‘I always meant to tell you, but things just happened, and I lost track of what I was supposed to be thinking-’
‘Yes,’ he said with meaning. ‘Me too.’
He kissed her again before she could speak, moving his mouth hungrily over hers, pressing her body close against his own. Now she could feel everything she had suspected yesterday, the hard, lean length of him, muscular, sensuously graceful, thrilling.
But it was dangerous to hold him like this when she was nearly naked. The gossamer delicacy of her gown was no protection against the excitement she could sense in him, nor against her own excitement, rising equally fast. Nearly naked wasn’t enough. Only complete nakedness would do, for herself and him.
There was an increasingly urgent sense of purpose in the movements of his hands, and her answering desire threatened to overwhelm her. She wanted this. She wanted him.
It was the very power of that wanting that made her take fright. Twenty-four hours ago she hadn’t met this man. Now she was indulging fantasies of fierce passion, desire with no limits. She must stop this now. She forced herself to tense against him, drawing her head back a little so that he could see her shake it from side to side.
‘No-Carlo-please-’
‘Della-’ His voice was edgy, and it seemed as though he couldn’t stop.
‘Please-wait-’
She felt his body trembling against hers with the effort of his own restraint, and at last he was still. Now he would think her a tease. But when she looked into his eyes she saw only understanding.
‘You’re right,’ he whispered.
‘It’s just that-’
‘I know-I know-not-not yet.’
He spoke raggedly, but he was in command of himself. Della only wished she could say the same about her own body, which was raging out of control, defying her wise words. She pulled herself free, grabbed some clothes, and vanished into the bathroom.
When she emerged, safely dressed, he had discarded his waiter’s jacket and was sitting at the table by the window, pouring her coffee. He seemed calm, with no sign of his recent agitation-except that she thought his hand shook a little.
‘Here’s food,’ he said, indicating rolls and honey. ‘But if you need something more substantial I’ll buy you a big lunch after we’ve been to Pompeii.’
‘We’re going back there?’
‘Just for an hour, while I give my team their instructions. Then we’ll have the rest of the day free.’
His manner was demure while he served her, as if their moment of blazing physical awareness had never been. But then she glanced up to find him watching her, and it was there in his eyes, memory and, more than that, an anticipation amounting to certainty.
‘I’m sorry for what happened,’ she said again. ‘I was going to tell you last night, but-’ She made a helpless gesture.
‘It was mostly my fault,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I just talked about myself all the time, which is a fault of mine. Mamma always says if I’d shut up now and then I might learn something.’
‘But you’ve never taken her advice long enough to find out if she’s right,’ Della chuckled.
He grinned. ‘You really do sound just like her. Besides, I know now that she was right. Today you’re going to do all the talking, and I won’t say a single word.’
‘Hmm!’ she said sceptically.
He looked alarmed. ‘You understand me too well.’
‘In that case we have nothing left to say to each other.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, isn’t that every man’s nightmare? A woman who understands him?’
‘I’m getting more scared of you every minute.’
‘Then you’d better steer well clear of me. If I call the airport now there’s bound to be a plane back to London today.’
At once his hand closed over hers, imprisoning it gently but firmly.
‘I never run away from danger,’ he said lightly. ‘How about you?’
There was a moment’s hesitation, because something told her that never in her life had she met a danger like this. Then, ‘Me neither,’ she said.
‘Good. In that case…’ He paused significantly.
‘In that case-?’
‘In that case I suggest we hurry up and finish our breakfast.’
She choked into her coffee. She had always been a sucker for a man who could make her laugh.
At Pompeii, his team was waiting for him in the canteen. A brief time in his company had made her more sharply aware of things she had overlooked before, and now she saw at once how the young women in the group brightened as soon as he appeared, and flashed him their best smiles.
She couldn’t blame them. There was a life-enhancing quality to him that brought the sun out, and made it natural to smile.
Della lingered only a short while as he talked to them in Italian, which she couldn’t understand, then wandered away to the museum.
Here she found what she was looking for-the plaster casts of the bodies that had lain trapped in their last positions for nearly two thousand years. There was a man who’d fallen on the stairs and never risen again, and another man who’d known the end was coming and curled up in resignation, waiting for the ash to engulf him. Further on, a mother tried vainly to shelter her children.
But it was the lovers who held her the longest. After so many centuries it was still heartbreaking to see the man and woman, stretching out in a vain attempt to reach each other before death swamped them.
‘There’s such a little distance between their hands,’ she murmured.
‘Yes, they nearly managed it,’ said Carlo beside her.
She didn’t know how long he’d been there, and wondered if he’d been watching as she wandered among the ‘bodies’.
‘And now they’ll never reach each other,’ she said. ‘Trapped for ever with a might-have-been.’
‘There’s nothing sadder than what might have been,’ he agreed. ‘That’s why I prefer these.’
He led her to another glass case where there were two forms, a man and a woman, nestled against each other.
‘They knew death was coming,’ Carlo said, ‘but as long as they could meet it in each other’s arms they weren’t afraid.’
‘Maybe,’ she said slowly.
‘You don’t believe that?’
‘I wonder if you’re stretching imagination too far. You can’t really know that they weren’t afraid.’
‘Can’t I? Look at them.’
Della drew nearer and studied the two figures. Their faces were blurred, but she could see that all their attention was for each other, not the oncoming lava. And their bodies were mysteriously relaxed, almost contented.
‘You’re right,’ she said softly. ‘While they had each other there was nothing to fear-not even death.’
How would it feel to be like that? she wondered. Two marriages had left her ignorant of that all-or-nothing feeling. What she had known of men had left her cautious, and suddenly it occurred to her that she was deprived.
‘Are you ready to go?’ he asked.
He drove back to the little fishing village where they had eaten the day before. Now the tide was in, the boats were out, and the atmosphere was completely different. This was another world from that sleepy somnolence, as he proved by taking her to the market, where the stalls were brightly coloured and mostly sold an array of fresh meat and vegetables.
The ones that didn’t offered a dazzling variety of handmade silk.
‘The area is known for it,’ Carlo explained. ‘And it’s better than anything you’ll find in the fashionable shops in
