clumsy for one of his grace he narrowly missed toppling a cup as he reached for her hand.
The heat of his fingers engulfed her smaller ones and she bent her head. She wanted to tell him that she had never had another lover. She focused instead on the tumbling gush of the waterfall, shining with blinding brilliance in the bright sunlight. Not only did he not require that information from her, he would also very probably refuse to believe her, and every time he refused to believe it hurt just that little bit more deeply.
'I'm five days late with this but I still need to say it,' he breathed. 'The night of the party you hit me hard with what you called the view from your side of the fence-'
'I don't want to talk about that.' It was her turn to interrupt and deny him the opportunity to have her listen. The baby… that subject was too painful in the light of his disbelief.
'Ashley… '
'No!' she said fiercely, sharply withdrawing her hand from his.
'We have to talk about it.'
'But I don't want to!' Snatching in oxygen, she rose unsteadily upright, ready to run if he persisted.
'Maybe it's too soon,' he conceded with surprising generosity.
Perhaps not so surprising, she allowed when she thought about it. He had been badly shaken by the sight of that crashed car and the conviction that, if she had not been killed she was at the very least severely injured. But for how long would this greater gentleness and understanding last?
Ten days later, she stood on the heights of the ramparts of the Dambulla Cave Temples, her bare toes heated by the sun warmed ground, and conceded that Vito was making a very real effort to be well-mannered, entertaining and non-controversial. She was beginning to learn that in some ways she had not known Vito at all four years ago. That annoyed her but it was true. For a start the charm wasn't switched on, it was entirely natural. The tension that had once underscored their every moment was gone now that all sources of possible confrontation were banned. He was far more conservative than she had ever appreciated. The way he had swept her off her feet the night they met had distorted her image of him, much as it had distorted his image of her. She could see now that in the past she might well have put Vito and his traditional values through one hell of an emotional wringer. She had gone out to well and truly shock him every time he roused her temper-a pattern learned in defiance of her father. But that pattern had been highly destructive. If Vito had been guilty of a desire to dominate and control, she had been equally guilty of replying with provocation. It had only inflamed the situation.
She stared out at the panoramic view of the citadel of Sigiriya, the giant monolith of red stone that rose hundreds of feet into the sky from a flat plane of scrub jungle. Lord, she was hot, despite the straw sunhat Vito had insisted she wore. She rubbed at the perspiration beading her face and suddenly realised that she felt pretty sick and giddy. It had been an incredible climb up to the temple and then their guide had spent so long giving them a tour of the astonishing wall and roof paintings.
'Do you think I could get a drink of water?' she whispered.
Vito stopped midstream in his conversation with the tiny wizened Buddhist priest in his saffron robes, reminding her of yet another unknown facet of his character that had lately been revealed. He was not the crashing snob she had once assumed, nor was he a workaholic with nothing on his mind but his next big deal – although four years ago he had seemed very much that way.
'You look terrible,' he murmured, pinning a supportive arm to her bowing spine.
'The heat…'
He took her over to the shadows by the wall. 'I shouldn't have brought you up here.'
'I'll be OK in a minute.' She was embarrassed by her own physical frailty. Until she had come to Sri Lanka she had truly believed that she had the constitution of an ox. But this wasn't the first time she had felt that she had overdone it. The day before yesterday and the day before that she had had a similar episode of wobbly knees and nausea, although on both those occasions she had contrived to conceal her weakness from Vito.
He was taking charge, fussing over her. Having sat her down on a step, he reappeared with a paper fan and proceeded to wield it most efficiently. He looked in his element, she thought wryly: big, masterful, rudely healthy male reviving poor weak little woman. He liked to be needed, and she had never allowed herself to need him before. She thought of Elena with her deliberately fluffy manner in his radius, his sister, Giulia, guilelessly fluttery, and decided that experience hadn't prepared him very well for a woman of independence.
They made the descent in easy stages. He took her into the shabby little cafe in the village and bought cold drinks. 'We'll sit here for a while before we get back in the car,' he decided.
'Sightseeing is more demanding than work,' she sighed ruefully.
Vito tensed. 'I suppose you miss your career.'
The pretences she had put up now seemed so futile in retrospect. 'It wasn't exactly a career.'
'You never talk about it,' he remarked with studious casualness.
'There's not a lot to talk about.' She sipped at her drink.
Dark colour overlaid his aristocratic cheekbones. 'And naturally you blame me for that. I know how much your career must mean to you. If… I mean-' unusually, he faltered '-when we part, I'll give you whatever assistance you require to re-establish yourself in an appropriate position. I have many contacts.'
'Take it from me, Cavalieri influence would be overkill.' She spoke through stiff lips. When we part… Last time a cheque-book, this time a new job. Whatever you want, I can give you, he might as well have said… but he couldn't give her what she most wanted. She felt sick with longing, sick with self-disgust. He hadn't touched her since that night. He said goodnight to her after dinner every evening and went off to his computer terminal in the study he used as an office while she went to bed alone. He stayed up to all hours, seeming to thrive on just a few hours' sleep. Was the idea that she had had other lovers really that distasteful to him? Or was there a far less complimentary reason behind his unexpected restraint? It was perfectly possible that he no longer found her desirable. Familiarity bred contempt, didn't it?
'Where exactly were you employed?' 'Nowhere you would know.'
'Why are you being so secretive?'
'Look!' She took a deep breath and murmured wryly, 'I dropped out of university, Vito.'
He surveyed her in disbelief. 'You what?' 'I failed my exams.'
'Failed?' he ejaculated with flattering astonishment.
Baldly she issued the facts.
'But why didn't you resit your exams?'
'I wasn't well and my father withdrew his support.' 'Why?'
'Because he found out that I had been living with you.'
Succinctly he swore. 'Isn't there a student loan system available?'
'I was already in a lot of debt, Vito. With no support from home there was no way I could manage to survive and study at the same time.'
He was very pale. 'And still you wouldn't take my money. The view from your side of the fence grows more distressing with every word you say.'
She had upset him. Yet revenge should have made him gloat. He had deeply resented her ambition once, not because he was uncomfortable with ambitious women but because she had apparently put ambition higher on the scale than him. 'It's all water under the bridge now.'
'So how have you lived?' he demanded grimly. 'Like everyone else, I work. For a while, I worked in a store. Don't be such a snob, Vito!' she snapped, seeing him flinch.
'I am not a snob,' he ground out. 'But I am understandably very disturbed by what you have told me.'
'Oh, come off it. If you'd still been around when I'd failed, you'd have loved it!' Ashley condemned bitterly. 'It would have saved you the trouble of telling me that my needs and ambitions came a poor second to yours. But I wasn't surprised, Vito. When I was seventeen, my father told me when I wanted to learn to drive that if God had meant women to drive they would have been born with wheels! The two of you would have been good company for each other in the prehistoric caves!' 'I have no intention of trying to defend myself when you are in this mood.'
'I think a defence would really tax your ingenuity.'
She refused to speak to him all the way back to the house. It was childish, but she relished the chance to get her teeth into some resentment and use it to hold him at bay. She might be in love with Vito, but that didn't mean she had forgotten what a ruthlessly selfish swine he could be. There had never been a worse mismatch of personalities, she told herself.
'We're too alike,' he sighed.
