Cordelia didn’t say anything. She had made her decision and she knew that he had a point. She could no longer hang around in jeans and tee shirts because she was no longer going to be living the life she had always lived. Close to the sea, barefoot on a beach, interacting with people who built lives around the ocean. She had dreamed of faraway adventure and now she had got what she’d always wanted, but that dream came at a price and it was too late to start quibbling about how high or low that price should be.
At least when she had earlier spoken to her dad, he hadn’t sounded as anxious as she’d expected.
Lord knew, his anxiety levels would shoot through the roof when she broke the news to him about the pregnancy, but that was a bridge she was happy to cross a bit later.
She could only hope that Doris would keep quiet, but there was nothing she could do about that.
She resisted the urge to make Luca’s driver stop again when they entered the city because it was so unimaginably beautiful.
The colours of sand and taupe, buildings that seemed to be carved from the earth, ornate, majestic and breathing an ancient history.
It felt as though, literally, she was entering a different world. She wanted to hop out of the car and begin exploring immediately. Instead, she poked her head through the window and tried hard to take it all in.
Regrettably, they were at the designated meeting spot all too soon for Cordelia’s liking.
She tipped into the most amazing open space, a fan-shaped central square ringed by ancient medieval buildings with the occasional modern shop front as a token nod to the twenty-first century. A thin bell tower dominated the vast circle of old buildings and she took a few seconds out to gaze at it.
Luca was sitting outside the café, the name of which he had texted her. He was lounging back in a pair of grey chinos, a white short-sleeved linen shirt and dark designer sunglasses that inconveniently concealed his expression as she walked towards him.
He looked the very essence of sophisticated and laid-back, with an elegance that only money could buy.
No wonder he wanted her out of her uniform of jeans as fast as possible, she thought. He might have found that charming in Cornwall but it was definitely off limits here in his rich life and all that that rich life entailed.
She had a twinge of doubt. Was this really her? She had agreed to marry a guy who didn’t love her. She had signed up to a life the rules of which she didn’t know. Then she thought of the baby inside her and swallowed back all her fears and misgivings. She had to settle in one camp and put the pull-push feelings away. She also had to stop hoping for the impossible.
Their marriage might not be what she had had in mind for herself but, then again, neither had she ever contemplated the prospect of a pregnancy she hadn’t planned and, while Luca might not love her, he had been prepared to sacrifice the direction of his own life to accommodate a situation that would have hit him as hard as it had hit her. That spoke volumes. That was enough because it would have to be enough.
She just couldn’t deny their baby the huge advantages of inheriting a lineage that was rightfully his.
Step one would be to accept the path she had chosen without fuss. She wouldn’t argue about everything and she wouldn’t look further than what Luca could put on the table. She would also stop thinking about the woman he had walked away from, speculating on what he might or might not have felt for her, on what she might or might not look like.
Her future was starting this very moment and glancing over her shoulder wasn’t going to do.
‘You worried me when you told me that you’d asked Roberto to stop on the way here,’ he opened, getting down to business straight away but unable to overlook the tug at his groin when he looked at her. Luca had never had a problem when it came to women and moving on, and he absently wondered whether the fact that she was pregnant with his child somehow accounted for the ongoing effect she seemed to be having on him.
‘I’m sorry,’ Cordelia parried stiffly as she sat on the chair next to him and facing out onto the square, which was great because it meant she didn’t have to look at him, which was a disaster zone for her when it came to thinking clearly. ‘I couldn’t resist. I’ve never travelled abroad. It was all too much.’ That admission of just how wildly different their worlds were brought a tinge of colour to her cheeks. ‘If we’re going to be late for...for whatever it is that you’ve arranged, then perhaps we should leave now.’
‘They’ll wait.’ Luca shrugged. ‘I thought all women enjoyed shopping and having things bought for them. You’re acting as though I’m punishing you by getting you a new wardrobe. Whatever you want. You name it and it’s yours.’
‘We’re so different, you and I,’ Cordelia couldn’t help but murmur, glancing across at him and then finding her gaze helplessly locked to his sharp, aristocratic profile.
‘We are,’ he agreed without hesitation. ‘You’re not going to start using our differences to return to the discussion about love and marriage, are you?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Good.’ He removed the sunglasses to dangle them on one finger and glanced sideways at her.
So different.
Yet she had taken the plunge and was about to enter a world she would never have envisaged for herself. She would be buffed, polished and primed for life in the luxury lane and he felt that she might be scared stiff at that unknown future ahead of her. It was one thing to talk about exploring different shores. It was quite
