‘You just don’t know what you’re going on about,’ she announced out of the blue.
Standing in the doorway to the en-suite bathroom with just his jeans on, because he had discarded his white linen shirt on the ground, Luca paused and looked at her with a frown.
There were times when she was so utterly illogical that he was reduced to complete speechlessness.
Who’d have thought? She could swim like a fish for miles, could handle a boat like a sailor and could talk to fishermen as if she were one of them, making them obey her orders without complaint, and yet, out of the blue, she said something like this that left him scratching his head and wondering what the hell she was talking about. Unpredictable. He’d never cared for unpredictable but he’d had to get used to it and fast.
Whatever she was now trying to say, his gut feeling told him it was going to be a convoluted conversation.
‘Trust me,’ Luca said smoothly, deliberately going for what he knew she wasn’t talking about, but seeing it as a safe port in what could be an uncomfortable gathering storm, which was the last thing either of them needed hours before a gala where their engagement was going to be officially announced to all and sundry. ‘That dress is going to look amazing on you, tesoro.’
Cordelia was sufficiently distracted by that random comment to look down at the dress laid out on the bed by the young housekeeper. She’d tried it on the one time a hundred years ago in that shop, forgotten what she looked like in it, and now quailed at the thought of appearing in it in front of a bunch of people she didn’t know.
It was long, which was reassuring. But it was tight, which most definitely was not.
And then there were the shoes. Several inches of nude into which her feet would have to be squeezed.
‘I’m going to look like a clown,’ she muttered.
Luca raked his fingers through his hair and half smiled. This was what he liked, this connection that ran like a current between them. It felt, suddenly, as though a signpost that had been there all along was staring him in the face, pointing him in a direction, and he frowned, in the grip of something he couldn’t quite grasp even though, deep inside, he felt that he would be able to if he thought a bit harder about it.
All he knew was that he missed her easy laugh when it wasn’t there and the way she would look at him, those slanting glances that always turned him on as no one else had ever been able to. He missed the way he occasionally felt taken for granted and didn’t seem to mind all that much. He missed the essence of her, although he wasn’t really too sure what that essence was. He just knew that in some low-level way, he missed it.
Hearing the uncertainty in her voice relaxed him now because she sounded more normal, more like the girl he’d so quickly become reacquainted with ever since she had appeared on his doorstep with her bombshell revelation.
‘You could never look like a clown.’ Luca strolled towards her, a slow smile transforming the harsh contours of his beautiful, lean face.
‘I can’t tell you the last time I wore a dress.’ Annoyingly, Cordelia was finding it hard to hang onto what she had meant to say to him. He was so close now that she could smell the late summer warmth on his skin and see the ripple of muscle in his chest and shoulders. He always knew that the rough edges could be smoothed like this, with a touch.
The second he got just a little too near her, she couldn’t seem to help herself. She could be cross, angry, dejected or plain frustrated to within an inch of her life, and her body would still do its own thing, would still curve towards him like a plant turning towards the sun, searching for nourishment.
‘What about those dances you tell me you used to go to...?’
‘Dances?’
‘Where all the local talent would strut their stuff once a month in the village hall.’
‘A lot of people found the love of their lives at those dances,’ she pointed out. ‘Maybe if I’d worn dresses instead of trousers, I might have been one of the lucky ones.’
Luca lowered his eyes. He didn’t say a word and she had a sudden urge to prod him into something more than tactful silence, but what would be the point of that? They were where they were.
‘Before you distracted me with the whole dress thing,’ she said, although impetus had been lost, ‘I was going to tell you that you just don’t know anything about Dad.’
Temporarily lost, Luca looked at her with bewilderment. She wasn’t going to clarify. She was going to wait until he clocked on with where she was going with this and woe betide if he missed the turning.
He felt something shift inside him, some illogical feeling that made him vaguely uncomfortable even though it was a feeling that he perversely liked.
‘You mean,’ he said slowly, thinking on his feet, ‘the bit about him not being as nervous about being here at the gala this evening as you think he might be?’
‘That’s exactly what I mean.’
Luca breathed a sigh of relief. He cupped the side of her face with his hand and looked at her solemnly. ‘I meant every word of it, cara mia. You’ve clung to one another over the years and I am sure he has
