The room in which he was standing was far from lavish. It was large, with a wooden floor over which a worn Persian rug tried hard to add a bit of luxury. The furniture was all old but gleaming and highly polished and the walls could have done with a top-up on the paint. But the bed had been incredibly comfortable and he had to admit that there was something seductively cosy about the room, despite its lack of expensive furnishings.
‘Show me around?’ he heard himself ask her. ‘I need to stretch my legs. I feel like I’ve been confined in one place for far too long.’
‘What about the phone call?’
‘Ah.’ Green eyes met violet and Luca smiled, because it wasn’t often that he was in the company of a woman who didn’t know his worth. It felt strangely liberating. He could be himself. He was no longer the man who was committed to driving forward the considerable family business he now ran, having hauled it back from the brink thanks to his father. Nor was he the prized aristocrat who couldn’t enter a room without being marked as a target by well-bred women with marriage on their minds. Here, tossed up from the sea into the middle of nowhere, he was a man without a predetermined destiny.
He wasn’t quite sure who he was, shorn of all the trappings that usually surrounded him, but he was willing to have a go at trying the situation out for size.
Especially in the company of a woman who looked the way this one did.
He felt a sudden tightness in his groin and had to stifle a need to groan aloud.
‘Like I said,’ he murmured, ‘no one will have contacted the police to get a search party together just yet.’ He commanded complete freedom of movement. He’d told his PA that he would be taking time out for a few days. He hadn’t specified how many. She would have cancelled all immediate meetings and would have put nothing in place until told to do so. Likewise, his father would have no real idea when to expect him back. They didn’t live in one another’s pockets. As for the rest of the world...?
Who was there? He was an only child and a man who did as he pleased without reference to anyone else. He had never believed in the value of teamwork. The only person he had ever relied on was himself. It had served him well. Only now, he was struck by a certain peculiar uncertainty—a feeling that complete independence might not be quite what it was cracked up to be.
He shook his head impatiently.
‘Walk me through your house,’ he said gruffly, looking forward to immersing himself for a short while in a life that was far removed from his own.
‘Only,’ Cordelia returned, consumed with curiosity about the life he represented, ‘if you tell me about your life in Italy.’
Luca relaxed. There was a lot he could tell her about his homeland. About the rolling splendour of Tuscany, about the beauty of the Alps and the grandeur of the Apennines and the marvel of a climate, caught between the two, that was so perfect for growing the very best grapes, which produced the very best wine in the country. He could tell her about the villages surrounding his estate and the people who lived there, most of whom were employed in some capacity or other by his family and always had been.
Naturally, he would have to tailor all of it because there was even more he had no intention of telling her, starting with the truth of his identity and the position of power he held in the region.
She was leading the way out of the bedroom, onto the broad landing, vaguely pointing out the remaining bedrooms on the floor before heading down the wooden staircase into the body of the house.
Following in her wake, he was half paying attention but mostly looking at her and admiring the spring in her step, the way she half ran down the stairs. He was wondering what her hair would look like unrestrained. She had the longest hair he had ever seen.
They reached the black and white flagstone hall and she spun round to look at him, eyes bright and her expression open and trusting.
Luca blinked to dispel the weird ache that had kick-started inside him.
‘I’ll tell you everything you want to know about my country,’ he said smoothly, ‘on the condition that you tell me why you don’t get out of here, or have I misinterpreted what you said earlier on?’
‘You haven’t and that’s fair enough.’ She smiled hesitantly and pulled the ponytail over one shoulder to distractedly play with it, twirling gold strands of hair between her fingers. She had so many questions she wanted to ask him that she didn’t quite know where to begin.
And she could tell him so much about herself and why not? Her father wouldn’t be back for another few hours. He was off fishing. And this man who had catapulted into her small, predictable world was so compelling.
Where was the harm in talking to him? It wasn’t as though he were going to be around for much longer and it had been such a long time since she had talked, really talked, to a guy, to anyone. For ever. Her brother. That was how long it had been. So many years just plodding along, quietly doing what she had to do, without fuss, keeping her loneliness to herself.
Where was the harm in opening up, now, to this stranger...?
CHAPTER TWO
HE DIDN’T PHONE his father or his PA or anyone else for three days and when he did, it was to inform them that he had decided to take a slightly extended
