Did he think that if he’d handed her over to a tour guide and returned to his work schedule, she might have reconsidered the marriage option?
Had it occurred to him that, as a husband in the making, it wouldn’t have done to have given her the wrong impression? She’d turned down his marriage proposal to start with...it made sense for her to have a visible demonstration of what she would be getting if she took him up on the offer after all. He’d won her with his persuasive arguments and maybe he thought that, yes, he would go the extra mile in making sure she didn’t change her mind.
‘Of course, I appreciate all the hard work that’s gone into making me feel welcome,’ she concurred coldly, pushing away the flowered plate and sitting back to rest her hands on her lap.
Luca had the grace to flush. ‘That is not what I meant.’
‘Sounded like it to me.’
He glared and dumped his serviette on the table with a flourish and summoned the waiter to pay the bill.
‘Let’s move on from this conversation.’ He offered his hand to help her and she took it readily enough but then dropped it the second she was on her feet. ‘I feel it’s one that could end up going round in ever-decreasing circles and getting nowhere fast.’
‘Sure.’ She was going to have to look at the bigger picture. She was going to have to see this upcoming union for what it was and look for no more than what was on the table.
She would enjoy the last couple of days in this wonderful place because, all too soon, she would have to tell her dad about the pregnancy and break it to him that she would not be returning to Cornwall, but making her home on the other side of the ocean.
‘We will be back in Tuscany in no time at all.’ Luca mirrored what she was thinking with uncanny accuracy. ‘Let’s try and relax here. Stress is no good for a pregnancy. There will be much to do when we return.’
So factual, Cordelia thought, so well-mannered, and if she wanted more then that was her problem and nothing to do with him.
CHAPTER NINE
HER FATHER WOULD be coming over for the charity gala.
‘It makes sense,’ Luca had pointed out in the sort of voice that implied that anyone who didn’t agree with that sweeping statement was clinically insane.
‘He’ll be walking into something he hasn’t banked on and he’s not the kind of man who would know what a charity gala is.’ Cordelia’s voice had been laced with scepticism. ‘He doesn’t even own a suit. Or if he does, it will be the one he was married in and it probably won’t fit. And that’s the kind of thing he would want me around to help him with. Choosing a suit.’ Her eyes had welled up.
‘He won’t be walking into it unprepared,’ Luca had returned equably. ‘He has already accepted that you’ve looked me up over here and he probably suspects that the very reason you left Cornwall in the first place was to get in touch with me. He’s already overcome the disappointment that you didn’t tell him the truth in the first place. So we tell him that there will be an event taking place. Who knows? He might look forward to it.’
Cordelia had maintained a healthy silence on the matter. What did Luca know? She hadn’t cared for his remark about the disappointment her father had had to overcome but she hadn’t been able to argue the logic behind the remark. Luca, she had discovered, didn’t pull his punches. If something had to be said, then he said it. End of story.
Heaven only knew what her father thought of her now, lying to him about this trip.
There was no way Luca could understand how she was feeling and, even though she didn’t want to sound vulnerable and needy, she hadn’t been able to stop herself from confiding in him when the plan had been hatched up.
That was how he got to her. One minute her head was telling her to look for nothing, to play it cool, to accept the conditions that had been imposed on this relationship. It was a situation that had been forced on him and there was nothing offensive in the fact that he was rising to the occasion and doing whatever was within his power to make her feel comfortable about the choice she had made. He was proud that he had gone the extra mile. So what right did she have to be upset about it?
She should be able to maintain a stalwart and adult silence on all things personal, but then the second something began weighing on her mind, like the thought of her father coming over to Italy, leaving his beloved Cornwall behind, and being confronted with the sort of over-the-top event he wouldn’t know how to cope with, she instinctively turned to Luca to hear what he had to say.
Even though he was the instigator of the whole thing! How did that begin to make sense?
Love, she had thought with helpless desperation.
‘Don’t underestimate the power of change,’ he had advised her in that calm, utterly reasonable voice of his. ‘You may find that you’ve kick-started something you hadn’t foreseen. He might have discovered that he can manage just fine without you around. Might prefer it, even.’
Now, with her fancy dress laid out on the bed and a bath run, Cordelia thought back to what Luca had said. There was a knot in her stomach. Her dad would be arriving at Luca’s villa in under three hours, before the charity gala was due to begin. He was walking into a rolling estate the likes of which he had never seen before and he would quickly realise the set-up and just how magnificent it was going to be. She had gaily told him that Luca, despite what they had both originally assumed, was pretty
