Minnie was counting on her fingers. ‘So how do you get six sons?’
‘Toni and Hope had twins, Carlo and Ruggiero. And then last year the first son, Justin, turned up, and there was a big reunion. He came to Naples to be married-’
Luke’s voice trailed off as he realised something that astonished him.
‘What is it?’ Minnie asked, looking at him more closely.
‘He married barely six weeks ago,’ he said, sounding dazed.
‘Is that odd?’
‘I left the next day, so it means that I’ve only been here for six weeks.’
So much had happened that he seemed to have known her for ever, yet it was all crowded into that short space of time. He knew it was true, and yet he couldn’t believe it.
‘Just six weeks,’ he murmured, looking at her.
She met his eyes and he knew that she had understood. Suddenly the truth was there between them, undeniable, even for her. He reached forward to touch her face with gentle fingers.
‘Minnie-’ It was no more than a whisper.
‘Luke-please-please-go on telling me about your family.’
The moment was over, so fleeting that it had barely happened, and even he, the least subtle of men, knew that to try to prolong it would be to court disaster.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Well-we’re an odd family, some related, some sort of related, some not related at all.’
‘But the only one not at all related is you,’ she said shrewdly. ‘You’re a Cayman in the middle of a family of Rinuccis. Don’t you feel left out?’
He considered this.
‘I’m not sure. Justin isn’t a Rinucci either. He’s Justin Dane.’
‘And Primo, presumably, is a Cayman too.’
‘No, he took the family name years ago. I could have done the same. Dear old Toni said he considered me as much his son as his own boys, and I was welcome to be a Rinucci if I wanted.’
‘But you didn’t want to?’ she asked, sounding puzzled.
‘Do you think that’s strange?’
‘I can’t understand anyone choosing not to be part of a family if they had the chance. It’s so-so cold outside.’
‘I’m not exactly outside, or only to the extent that I choose to be. I guess there’s just something pigheaded in me, something that makes me stay outside the tent, or at least to be free to leave when I want. Does it matter?’
‘I suppose it might matter to the people who tried to welcome you, and maybe were left feeling rejected.’
‘I think they understood.’
‘Of course they understood, if they loved you, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t hurt.’
He frowned, but before she could speak she checked herself.
‘I shouldn’t have said that, please forget it. It’s your business. I love being part of a large family, and I forget that some people feel suffocated by it.’
‘No, not suffocated,’ he said quickly. ‘It’s just that-you’re right. I’m the only one that isn’t related by blood to any of them. I’d never really thought of that before, yet I suppose, in a way, it’s always been at the back of my mind that they all belong together in a way that I don’t.’
‘But that’s meaningless,’ she said earnestly. ‘I’m not related by blood to the Pepinos, but I’m still one of them, because they want it and I want it.’
They said no more, but her words stayed with him, keeping him awake long into the night. There was, in her, an open-hearted acceptance of life, and a need to seek and embrace warmth, that he knew to be lacking in himself. And he had never been so conscious of it as now.
The work he’d ordered was getting under way. Engineers had surveyed the building, identified several other boilers that they considered dangerous, but passed most of them as safe.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Luke told Minnie as he folded up the papers one night. ‘I want them all replaced. Every one. And stop giving me that cynical look.’
‘I’m
‘Give me patience!’ he roared. ‘Woman, will you stop thinking the worst of me at every excuse?’
‘I don’t need an excuse, and don’t call me woman.’
‘What would you prefer? The creature from the black lagoon?’ he asked, reminding her of their first meeting in the cell.
‘No, that’s my line,’ she said, laughing, for these days their battles had lost the hostile edge and were more like humorous fencing.
‘Anyway, it’s nothing to do with playing the hero. It’s Netta. Her boiler doesn’t need replacing, but if you think I’m going to face her with
‘Coward!’ she said amiably.
‘Sure I’m a coward. Netta scares me-not as much as you do, but enough.’
‘Oh, yes, you’re very scared of me! Who do you think you’re fooling?’
She’d been cooking and was now sitting beside him on the sofa, her face flushed from the heat of the kitchen, and prettier than he had ever seen it. Suddenly all his good resolutions deserted him, and he reached out, cupping his left hand behind her head and drawing her face close to his.
‘If I weren’t terrified of you, you harpy, I’d kiss you right now.’
‘But you are terrified of me,’ she reminded him in a voice that wasn’t quite steady.
You could take that two ways, he thought: as a rejection, or a dare. He was always up for a dare.
Moving clumsily, he managed to get his bad right arm around her as well.
At this distance Minnie couldn’t miss the disturbing smile on his lips, and an even more disturbing look in his eyes.
‘I’m getting braver by the moment,’ he said. ‘Still nervous of your right hook, though.’
‘No need for that,’ she murmured. ‘I wouldn’t fight an injured man. It wouldn’t be-correct.’
‘That’s right,’ he said, lowering his lips. ‘I might sue.’
In the four years of her widowhood she’d had light flirtations, short-lived relationships that had died almost before they lived. A kiss and it was over, dying in disappointment and despair.
But Luke’s kiss was different, shocking in its intensity. Briefly Minnie put up a hand to protest, but then let it fall away. Sensations that she’d banished from her life were threatening to take control of her. They were purely physical, unmixed with tenderness, but thrilling, driving caution out.
It was crazy, reckless to kiss him back, but she found herself doing it, using both arms to clasp him, one hand seizing his head in a mirror image of his own movement, so that she could press her mouth more closely to his.
Now there was no going back, even if she’d wanted to, but there was nothing she wanted less. All the sensuality she’d suppressed was rising up to torment her, crying out that there was life still to be lived. The skills she’d thought she’d never need again clamoured for use, reminding her of how sweet it was to be held in a man’s arms, especially a man like this, who knew how to use his lips to tease a woman until she melted.
She opened her mouth a little, teasing him back, inviting, while her hands explored him, relishing the shape of his head, his shoulders. Every movement was a violation of the rules she lived by but she didn’t care. There would be time later for regrets-but there would be no regrets-regrets-
Suddenly the word shrieked at her out of the darkness. She lived with a secret that caused her such bitter regret that there was almost no room in her life for anything else. She’d survived on caution, and she was throwing it recklessly away.
She must escape the trap her own madness had created for her, and there was one way, one weapon calculated to drive him off.
Fighting the pounding of her heart until she could control herself, Minnie pressed her hands against Luke’s chest, just enough to let him know that she meant it. He drew back a little, regarding her with eyes that held a question, and a hope.
‘This is a bad idea,’ she said.
