Luca listened to her footfall fade away. He slammed his hands against the door that still vibrated in its frame and stood absorbing the energy, using it as a counter-force to his own.
What the hell was he doing? He sank his forehead against the door in defeat. The years had fallen away and the old feelings of rejection and frustration, amplified tenfold by his body's need for her, consumed him and destroyed the tenuous peace that seven years away had brought.
She was driving him crazy.
Why? God only knew. His confusion had nothing to do with love—that had died, eaten away by the pain of her rejection.
No, he didn’t know why she was driving him crazy. All he knew was that he didn’t want it, he didn’t need it. Dio! He couldn’t cope with it. He needed to distance himself from her. If she could close down, so could he. He just had to complete his grandmother’s last requests to him and Isabella to sort through her possessions, and then he’d keep away.
He pushed himself off the door and took one last look around the room where he'd thought he'd found love all those years ago. He'd been wrong. He hadn't been good enough for her then, and he wasn't now.
CHAPTER THREE
“Tell her she's to come straight away.” Luca called to his assistant as he glared at the battered tin chest that sat incongruously on his desk beside his laptop. He jumped up and walked around the desk, his eyes never leaving the chest, the contents of which were unknown.
So much for distance, Nonna wasn't even giving him that luxury.
“She says she's busy.” The assistant shuffled from foot to foot in the doorway, obviously uncomfortable in his role of go-between.
Luca's eyes didn't leave the chest. “Tell her if she's not down here in two minutes I'll personally come up and bring her down, over my shoulder if I have to. Tell her—”
“Sir?”
He took a deep breath. Control. “No. Tell her the lawyer is insisting we follow my grandmother's last request to go through her papers together. Tell her we can't leave it any longer. Tell her…just tell her that.”
Luca continued to pace behind the desk, his eyes remaining fixed on the chest that he was sure contained something sinister. Nonna was up to something. He knew it.
Isabella didn't bother knocking. Just swept the door open wide as if she still owned the place. Well, she didn't.
“It's usual to knock, Isabella.”
“I'd assumed, as I'd been so repeatedly summoned to you, you'd be expecting me.” Her perfume hung in the air, finding a way to that part of his brain he was determined to ignore. Dio, give him strength. Her eyes dropped to the desk. “Nonna's tin chest.”
He nodded. “My lawyer has informed me that my grandmother, in her wisdom, required us to work together on two more things: her papers and her house. I want them sorted as soon as possible. Papers today, her house tomorrow. Then we can both get on with our own work.”
“Fine with me. Though I don’t understand her request. She was always fastidious about paperwork. To leave these two outstanding matters…” She shrugged.
“Indeed. But there appears to be no avoiding it. I'd prefer to do it alone but apparently, Santino advises me, that would be dishonoring her wishes.”
“Not a legal issue, surely?”
He looked up at her for the first time. “No. Not legal. Personal. I, for one, do not care to dishonor her. No matter how little I wish to carry out her request.”
“Then we'd best begin.”
Luca unfastened the catch, flipped open the lid and peered inside. “Looks like,” he tentatively pushed his finger around its contents, “photographs. And lots of them.” He sighed and only then sat down, suddenly feeling defeated.
Isabella threw him an irritated glance, leaned over and upended the chest, spilling its contents over the desk. Photographs—all shapes and sizes, black and white, colored, some pristine and others dog-eared from much handling—smothered the papers and laptop.
He shook his head. This was going to be impossible. “I don’t know why she didn’t ask me to do this alone.”
“Perhaps because she wasn’t sure you would?”
“Of course I would. Anything legal, I’d have passed to the lawyer and, as to the personal, I’d have had it stored.”
“But not looked at.”
He shrugged. The personal could wait. The personal had to wait.
“There doesn't look to be anything official here. It's all…”
“Personal.” He sighed, feeling the anger seep away leaving only resignation and emptiness. “How are we going to get through this lot, hey Isabella?”
His change in mood must have registered with her. For a brief moment he wondered how eyes of such a grey color could convey heat so effectively. But, before he came to a conclusion, the warm taupe tint in her eyes turned into the cool grey of a northern ocean with which only a fool would mess. And he was no fool.
“One at a time, I suppose," she said, her voice clipped. "And the sooner the better. I’ve work to do.”
He took a deep breath but it didn't calm his returning irritation. The notes of her perfume seemed to meld perfectly with the scent of refreshed flowers that wafted in on the damp air through the open window.
He swept the high pile of photographs roughly across the desk: tiny black and white yellowed photographs of people and places long since forgotten mingled with color photographs of more recent decades where people stared at the camera with unfashionably straight faces and even more unfashionable clothes and haircuts.
Isabella picked up the first photograph with tentative fingers. “I remember your grandmother showing me this one. You won the prize for the fastest sprinter in the school. She was very proud.” She held it out to him, challenging him to take it, to participate.
He took it from her. “Just as well they had a prize for something like that. Now, if they'd awarded a prize for the student who made the least effort at school, there would be many more school photographs of me.”
“You didn’t do so badly.”
“How would you know? You weren’t allowed to attend the village school.”
“No. But Nonna was very proud of you. She told me everything you did—good and bad.”
“And I heard all about you.” His eyes flicked over her, taking in the pristine hair, make-up, dress. “It used to irritate the hell out of me to hear about this virtuous girl who did everything right.”
She smiled and looked down at the photo she was holding. “Not everything.”
“According to Nonna you did.”
“Well,” she placed the photo to one side and picked up another, “even Nonna didn’t know everything that went on at the castello.”
The damp air suddenly felt more chill and he shivered. “What do you mean?” He swung around to face her but she didn’t meet his gaze, just continued on to the next photo.
“It was lonely, that’s all I mean. I was lonely.” She picked up another photo jutting out of the pile at right angles. It was faded in the centre as if it had once been in a frame.
“Nice photo, Luca.” It was a snapshot of him as a child at a village fete—laughing and engaging everyone around him in fun. “I haven’t seen this one before.”
“Si.” He plucked it from her hand. “I remember that day. It was not long after I arrived to live here with Nonna. She had forbidden me to go to the fete as punishment for some transgression.”
“And yet you went.”
“Yes, I foolishly thought I’d get away with it.” He dropped the photo onto the table. “Hadn’t taken into account the fact I may get photographed.”
“Was she angry?”
“Very.”
“And yet the photograph has obviously been in a frame at some point. She couldn’t have been that angry.”
He shrugged.
“And you always did what she said in future?”
“Rarely.”
“Umm. Figures.”
“What does?”
She tilted her head to
one side. “Contrary. Loving someone, but unable to respect their views, their wishes.”
“She understood me. She taught me right from wrong and then let me make my own mistakes.”
“And so you did.”
Her implicit criticism irritated him. Always needling, always blaming. Well, he was growing tired of it.
“Stop blaming me, Isabella.”
She looked up coolly and shrugged. “I don't know what you mean.”
He leaned toward her, shifting his face into her line of vision so that she was forced to look him in the eye. He saw it took effort for her to return his gaze—effort and willpower that showed in the flashes of heat that suffused her skin, revealing the fractures in her confident exterior. “Stop fighting me, Isabella. I’m not the enemy.”
“It doesn’t mean you’re not dangerous,” she answered softly.
The vulnerability in her voice shot straight through him and he reached out for her hand but stopped short. The need to break down the barrier that lay between them, to hold her so tight that she would have no choice but feel the same physical passion that simmered deep inside himself, was almost overwhelming.
Almost, but not quite. His own confusion saw to that. Because she had it wrong: it was Isabella who was dangerous. She brought all the passion, that he’d tried so desperately to lock away, to the surface. He had no idea, now, what he felt for her because that passion was overlaid and intertwined with anger at her rejection all those years ago. He had no idea what he felt and he had no wish to know.
He withdrew his hand. “Dangerous? That's ridiculous.” He cleared his throat and riffled through the photos aimlessly. “I wouldn't do anything to harm you.” He glanced at her. Her eyes were wide and her lips softly parted, a small frown furrowed her brow.
“Right.” She raised one disbelieving eyebrow and picked up another photograph. She shifted her head slightly as if to flick away a stray strand of hair. There was none. “I’ll put the photos in piles if you like. Ones for you and a few I’d like to keep if I may.”
“Whatever you wish.” He understood how it was going to be. Say one thing, think another. That was the way with her family.
He looked down at the photograph he was absently tapping on the table and quickly pushed it to one side. But not quickly enough. Isabella noticed and picked it up. She looked at the photo and frowned.
“I thought I’d seen most of your family photographs but I don’t remember this one. It’s you isn’t it?”
“With that mop of hair, of course. Why do you doubt it?”
“It doesn’t look like you. The expression in your eyes. You look lost and wary.” She moved the photograph and her head slightly as if to gain a different perspective. “You look, actually, quite scared.”
Luca flicked up his eyebrows, surprised at her perspicacity, but said nothing.
“Your father took this photograph, didn’t he?”
Luca nodded.
“That’s why you look so bewildered and sad.”
He plucked the photo from her hand. “I was five years old when my mother died and my father re-married and decided I was surplus to requirements.”
“It must have been terrible for you.”
“I survived.” He looked at her closely. “Curious. You’re touched by the plight of a small boy who’s had the only love he’s known taken away from him. Yet you, yourself, willingly did the same to me.”
She shook her head. “No, I didn’t do that…it wasn’t like that…”
“No?” He swiveled his chair jerkily from side to side, trying to contain the growing agitation as memories flooded not only his mind but also his body. He felt them viscerally. “You tell me how I should view my father cutting me adrift at the age of five years old. You tell me how I should view the woman I loved telling me to leave, not having the strength to stand up to her family for me, not loving me enough to be with me.”
“I'm sorry, I—”
He held up his hand—he didn't want to hear—and jumped up and paced away, unable to contain the agitation any longer. Even with their backs to each other he sensed her confusion. A heavy silence lay between them. He took a deep breath and returned to his seat.
“But, I’m a grown man now. That boy, who believed he’d never be good enough, is long gone.”
Isabella's eyes were hot upon him. He felt her gaze but refused to meet it. He couldn't let her see his true feelings. Dio, he was becoming like her. Saying one thing, feeling another.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Forget it. It’s a long time ago.”
“Your feelings have changed, then?”
“Of course. Nothing stays the same, not feelings, not people.”
She fidgeted uncertainly with her fingernails. “No, of course not.” She looked up at him with eyes that still asked the question.
“You want to know my feelings about being rejected by my father?”
A brief nod.
“Hurt for the boy I was, but I understand. I don’t hold the pain any longer.” He shifted uncomfortably in his chair, not knowing any more. This was what he’d believed. But now?
Her eyes were still fixed on him, questioning.
“You want to know my feelings about being rejected by you?”
She nodded again.
He paused, wanting to give her the answer she was seeking, but he couldn't. “I don't understand and I suppose I never will.”
She looked away before he could see the full extent of her reaction. “Well, that’s honest anyway.”
“I’ve always been honest. It’s you who haven’t. Not with yourself.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean. You hide the truth, not only from others but from yourself.”
“No doubt you’d prefer to believe I hide my feelings rather than admit that I have none for you.” She bit her lip as if to retract the words that had tumbled defensively from her mouth.
“And no doubt it’s far easier for you to carry on like this.” He shrugged. “I may have changed but I haven’t grown so hard, buried my feelings so deep, that I cannot feel anything.”
“And that’s what you believe I’ve done?”
“I know it, Isabella, I know it.”
She stood up slowly and walked over to the window. He twisted in his chair and watched her. She couldn't bear confrontation; she couldn't bear self-examination. And he had no idea why.
She stood, silhouetted against the soft, dove-grey light, as insubstantial and ethereal as the soft gauzy damp air, and he felt an overwhelming sorrow for what might have been. He repressed it immediately—it was drowned out by what actually had been: his hurt, his pain. Whatever he said, the little boy who was hurting was alive and well, deep inside him.
She turned. “I have to go.” Her glance shifted one way and then another. “Now. I'm sorry, Luca. I can't do this now. Another time...”
“Sure. Another time...”
Luca watched her go. Another time and they’d talk of many things; another time and they’d fill the silences with words, gestures, lies or truths; another time and he didn’t know if either of them would be able to deny the powerful, primitive charge that still ran between them.
He stood up and swept the photographs back into the chest, plucking out a couple that caught his eye. He took one over to the window to see the small photograph more clearly. His finger traced the long, dark hair and smiling lips.
“Isabella, how the hell am I going to keep my hands off you?”
Suddenly he heard the sound of a casement window opening in the guest wing that projected at right angles to the main building. He saw her slender hand reach out and secure the window and then she leaned out, intent, as if searching for something, as if listening for something. What? He looked around. There was nothing, except the wind rustling in the tall trees, and the constant rush of water as it tumbled over the rocks down to the valley floor. He looked back at her again. Her eyes were closed as she pulled out the c
lips that fastened her hair and it tumbled down around her face, her lips falling apart as if emitting a gentle sigh. He knew then, that she'd found the sound that gave her peace. And he knew he'd been robbed of his.
He fell back against the wall, out of sight, and closed his eyes, feeling as if all the air had been punched from him. He wanted her with a physical intensity that scared him. If the past few days had proved he still hadn't forgiven her, they'd also proved his dreams of making love to Isabella weren’t the product of faulty memories but were based on a powerful desire that hadn’t waned with time.
And she felt the same elemental attraction too: he saw it in her eyes in her brief glances, felt it in her touch, no matter how tentative.
He walked over to the chest and was about to drop the photographs inside when he changed his mind. He opened his desk drawer and placed the photographs carefully inside, closing it slowly.
There was no future in their relationship, there was too much hurt and recrimination on both sides but, Dio, he was a grown man, he could find a way to endure the next few months. They’d go to Nonna’s house tomorrow, as planned. But he’d keep things light, pleasant; he’d avoid the emotional. God knows he knew how to flirt, how to have fun, but for some reason Isabella stripped those abilities from him. He just had to re-find them.
CHAPTER FOUR
"Ciao." Isabella waved to the mechanic as he locked her car in the garage. It wasn't due for a service until the following day but she had to get out of the castello. She couldn’t spend any more time with Luca than was necessary. He unraveled her. With a bit of luck she’d be able to look over his grandmother’s house before he turned up.
As she walked, she spread her fingers over the old print dress, preventing it from flipping up in the breeze. It felt like silk under her fingertips. Vintage, now, she supposed. It had been her mother’s. By wearing the dress, so different to her usual clothes in its loose fit and fluid print, she was making a statement to herself, not to anyone else. Luca was wrong. He had to be wrong. She wasn’t so tightly bound she couldn’t feel.
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