‘I am constantly surrounded by people at the hotel, therefore I have much need of my private retreat when time allows. Which is not often enough, alas.’
Laura sat down and took the cup he offered her. ‘Domenico?’
‘Sì?’
‘Tell me to mind my own business, if you like, but I can’t help feeling curious. When we were discussing my love life—or lack of it—you kept pretty quiet about your own.’
‘Because it is embarrassing.’ He shrugged, and sat down beside her. ‘It is no secret. I was engaged to be married while still young, but my fidanzata changed her mind.’
‘How did you feel about that?’
‘Angry.’
Laura looked at him curiously. ‘Only angry?’
His face hardened. ‘A week before our wedding day Alessa ran away with my oldest friend.’
‘Oh, bad luck,’ she said with sympathy, and to her relief Domenico let out a crow of laughter.
‘That is so British!’ He shook his head. ‘My fidanzata deserts me for another man and all you can say is bad luck?’
‘What would you like me to say?’
‘You say, “Domenico, my heart bleeds for you”,’ he said promptly. ‘Then you comfort me with many kisses.’
‘Oh, right—that’s going to happen!’
He smiled at her soulfully. ‘I wish so much that it would!’
‘When was this, by the way?’
‘Ten years ago.’
‘Then your heart can’t still be bleeding! Have you seen the lady since?’
‘Many times. Since her marriage Alessa has gained three children and several kilos in weight.’ Domenico gave her a wicked grin. ‘And I have received a little comfort from other ladies over the years to assuage my sorrow.’
‘I bet! Anyway, I thought you were angry, not sorrowful.’
He was suddenly serious. ‘Mario was my friend. He should have faced me with the truth instead of running away with Alessa like a criminal.’
‘Probably they both felt like criminals for hurting you.’
He shrugged. ‘Those hurt most were Alessa’s parents. They wanted the marriage very much.’
‘Because you were a good catch for their daughter?’
‘They know my family,’ he said simply, as though that explained it. ‘Alessa comes from a long line of aristocrats with very little money, and she has two younger sisters. As soon as Alessa left school she was pushed into marriage with someone suitable able to provide for her.’
‘Did you know she was being pushed?’
His mouth twisted. ‘Of course not. In my arrogance I believed she was madly in love with me. She was very sweet, very pretty. Not long after our first meeting we became engaged, and her parents arranged the wedding.’
‘Couldn’t they have gone through with it with a different bridegroom?’ asked Laura.
Domenico looked amused. ‘A practical idea, but not possible. Alessa and Mario were already married by the time they returned to Venice. Their first son was born seven months later,’ he added, shrugging.
‘Ah. But in that case surely you must have wondered if the child—’ She stopped dead. ‘Sorry! Forget I said that.’
His lashes came down like shutters. ‘The child could not have been mine. Alessa had insisted that we must be married before we made love.’
Laura’s eyes widened. ‘And you went along with that?’
He shrugged. ‘She was so young and shy and—I believed—inexperienced, that I respected her wish.’
‘Yet all the time she was sleeping with your best friend. No wonder you were angry.’ She eyed him curiously. ‘But this was a long time ago. And there must have been other women in your life since then.’
‘Of course. I am wary of marriage, not women.’ He waved a hand at the room. ‘I have this apartment, I enjoy my work, I travel, and in winter I indulge my passion for skiing. My life suits me very well.’
‘So does mine now,’ she told him. ‘Since the fiasco with Edward I’m keeping men out of my social life for a while. I get quite enough of them during the day. Part of my job involves collating reports to pass on to the likely lads on the trading floor at the bank, and to a man they believe they’re irresistible to women!’
Domenico smiled. ‘But not to you?’
‘Not in the slightest.’
‘You dislike them all?’
Laura shook her head. ‘Actually, I like some of them well enough. But if I said yes to so much as sharing a pizza with any one of them I’d be asking for trouble.’
He frowned. ‘You mean they would also expect to share your bed?’
‘From the way they talk, yes. So I say no. Behind my back,’ she added tartly, ‘they call me the Ice Maiden.’
Domenico nodded sagely. ‘And all of them burn to melt the ice!’
She gave a scornful sniff. ‘No chance of that.’
‘The proposal in the restaurant—this was recent?’
‘Very recent. I should have been on holiday in Tuscany with Edward this week, in a villa with some of his college friends and their partners. He sent my share of the cost back to me the day after the quarrel, so because I’d already arranged the time off my mother asked Fen to sort something out for me in Venice. If you work for the Forlis,’ she added, ‘maybe you know her. Lorenzo Forli is married to her sister Jess.’
‘I have met Fenella, yes,’ said Domenico. ‘What time shall we meet this evening, Laura?’
She looked at him steadily. ‘Are we doing something this evening?’
‘Yes,’ he said firmly. ‘I shall take you to a favourite restaurant of mine.’
Secretly delighted with the idea, Laura gave him a militant look. ‘I’d like that very much, but on one condition.’
‘That I do not kiss you,’ he said, resigned.
‘That I pay for the meal!’
Domenico held up his hands in laughing surrender, and gave her his phone number. ‘Now give me yours.’ And although Laura assured him she could find her way back alone, he insisted on walking back with her to the Locanda Verona. ‘Sleep for a while,’ he advised. ‘I shall call for you at seven-thirty.’ He speared her with a look of glittering blue command as he left her at the familiar bridge. ‘And this time I insist that you wait for me!’
Laura turned suddenly when she was halfway across. ‘Domenico! I forgot my shopping.’
He smiled indulgently. ‘Non importa. I shall bring it this evening. Ciao!’
Laura smiled her thanks and went into the hotel, her spirits high at the prospect of another evening with Domenico—her third in his company if she added the brief encounter at Florian’s. Her eyes narrowed as she went up to her room. Perhaps she was enjoying his company rather more than was sensible in the circumstances. Holiday romances rarely translated well into everyday life. Not that she could call this a romance, exactly, nor would this man ever be part of her life. Once she left Venice she would never see him again.
With this in mind Laura took longer to get ready than usual. While she was eyeing the limited choice in the wardrobe a flash of lightning preceded a clap of thunder, and she ran to close the open doors on the rain hammering down outside. Choice made, she thought irritably. It had to be the black dress again, but at least she could wear it with the white cotton trench coat packed for just this kind of emergency—very Audrey Hepburn, according to Fen.
Laura had been ready and waiting for several minutes before Domenico rang to say he was in the foyer. When she hurried down to meet him he
gave her the now familiar double kiss of greeting and brandished a tall black umbrella.
‘You see, Laura? It is not always moonlight in Venice!’
‘And when it rains it certainly rains,’ she agreed.
In the doorway Domenico put up the umbrella, then with his usual ‘Permesso’ slid an arm round her waist. ‘If you wish to stay dry we must walk close together. Which makes me very happy,’ he added in her ear.
Laura chuckled, feeling quite happy about it herself. ‘Do we walk very far?’
‘No. The restaurant is so near I thought you would not mind a walk in the rain.’
Held close against Domenico, she didn’t mind at all. All too soon for Laura they entered an alley so narrow they had to keep very close together indeed before he ushered her into the large, luxurious interior of a restaurant divided into two parts, one very sleek and cosmopolitan, the other more rustic, with a stone fireplace and windows looking out onto a courtyard.
‘I thought you would prefer the room with the true Italian atmosphere,’ said Domenico as a waiter hurried to relieve him of Laura’s raincoat.
‘You were right, I do,’ she assured him, thanking her lucky stars as she took in her surroundings that she could rely on her credit card to pay the bill. Because whatever it cost she was going to pay for their meal.
‘It is not crowded yet as early as this,’ he told her, and looked at her in silence for a moment, something new in his eyes as they moved over her face.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘You glow tonight, Laura.’
‘You look pretty good yourself,’ she said, smiling.
‘Grazie!’ Domenico pushed the menus aside. ‘Allora, tonight the choice is simple if you like fish.’
‘I love it.’
‘Good. This restaurant is famous for its frittura mista dipesce, a platter of many varieties of fish,’ he added. ‘You will like it.’
He was right. But though the meal was delicious, and the surroundings elegant, Laura knew very well that most of her pleasure was down to the man who made it so flatteringly plain he delighted in her company.
‘It is hard to believe,’ he said, when they were drinking coffee, ‘that we have known each other so short a time. I wish that you could stay longer, Laura.’
‘So do I,’ she said regretfully, ‘but in three days I fly back to London, and so far I haven’t been inside the Basilica, visited the Guggenheim, taken a trip to Murano, or any of the things I was told were a must on holiday in Venice.’
‘We shall do that tomorrow.’
Laura’s eyes widened. ‘But what about your job?’
‘I have arranged a little holiday. Until your flight home my time is yours. But now,’ he added, a glint of steel in his eyes, ‘we come to the difficult moment. Laura, I am known here in Venice. I cannot allow a lady to pay for dinner. So I will settle the bill, per favore. If you must,’ he added as she opened her mouth to protest, ‘you can pay me in private later.’
‘Oh, very well,’ she said, resigned. ‘But just make sure you keep the bill for me.’
‘Of course I will,’ he said, looking injured. ‘Why do you not trust me, Laura?’
She smiled in sudden remorse. ‘I do trust you. I just can’t let you spend so much money on me.’
‘But it is customary for a man to do this when he asks a woman to dine with him. I cannot believe that this is different in London.’ Comprehension dawned in his eyes. ‘But of course! I am a fool. You think I will expect—’
‘No! I most certainly do not,’ she retorted, colouring.
‘You say it is the problem with the men who work in your bank,’ he pointed out.
‘You’re different.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘In what way? I am a man.’
‘I know that,’ she said, exasperated. ‘But it never occurred to me that you’d want—expect—’
‘I do not expect to make love to you,’ Domenico said very quietly, leaning nearer. ‘But I would lie if I said I did not want to.’ He signalled to the waiter for the bill, paid it, received Laura’s raincoat and held it for her, then escorted her outside into the narrow alley.
Nothing was said other than a ‘Permesso’ from Domenico as he put his arm round her under the umbrella, but once they left the narrow alley he halted, looking down into her face as the rain teemed down around them.
‘We dined early tonight, Laura.’
She was well aware of that. Yet now there seemed no alternative to a return to the Locanda, where there was no bar, or visitors’ lounge. ‘I need to settle up for dinner,’ she reminded him with sudden inspiration.
‘That would be difficult here in such rain. And I still have your shopping,’ he reminded her. ‘I would ask you back to my apartment to collect it, but after our conversation in the restaurant you will suspect my motives, yes?’
She shook her head, smiling. ‘No, I won’t, Domenico. I’d love to go back to your place.’
After the drenching rain of the not-quite-dark of the lagoon night Domenico’s salotto glowed with welcome from lamps that threw light on the high white cornices and sparked muted gleams from a collection of mirrors in different sizes, all of them old with carved, gilded frames, some of them in need of restoration.
‘I noticed yesterday that there were mirrors instead of pictures,’ said Laura as he took her raincoat.
‘I am not so very vain,’ he said, grinning. ‘The glass is original in my entire collection; which means it is almost too dim to give a reflection.’
‘They’re beautiful.’
He held out his hand. ‘Come. Sit down, Laura, and let me give you a drink.’
‘I don’t suppose you have any tea?’ she said without hope.
Domenico smiled in smug triumph. ‘I bought some today, but I do not drink tea, so it is best you make it yourself.’
‘Wonderful!’
In the small kitchen he handed her a packet of teabags labelled ‘English Breakfast’. ‘It is a little late for breakfast, but I thought you would like this.’
‘I’ll love it,’ she assured him as he filled the kettle. ‘Do you have any milk?’
‘Of course! I knew that tea would be no use to my charming English guest without it. But there is lemon, if you prefer,’ he added.
‘You’ve thought of everything. Thank you.’ She gave him a radiant smile.
‘Such a smile will gain you anything you wish,’ he told her, watching as she poured boiling water on the teabag.
‘At this moment all I want in life is a cup of tea,’ she said, and savaged the teabag with a spoon. ‘What are you having?’
‘A glass of wine. Perhaps you would like one later, also.’
Domenico took a tray into the salotto and set it down in front of her, watching indulgently as she sipped her tea with a sigh of bliss.
‘I’ve been suffering withdrawal symptoms.’ She laughed at his blank look and explained that three days without tea was a personal best for her.
‘But why did you not say?’ he demanded, sitting beside her. ‘We can provide you with tea in any café in Venice.’
‘I love the coffee here so much I never thought to ask for tea.’ She gave an admiring glance at the gros point embroidery on the cushions. ‘I envy you these, Domenico.’
He smiled, pleased. ‘They are my mother’s work.’
‘She’s very clever. I’m not at all talented when it comes to sewing.’
‘Can you cook?’
‘It all depends,’ she said guardedly.
He looked amused. ‘On what, exactly?’
‘Your idea of a good meal. Can you cook?’
‘Of course,’ he said matter-of-factly.
‘I thought all Italian males were spoilt rotten by their mammas!’
‘Often this is true,’ he admitted. ‘But when I am here in the apartment I sometimes like to make a meal. It is a change for me.’
‘And in the hotel?’
‘I eat hotel meals,’ he said, shrugging.
She eyed him curiously. ‘What exactly do you do in this hotel of yours?’
‘I work very hard!’ He smiled. ‘Allora, would you like more tea, or shall I give you a glass of wine?’
Laura shook her head. ‘Nothing more, thanks. But if you’d be kind enough to hand over those bags I left behind I’d love to gloat over my purchases.’
Domenico deposited her shopping at her feet, smiling at her pleasure as she examined her trophies.
‘With your help I spent a lot less and bought far more than I expected,’ she told him with satisfaction. ‘But I also need a proper wedding present for Fen Dysart. I’d like to buy her some Venetian glass—something special.’
‘Then we shall go to Murano tomorrow. A reproduction of something old would be good, yes?’
‘Perfect.’ Laura hesitated. ‘As long as they accept credit cards.’
‘Of course. They will also ship anything you wish to England.’
‘That would be marvellous.’ She turned to look him in the eye. ‘Allora, as you Italians say, give me the bill for the meal, please.’
‘I hoped you had forgotten.’ Domenico sighed heavily. ‘I do not like this.’
‘Tough. I insist.’
‘You are a hard woman.’
‘You’d better believe it!’ She smiled at him to soften her words, and managed not to wince at the total when he produced the bill from his wallet.
‘But remember this, Laura,’ he said very deliberately. ‘You may pay this one time since it matters so much to you, but that is all. It is understood?’
She nodded meekly, and counted out a pile of euros, relieved to discover she had enough to cover it.
‘Do you feel better now?’ he demanded.
‘Much better,’ she assured him, and smiled. ‘I think I would like a glass of wine after all.’
‘Do you insist on paying when you dine with men in London?’ he asked, handing a glass to her.
‘That’s different,’ she said firmly. ‘You’ve not only paid for meals, you’ve taken time off from your job to help me.’
‘Let us talk no more of money.’ He sat down beside her. ‘Instead, I will make a confession which will amuse you very much.’
‘Confession? That sounds serious.’
A Venetian Passion Page 3