‘Maybe,’ Luca drawled, watching her with his head tilted to one side, ‘you awakened a taste in me for everything that’s natural.’
‘Because I live half my life barefoot and don’t own any make-up?’ But her heart was leaping all over the place because that sounded a lot like a compliment.
‘Who would have thought that shoes could end up being a highly overrated commodity?’ He grinned and raised his eyebrows and she shivered with a sexual awareness that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. ‘Besides,’ he continued in a lazy drawl, ‘I couldn’t stand the thought of hanging around in Siena any longer.’
‘It’s a bore for you,’ she agreed, glancing down and then slipping into the passenger seat of the car. It smelled of soft leather. ‘I guess you probably thought that it was a waste of time, especially when you probably have lots of work to do.’ She turned to him with apologetic eyes because caretaking her really had to be the last thing in the world a guy like him needed or wanted. He was used to expensive women who didn’t need to be escorted to the right shops to buy appropriate clothing.
Although hadn’t he just said that he liked the thought of her au naturel...?
A rush of pleasure surged through her body.
‘It would have been a bore for me,’ Luca murmured, swivelling so that he was looking at her. He carelessly had one hand by her headrest and he lightly stroked her hair, running one lazy finger through its vibrant blonde curls, ‘because I could have thought of a million better things I would rather have been doing with my time.’ He paused and then traced her mouth with his finger, tugging on her fuller lower lip until she wanted to faint. ‘No, I tell a lie. I would have been thinking of just the one thing I would rather have been doing with my time...’
‘What’s that?’
Luca laughed, amused. ‘Will it turn you on if I spell it out?’ He looked at her with satisfaction when she nodded. ‘I won’t spell it out. I’ll show you just as soon as I get you into my bed...’
CHAPTER EIGHT
CORDELIA STRETCHED OUT on the bed and sighed with contentment.
The past week had been a whirlwind. Much of it had been spent in bed, the rest on a voyage of discovery. The day after their visit to Siena, Luca had announced that he intended to keep to his word and show her a bit of his country before she broke the news to her father.
There was work he had to do in Milan, some deals that needed fine tuning. He would arrange for a guide to take her on a personal tour of the city and then they would drive to his house on Lake Como, so that she could see a different countryside from the one she had glimpsed in his Tuscan home.
Vineyards, of course, but also olive trees, oleanders and palm trees and, along with that, incomparable stretches of exquisite villas, their gardens dipping down to the lake shores.
‘Italian aristocracy at its very best,’ he had wryly informed her, and when she had asked him whether his house might be amongst those villas, he had laughed and returned, ‘But of course. Would you expect otherwise?’
His tone had been one of amused irony but, actually, Cordelia had thought that, no, she wouldn’t have expected otherwise. The more she glimpsed of his eye-wateringly privileged life, the more she acknowledged the gaping differences between them.
She was forever telling herself that if he could shrug off those differences, then so would she.
‘I want you to feel a little more at home in my country before your father gets here,’ he had confided as they had boarded his private jet that would take them to Milan. ‘I want you to show him that this is a country that you can love, as I love it. I would not want him to leave with any...doubts that you are doing the right thing.’
Still warm after a bout of passionate lovemaking, Cordelia had thought that that was the nicest thing Luca could have said because it showed that, beyond the baby, he was also thinking about her and her well-being. That counted for a lot.
Milan had been a wondrous place. For someone who had never been abroad, it was mesmerising. Busy but small, it had offered a variety of riches and Cordelia had paid close attention to the charming young guide who had taken her on her whirlwind tour of the city, starting with Piazza del Duomo with its towering cathedral, followed by a visit to see the paintings of the old masters, all of whom were familiar to Cordelia via the many books she had devoured over her lifetime.
This wasn’t like Siena with its feeling of medieval splendour and laid-back charm. This was hectic and busy. There were chic cafés everywhere, dotted in between the historic splendour of the piazza. The young people all seemed ridiculously good-looking.
She had enjoyed every minute of it and now here she was, enjoying every second of a completely different environment.
From the window of Luca’s fabulous villa, she could see the placid waters of the lake in the distance. When the car had first swerved onto the long drive leading to the villa, Cordelia had been gobsmacked. She hadn’t bothered to hide her awe. The square white building with its evenly spaced rectangular windows and its formidable symmetry reeked of opulence. From the front of the villa, gardens led down to an archway that opened out onto the lake via a series of shallow stone steps. It was, put simply, breathtaking.
That, however, was a sight that had been taken in several days ago and now, lying here in bed while Luca showered in the fabulous en-suite bathroom, Cordelia could only marvel at the speed with which she was becoming accustomed to
