by Liz Harris
She glanced down at his tanned forearm, at the hand still firmly enclosing hers, at the jeans slung low on his hips. If she was totally honest with herself, there were certain sights she’d never have enough of.
‘We’ll get off as soon as we’ve had lunch.’ They stepped from the first leg of the escalator and began to walk along a short stretch of street to the next section of the escalator. His hand still firmly held hers, she noticed with glee. ‘I get the impression you like Gabriela a bit better now,’ he said.
‘I liked her when I met her the other night.’
‘I’m not so sure about that, but we’ll let it go. But I did think that the two of you seemed to be getting on really well over coffee this morning. You were chatting away non-stop whilst Eduardo and I were looking through the book of Perugino’s paintings that he bought as we were leaving the Collegio del Cambio.’
‘You’re right, we were. But I know what you mean about intense – she’s not exactly a laugh a minute. I’d hate to share a house with someone like that. To be honest, when I first met her, I thought she seemed a bit hard, but now that I’ve talked to her, I can see that she isn’t hard at all. No, she’s OK.’
‘What did you talk about?’
She looked at him and laughed. ‘I was about to say that that was something a woman might ask, but I’ve got an awful feeling that I’d be called a sexist sow if I did, so I’m not going to say it.’
He laughed.
They turned and went through the entrance to the next section of escalator. ‘You really ought to have been a barrister, Evie. Your talent for not saying something, but getting your message across all the same, should have a wider audience than just me and a metal staircase. And why hold back now? I’ve already been likened to a matchmaker this week, and been seen as having similarities with your mother, so why stop short at making me a confidante?’
‘OK, bezzie mate, she was asking me about living in England, if you really want to know. She wanted to know the sort of places my friends and I go to at night, our favourite clubs and the like, where I shop – but that was probably to avoid those shops. I can’t see her wearing the sort of things I go for.’
He glanced down at her short, pale-blue gingham minidress with shoestring straps. ‘You might well be right about that.’
‘She also wanted to know how I liked sharing a house with other people. She’s going to have to do that when she’s in London, although I think she’ll be in a separate flat in a large house that’s been converted into flats. It’s not the same as Rachel, Jess and me living in one house together. I think that was all we talked about. Oh, and she asked quite a lot about where you lived.’
‘I’m very grateful to you. It sounds as if you’ve saved me some work. I told her I’d help her with what she needed to know about London, but you seem to have done that for me, and probably much better than I could have done.’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
‘Well, I would. I’m used to seeing the finished product across the dinner table. The shops and the places that they visit to get that way is outside my field of knowledge, and I’m quite content to let it stay there, thank you.’
‘I’m not sure that she’ll let you. She wanted to know about where you worked as well as where you lived.’
‘I expect she likes the idea of knowing someone in the place she’s moving to. Of knowing two people, I should say. She knows you, too, now.’
‘Maybe. But at the moment, she seems to have lost the two people she knows.’
‘They’ll be at the bottom of the escalator, you wait and see. They can’t go far without us as we don’t know where the restaurant is.’
Shading her eyes with her slender hands, Gabriela stared at the exit for the escalator. Where were they? she thought impatiently. The morning had been a great success, and she wanted the rest of the day to go equally as well.
She’d booked a table at one of her favourite restaurants, and whilst everyone in Italy was fairly casual over time – more casual, she suspected, than she was going to find in England – she didn’t like arriving too much after the time she’d arranged. Apart from anything else, she had managed to reserve a lovely table for the four of them, and she wouldn’t want the restaurant to despair and give their table to someone else.
However, they were late for a good reason, she realised, and she should not be too impatient with them. Both Tom and Evie had clearly enjoyed seeing the sights of such a beautiful city, and their responses showed that they had appreciated everything she’d shown them. As a result, at times they had lingered longer than was wise, given that they had a lunch reservation. But they couldn’t be blamed for this; it was understandable.
She looked across at Eduardo. He, too, was watching the exit, although trying not to be as obvious about it as she was. She smiled inwardly. He certainly had a bad case of infatuation over Evie, and this somewhat surprised her – the women friends of his that she’d met in the past were generally of a cultured nature.
Which Evie wasn’t.
Although Evie had seemed to enjoy the morning very much – far more than Gabrielle had expected, in fact. And she’d been somewhat amazed at how well Evie and Tom seemed to get on. They had clearly become friends. Obviously it was no more than that, and it was unlikely that their friendship would survive their return to Italy – they were just too different as people – but it was a surprise to her, nevertheless, how much they seemed to enjoy each other’s company.
She glanced at her watch, and sighed. Hopefully, they wouldn’t be much longer.
‘Remind me, will you, to swap details with Gabriela before we leave?’ said Tom. ‘She’ll need my contact numbers in London, although I suppose she could always get them from Eduardo. Ah, here we are. And, look, there they are across the road. What did I tell you?’
‘What a burden it must be to always be right,’ she said with a smile as they stepped off the escalator.
‘No one’s that, Evie.’
She shot a quizzical look at him, then turned back to Gabriela and Eduardo, who’d just caught sight of them. Eduardo had been leaning against a wall, but he promptly straightened up and started waving across the road to them. Gabriela’s face broke into a wide smile.
How the hell did she do it? Evie wondered as they started across the road. Gabriela looked as cool and elegant in her cream linen trouser suit as she had when they’d first met up that morning – not a crease; nothing – whereas she was sure that her favourite Kate Moss dress had been reduced to a limp rag in the heat.
What’s more, she could tell that numerous strands of hair had escaped from the two barrettes she’d put in that morning because they were hanging damply around her heat-flushed face. She must look a total wreck.
As they reached the other side of the road and stepped on to the pavement, she saw Gabriela’s gaze slip to their linked hands. A look of surprise fleetingly crossed her face, and of something else she couldn’t quite put her finger on, but the expression swiftly passed and was lost in the welcoming crimson-lipped smile that Gabriela gave them.
‘Ci dispiace,’ Evie began.
‘There’s no need to apologise, Evie. It’s difficult to walk past so much beauty and not stop and examine it closely. Eduardo and I were happy to have time to catch up with each other. But come, Tom, let me quickly show you this before we go to the restaurant.’
Turning slightly from Evie, she put one hand lightly under Tom’s elbow, and with the other, pointed to the intricate engravings on the stone arch around a heavy wooden door near where they were standing. As she moved closer to the doorway, she took Tom with her, and Evie’s fingers gradually slipped through his.
Her hand felt empty.
Damn! Gabriela’s timing couldn’t have been worse – by the time that the lesson in architecture was over, the togetherness with Tom would also be over, and there was no certainty that they’d get back to where they’d been. Thank God there was only lunch to get through before they could go off on their
own.
She turned to Eduardo in desperation and asked how far the restaurant was.
‘That’s the one!’ Evie cried, standing in the middle of the sitting room, staring up through the glass roof to the now-illuminated stone tower above them. Caught in the beam of the spotlight, the column pierced the night.
‘And this is the last one.’ Tom flicked the switch as he spoke.
She turned to look through the windows as light flooded the pool.
‘Wow!’
‘That’s a pretty good word for it. Eduardo certainly knew what he was doing, I’ll say that for him.’ He came and stood alongside her, staring with her at the spotlit gardens. ‘His Mediterranean gallantry may be a bit much at times, but he’s bang on when it comes to restoration.’ He pushed the glass doors open and walked out on to the loggia. ‘It’s a beautiful night. Shall we have a short stroll, if you’ve any energy left after Perugia, that is?’
Did he really need an answer?
‘I think I can just about summon up enough oomph to take a few steps,’ she said, and all but ran out after him. ‘Look at the sky! You can hardly see it for stars. That means it’ll be good weather for the flight home tomorrow, doesn’t it?’
‘Something like that. Come on, let’s walk.’ He took her hand and led them down the path, along the edge of the shimmering blue-green pool and down the slope beyond the pool to the rows of spectral olive trees.
At the edge of the dark groves, she stopped suddenly and glanced down at her feet. Tom gripped her hand more tightly. ‘There are no snakes here now, Evie, if that’s what you’re thinking. They like the sun, and that’s in short supply when it’s almost midnight.’
She started walking again. ‘I hope you’re right. I’ve got open-toed sandals on.’
‘I’m confident that the colour of your toenails would scare them away, if nothing else. Trust me.’
She looked at him in amusement. ‘Oh, I do, Tom,’ she murmured. ‘I wouldn’t be here alone with you in the dark, with you clutching my hand so hard that I couldn’t escape if I wanted to, if I didn’t thoroughly trust you.’
‘Don’t say that!’ he cried out, looking at her in feigned alarm. ‘You’re laying a moral responsibility on me to live up to your trust by doing the right thing, and I’m not entirely sure I want that.’
Huh! What did he mean by that? He didn’t want the moral responsibility or he didn’t want to do the right thing? Jeez, please let it be the latter! With difficulty, she switched her focus back to what he was saying.
‘There’s something in human nature that makes one keen to do the very opposite of what one ought to do, and I think I’m about to find out that I’m no exception to that rule.’ He stopped walking, turned to face her, and took a step closer.
Ohmigod, she knew what was coming! And it wasn’t more talk. Her heart started to race.
‘Is that so?’ She tried to infuse a touch of – more accurately, a huge dollop of – bouncy provocation into her words.
She’d obviously hit the right note; he took another step towards her. He was only inches from her face.
She tilted her head slightly upward, positioned her lips at an inviting angle and slowly ran her tongue along her lower lip. Moist, glistening lips, Glamour Puss had advised, were unmissable and sure-fire kissable. She’d often wondered if two sets of lips, one of them over-moistened, ever skidded off each other. With luck, she’d soon find out. Motionless, she stood with her eyes half closed, waiting.
‘Unfortunately, it is so.’ God, was he still talking? There was a limit to how long she could hold the position. ‘I feel I have to finish something I started a few days ago, but didn’t complete. And if I don’t do it now, I’m afraid I never will.’
Darn! Her eye muscles were about to go on strike – she’d have to change her pose. She opened her eyes to their full size and assumed an air of wide-eyed innocence. ‘What do you mean?’
He smiled into her face.
‘I think you know very well what I mean, Evie.’
Behind him, moonlight filtered through the trees, defining every angle, every plane of his features. She stared up at him. Her breath caught in her throat and her mind went blank.
‘I do?’ she croaked.
‘Yes, you do. From the moment I saw you standing on that bed, I’ve wanted to do this, and you know it.’ He slid his hands up her bare arms and pulled her to him. ‘Somehow I’ve held off till now, but I’m not going to hold off a minute longer. I think you want this, too.’
She looked deep into his eyes. A thunderbolt struck her, and she gasped from the shock of it.
She did; she really did. And it was nothing to do with any story.
She moved imperceptibly closer. He gently cupped her face in his hands, lowered his head and brushed his lips against hers.
‘Tom,’ she whispered, and he brought his mouth down hard on hers.
She sank into his arms, his raw scent surrounding her, his heart pounding against hers. Oblivious to everything but her need for him, her arms wound behind his head and she pressed closer still, his body hard against hers.
He pulled back sharply.
‘I shouldn’t be doing this,’ he said, his voice thick. ‘You work for me; it’s taking advantage; it’s all wrong.’ He took a step back.
She put her hands out to him, but he moved out of her reach, and her hands fell helplessly to her sides.
She stared at him in panic. She had to come up with something, and quickly. They couldn’t stop now, not now that she knew how much she wanted him.
An idea came to her. She felt a burst of hope.
She wrinkled her brow and cocked her head to one side. ‘But I don’t work for you, Tom. I work for the agency, don’t I?’
A slow smile crossed his face. ‘Why, so you do.’
Opening her eyes wide, she gestured with the upturned palms of her hands. ‘And as for what you were doing that you thought you shouldn’t be doing, I don’t know what you mean. I think I must have blinked and missed whatever it was.’
His eyes crinkled in amusement as he gazed down at her. ‘And what do you think I might have been up to, temptress Evie?’
‘Oh, I don’t know – something to add to my list of favourites, maybe?’ Her voice was playfully teasing.
‘Now that’s a challenge if ever I heard one, and as you know, I can never resist a challenge. Right, so I’ve got to replace the peaches and prosciutto, have I? Well, here goes.’
He moved closer to her. His eyes staring into hers, he ran his thumb very slowly along first her upper lip, then her lower lip, then he leaned over and gently kissed her on the forehead.
She felt his breath hot on her face, and a shiver ran down her spine.
Lowering his head, he kissed the tip of her nose, then lightly grazed her lips. Pressing his mouth harder against hers, his tongue prised her lips apart and slid into the moist warmth of her mouth. His arms tightened around her, and her toes curled in delight.
He pulled away.
She gasped in shock and disappointment.
He stared down at her, his chest rising and falling with his heavy breathing. ‘And what was the verdict that time?’
She nibbled her lower lip and made a massive effort to look as if she was weighing up his efforts.
‘I’d say that you’ve knocked the prosciutto off the list,’ she said finally. ‘But I’m afraid those peaches are still right up there at the top.’
‘Coming second to a peach! That will never do.’ His voice shook with mock horror. ‘I’ll just have to see if I can do better. If you’re up to it, that is.’
‘I think I’ll risk it.’
Their eyes met.
He stepped forward, ran his fingers through her hair and crushed his lips on hers. The heat from his body spread through her. She put her hand against his chest to steady herself, and felt the solid muscle beneath his shirt. A streak of electricity shot through her. Her every nerve was on fire.
He pulled away.
> Drawing their breath in ragged gasps, they stared at each other.
‘That’s gone to the top of the list,’ she said at last. ‘Peaches? What are they?’
He shook his head. ‘No, Evie, we’re not at number one yet.’ He held out his hand to her. ‘Let’s go back to the house and work at hitting that top spot.’
She stared at his hand. Then she raised her eyes to his face and took the hand that he offered. Without speaking, they turned and began to walk back through the olive groves.
By the time that they reached the house, they were laughing and running.
Chapter Thirteen
As for the nitty-gritty
They lay on the large bed, staring up at the rafters, which had been cast in dense shadow by the shaft of silver moonlight that fell through the small skylight into the centre of the room.
‘Seeing those wooden beams reminds me how much I owe that scorpion,’ Tom said. He tightened his arm around Evie’s shoulders and pulled her closer to him. ‘Thank God it found its way into your room that first night. If it hadn’t, you might still be wearing thick specs, mannish suits and sensible shoes, and I’d have missed out on one of the best weeks of my life. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘Agreed.’ She stretched her arm across his bare chest and nestled into the crook of his shoulder. ‘You’re absolutely right. We wouldn’t have had nearly as much fun as we’ve had, and we certainly wouldn’t be here like this now. So thank you, Mr Scorpion, wherever you are.’
Tom leaned over and kissed the top of her head. ‘Talking of suits and sensible shoes, the real world is coming horribly close. Starting on Monday, I’ve got two weeks of relentless preparation before my next case opens. My only comfort will be knowing that you’re beavering away back at the house, a sight for sore eyes if I’m able to get home early enough to see you.’ He turned on his side and smiled at her. ‘But not a sight to make my eyes sore. I want the new Evie at home – not the old.’
Oh, hell! Panic shot through her.