She turned and saw Justin.
‘I haven’t been able to get near you all evening,’ he said wryly.
‘I could say the same about you,’ she teased. ‘I must be the only woman you haven’t danced with.’
‘And the only woman I want to dance with.’
He opened his arms and she went into them.
‘I’m so happy for you,’ she said. ‘Who could ever have believed that it would all turn out as well as this? It’s a dream come true.’
‘More than that,’ he said. ‘How could I ever have imagined this?’
‘Never,’ she said happily. ‘It just shows, you never know what’s around the corner.’
He held her a little closer and she let her head fall on his shoulder, while the music played, soft and low. She thought back, just a few weeks, to before she had known this man. Now there was nowhere she wanted to be but in his arms.
She looked up, expecting to see him sharing her delight, but what she saw in his face startled her.
Instead of pleasure and satisfaction there was only confusion and a kind of bafflement. With a sense of alarm, she realised that she had never seen a man look so desperate.
‘Must you go?’ Hope pleaded the next day. ‘Have I only recovered my son to lose him again so soon?’
‘You won’t lose me,’ Justin said. ‘I’ll be back, but I must attend to my business.’
‘Please, Dad,’ Mark begged. ‘Just a few more days? It’s great here. Evie wants to stay too, don’t you?’
Smiling, she shook her head. ‘I have to get back to England too, but perhaps-’ A thought had come to her, seductive in its promise of pleasure and joy.
She exchanged a silent look with Hope, who understood her at once and beamed.
‘At least let Mark stay a little longer,’ she said. ‘Then I can be sure you will come back.’
Mark gave his father a beseeching look and Justin nodded.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘If that’s what he’d like.’
Mark began a war dance of delight and his uncles Carlo and Ruggiero joined in. Justin relaxed and nodded.
‘I’ll come for him in September,’ he said.
‘And you will bring Evie with you?’ Hope urged. ‘And then we can discuss your marriage. Perhaps we can even have it here.’
‘We can talk about that later, Mamma,’ Justin said quickly.
‘Of course, my son. I understand. I’m a steamroller, aren’t I? I make plans for everyone and I don’t let anyone else get a word in. It’s just that I’m so anxious to welcome Evie into the family.’
Warmly she kissed Evie’s cheek.
‘My first daughter-in-law. How glad I will be to have you-’
‘Mamma,’ Primo murmured, ‘you’re doing it again.’
Everyone laughed heartily, except Justin, who gave only a faint smile. His mind seemed to be elsewhere. Evie was too preoccupied with thoughts of the coming blissful time, alone with him, to find this ominous.
Everyone came to see them off at the airport. Hope kissed her and whispered, ‘Soon, my dear daughter.’
‘I called Tom and told him to meet the flight,’ Justin said when they were in the air. Tom was his driver.
‘Will he take me to my apartment, or shall I call a taxi?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said, almost angrily. ‘You’re coming home with me. That is-’ he became uneasy ‘-if you want to.’
She laughed. ‘I just wanted to know what you had in mind.’
‘I need to be alone with you. I haven’t had that for days.’
She nodded vigorously.
It was late when they reached home. Lily opened the door, smiling to see Evie. Acting on instructions, she’d prepared a room for her and showed her up to it, followed by Justin.
‘I’ve made a cold supper for you,’ she said when Evie’s bags were deposited in the bedroom, ‘and it’s on the table downstairs. Now, if it’s all right, I’m going to bed.’
‘Goodnight,’ they both said.
The moment the door closed behind her they were in each other’s arms, eager to make love and rediscover each other. He drew her down on to the bed, kissing her urgently as he removed her clothes and she removed his. And for a while it was as though the last week had never happened and everything was as it had been.
The sleep afterwards was deep and blissful. She awoke to the guilty thought that they hadn’t eaten the supper after all and turned her head to share the joke with Justin.
He wasn’t beside her on the bed, but by the window. He was naked, standing with his eyes fixed on her, so still that he might have been a statue. And the air was jagged.
‘Justin, what is it?’ she whispered. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I don’t know. I woke up in a black cloud. It came over me while I was asleep, but it’s as though I’ve been waiting for it. It was bound to happen.’
‘So, you’ve got a touch of depression, but you’re tired and you’ve had a lot of stuff to deal with. It’ll pass.’
‘I wish I believed that. But ever since I met my mother I’ve waited for the right feelings to come. At the party I looked around at them, my whole family, the features that so many of us share, and I kept saying to myself,
‘And Evie, do you know what happened? Nothing. I repeated it again and again, waiting for the spring of joy that would make everything as it should be. But there’s nothing there.’
‘But my love, of course there isn’t. It’s much too soon. Only fairy tales give you an instant happy ending. In life it takes longer. You haven’t lived all these years in a vacuum. You’ve become a certain kind of person-’
‘Harsh, suspicious, unfeeling-’
‘Don’t say that about yourself. You’re not unfeeling, and I know that better than anyone. If anything you’re hurt too easily, so you’ve tried to make yourself unfeeling, but it hasn’t worked.’
‘Don’t you think I’d know more about that than you?’ he asked quietly.
‘No, I don’t. You’re the man I love and I’m going to go on loving. I know it won’t be easy, but whatever demons you’ve got in your head I’ll drive them away.’
‘I wish I thought you could, that anyone could. I shouldn’t have brought you home here with me, I shouldn’t have made love to you. Forgive me for that. My only excuse is that I couldn’t have borne not to. I had to be close to you again, and then to talk to you like this and tell you what’s becoming clear to me, although God knows I don’t want to face it.’
‘What?’ she asked, trying to quell the rising alarm in her. ‘What is it that you don’t want to face?’
‘That we can’t love each other and it’s better if we say goodbye while there’s still time.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THROUGH her shock Evie realised that this had always been coming. Underlying the joy at Naples, there had been something wrong. She’d sensed it without understanding, or perhaps not letting herself understand. Nor would she face it now. He was her life and she wouldn’t give up without a fight.
‘Who says we can’t love each other?’ she asked angrily. ‘You?’
‘What I
‘I did? How? When?’
‘When you came back after that day with Ruggiero and I tried to stop you doing it again. You told me not to give you orders or try to control you. Do you remember?’
‘Yes. And then you had such a strange look on your face-as though I’d said something terrible.’
‘You had. You’d said exactly what Margaret used to say to me when we were married. I was possessive and controlling-’
‘But that’s only because you were afraid of losing her, because you’d lost everyone else. Surely you realise
