‘What do you mean?’
‘I thought you were going to have a stroll and maybe grab some lunch somewhere. Instead, you’ve decided that that’s all too tame and you’d rather risk life and limb on a speedboat...’
Cordelia’s mouth dropped open. ‘Luca, there’s no need for you to be overprotective! Are you forgetting that I rescued you from the sea? I’ve been handling boats faster and bigger than this since I was ten.’
‘You’re pregnant. You shouldn’t be thinking of doing anything as reckless as sailing. Of course, if I’m with you, then that’s a different story.’
They were heading towards the centre of the village, a charming honeycomb of small winding streets jam-packed with attractive, expensive shops, cafés and restaurants. Tables set out on the pavements were filled with tourists playing people-watching.
Luca veered off the main thoroughfare down one of the smaller avenues and eventually they managed to find themselves a quiet corner in one of the restaurants.
‘And who was that boy you were laughing with?’ he asked with a scowl.
‘Elias?’
Luca nodded and shrugged and looked away for a few seconds before scrutinising the menu and ordering nothing more than a double espresso from the waiter who had sidled up to the table.
‘He was the guy in charge of the boat rentals.’ Cordelia broke off to order a selection of little cakes, irresistible, before returning her gaze to his face with a frown. ‘Why?’
‘No reason. Should I have one?’
‘I have no idea what you’re getting at.’ The coffee and the cakes arrived and Cordelia gazed at them, marvelling at how perfectly formed each one was. Almost a shame to eat them. She wasn’t looking at Luca at all.
‘You seemed a little familiar.’
Her eyes flew to meet his.
‘Luca, were you...jealous?’
‘Jealous?’ Luca sat back and drummed the tabletop with his fingers while he looked at her with a brooding expression. ‘I have never been jealous in my entire life.’ He gestured in a way that was exotically Italian and gave a bark of laughter. ‘I don’t believe in jealousy. It’s a corrosive emotion.’
Cordelia didn’t say anything because what he really could have said was that he didn’t do jealousy because to be jealous you had to have some kind of intense emotion inside you for someone, and intensity on that level wasn’t something he was capable of feeling.
Suddenly deflated, she fiddled with the small fork that had been placed in front of her.
‘However,’ Luca gritted, ‘I’m an old-fashioned man with old-fashioned principles. I don’t care for the idea of my woman flirting with other men.’
At that, she met his steely gaze with a look of outraged incredulity. His woman? That level of possessiveness seemed to beg for a far deeper connection than business arrangement for the sake of a baby with someone you had a fling with, but she decided to let it pass. Was it a case of a business arrangement and keeping her at arm’s length except when his arrogance kicked in, at which point she turned into his woman?
‘I wasn’t flirting,’ she said in a low voice.
‘You were laughing.’
‘Since when is laughing the same as flirting?’
‘It’s a damn sight more than I managed to get from you today,’ Luca gritted in immediate response.
Uncomfortable with a show of feeling that was so far removed from his usual calm, cool and collected responses to anything that asked for an emotional response, Luca concentrated on drinking his espresso. There was no point continuing a conversation that seemed mired in abstract nonsense.
So what if he’d been jealous? It was only natural. A wife-to-be was quite different from a passing conquest.
Jealousy had never been an issue with Isabella. Perfect.
‘A person can’t be in a happy mood all the time,’ Cordelia pointed out, finishing the last of the tasty delicacies and licking the very last of the icing sugar from her finger while she thought about how he had changed earlier on, gone from light-hearted and warm to suddenly as cold as the Arctic sea. From wanting to spend time with her to needing to spend time on his computer.
‘I get that,’ Luca growled. When it came to happy moods, he hadn’t, after all, written the book. ‘But I want you to be. I... I’m going the extra mile... I’m trying.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Luca didn’t want her to feel tempted to return to the life she was going to be leaving behind. Showing her his country was a labour of love, more so because he seemed to be seeing so many beautiful parts of it for the first time himself, but he knew that it was also his way of getting her on board. He didn’t see anything devious about that. It seemed perfectly fair and reasonable.
Luca tightened his jaw and reminded himself that, first and foremost, he was a man who never allowed any part of his body to govern his behaviour except for his head.
The feathers that had been stupidly ruffled by that admission of jealousy smoothed back into their normal position and not a second too soon.
‘I’m showing you my beautiful country.’ He gestured around him but his fabulous eyes remained pinned to her face. ‘I am putting work concerns on the back burner so that I can bring you to a place like this!’
‘And so I should be smiling all the time?’ An unwelcome picture began to form, one that killed off any romantic notions that what he felt for her might, actually, have legs.
She could read between the lines as good as the next person.
He was putting himself out to entertain her and it wasn’t because he was necessarily enjoying it or even really wanted to. Everything had changed for Luca the second he had found out that she was carrying his baby and he had rolled with the punches because that was the kind of guy he was.
He had sussed the situation, known the direction he wanted it to go in and had altered
