‘And believe me,’ he murmured with heartfelt sincerity, ‘I would certainly like to get to know you better as well.’ It was a sign of creativity and a willingness to go with the flow that he was prepared to take a few more days out of his hectic schedule. In life, if something presented itself as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, you grabbed it with both hands. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
He smiled slowly.
‘Another week here isn’t going to hurt...is it?’ He reached forward and she leaned into him. He kissed her long and slow and Cordelia melted.
‘Another week,’ she sighed breathlessly, ‘would be great.’
‘And then we’ll bid our fond farewells. Deal?’
Something inside her stirred and she tore her eyes away from the puzzling void that opened up when she thought about him leaving.
She smiled. ‘Deal.’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘OF COURSE IF you want to go, if you feel you need to leave me when things are so busy here, then I can’t stand in your way. You’re a grown woman, Cordelia. You can do whatever you want to do and I understand that you need to get away for a while. Don’t blame you. What young thing wants to be cooped up with her old fool of a father?’
Under normal circumstances, Cordelia would have wilted under this flagrant emotional blackmail. Sitting across from her father at the pine table where they had just finished sharing a fraught supper, she took a deep breath, the sort of deep breath typical of someone determined to power on whatever the obstacles.
These were not normal circumstances and she didn’t have the luxury of succumbing to Clive Ramsey’s mournful blue eyes.
‘One week at the very most, Dad.’
She glanced down to the chips slowly going cold on her plate. She’d barely eaten. She shoved the plate to one side and leaned forward, elbows planted on the table.
Once upon a time, her father had been gloriously good-looking. A strapping man with the same white-blond hair as hers and light blue eyes. Time, grief and disappointments had changed all that and now, at the age of sixty-two, he was still lean and strong, but his face was lined, his hands gnarled from all the manual work he did, and his once erect frame was stooped. A tall man hiding away from life and it showed in the way he carried himself.
‘One week?’ He sighed and attempted a smile, which tugged every heartstring she had.
‘I know you think that once I’m gone, I’m never going to come back, but that won’t be the case.’ Cordelia thought of the trip she was about to make. If she lasted five minutes there, then she would be amazed. Nausea swamped her again and she shoved the plate with the now cold chips further away from her because the sight of the slowly congealing food was doing nothing for the state of her stomach.
Pregnant. How could it have happened? Her period, as regular as clockwork, had been ten days overdue before it had even occurred to her to do a pregnancy test. She had been living on her nerves ever since.
Luca had stayed on for a further week and then he had gone. The impact of his departure on her had been something she hadn’t foreseen. Yes, she had assumed that she would miss him because they had shared such a wonderful three weeks together. He had blown a hole in her orderly, predictable life and she’d known that it would take a while for normality to paper over his absence.
But she hadn’t expected the depth of those feelings of loss and wanting. She physically ached for him. She saw him in every room in the house and on every corner of every street in the little village, where he had become such a familiar sight that people asked after him when he’d gone.
And when she closed her eyes, his image took shape in her head with such clarity that she felt that if she tried hard enough, she would open her eyes and he would be there. Standing in front of her, so tall and so bronzed and so sinfully sexy.
He’d gone, though, and he hadn’t looked back. Not a text, not an email, not a phone call. Nothing. He’d warned her that he was just passing through and he’d cautioned her about getting emotionally involved with him and she’d nodded and agreed and said all the right things and had promptly done just the opposite of what he’d asked.
She’d laughed in the face of common sense and flung herself into a one-sided relationship with a guy who didn’t believe in love.
And now she was pregnant and it was like walking in a dense fog with her feet in treacle. Every thought about what happened next required such effort that she had spent the past few days just wanting to crawl into her bed and close her eyes and sleep for a hundred years.
As it had turned out, fate had had an excellent way of galvanising her into action. No taking time out to think things over! Or hiding under the duvet and pretending to be an ostrich!
‘And I don’t want you fretting that something’s going to happen to me,’ she said briskly, sweeping aside her fear of the big unknown and plastering a reassuring smile on her face.
Her father knew nothing about the pregnancy and that was something that she would broach in due course. When she reached the right levels of courage. That time was certainly not now.
‘Things happen,’ her father responded morosely. ‘We both know that.’
‘And we have to move on, Dad.’ God, she missed having her mum. She adored her dad, with all his endearing, frustrating, lovable little ways, but, Lord, what she wouldn’t have given for the emotional support of a mother, a hand to reach out and
