‘And I’ve contributed in my own, small way.’ He reached down to a cloth bag on the ground and when she looked inside, she saw two bottles of champagne.
‘Wow.’
‘If you’re going to do something, then you don’t do it in half measures.’
‘But champagne... It must have cost a fortune.’
‘I won’t worry about the price tag if you don’t.’
‘I like that,’ she confided as they began heading out towards where her boat was anchored just off the jetty.
‘What?’
‘The fact that you’re so carefree.’ She slid her eyes across to him and drank in the lean beauty of his face. His hair was longer than when she’d brought him back to the house, curling at the nape of his neck.
‘I don’t think anyone has ever described me as carefree before,’ Luca commented with complete honesty. ‘Frankly, it’s not a description I would ever have used for myself.’
‘Wouldn’t you? Why not?’ She glanced at him, smiling, then began the business of getting the boat ready for them while he watched and admired her quiet efficiency, doing something she had probably done a million times before. It was compulsive viewing. She was wearing some cut-off jeans and a striped tee shirt. He could just about make out the heavy swing of her breasts as she expertly loosened the boat from its mooring, bringing it into position for them. She had braided her hair into one long plait that fell down the centre of her spine like rope.
‘You’re here,’ she pointed out, steadying the boat and then half jumping on board without really looking where she put her feet because the manoeuvre was so familiar. ‘You’re not rushing off to do anything. You know how to slow down. So many people don’t, although I guess if you’re going to slow down, then this is the perfect place to do it and the perfect time, given what you went through.’
Cordelia watched as he hit the deck as confidently as she had. When he suggested he sail the boat, she found herself instantly agreeing because something inside her trusted his expertise, which was contrary to everything she had been brought up to believe.
‘Everyone thinks they know what to do when it comes to boats,’ her father had told both her and her brother when they were young. ‘Don’t trust anyone with a throttle, a rudder, a tiller or an engine unless they can produce a captain’s licence. It’s easy to get out of your depth when it comes to handling a boat, and out at sea, that could be fatal. I’ll make sure the pair of you know exactly what to do when you get on a boat. If anyone gets on with you and asks for a go, tell them to get lost.’
She gave directions, sat back and tilted her face up to the sun.
‘Do you ever slow down?’ Luca murmured, obeying directions, enjoying the speed of the boat as it sliced through the water to the hidden bay she had told him about, enjoying even more the feel of her next to him, her body warmed from the sun, the hairs on her hands white-blonde in the sun.
‘Only when I do this,’ she replied, eyes still closed. ‘Or when I go swimming. I slow right down when I go swimming. Especially if I go swimming at night.’
‘At night...and you don’t get scared?’
‘Of what? I know everything there is to know about the tides around here. I’d never swim if there was a hint of a current, but if the water’s calm, then there’s something about being in it when it’s dark. I can think.’
They’d arrived at the bay. It was deserted and protected by dense shrubbery and tangled trees. The sand was very white and, when they stepped out onto it, already warm from the sun.
‘What do you think about?’
Cordelia looked at him and couldn’t look away. She’d thought long and hard about what to tell him about herself and, in the end, had said very little. She was ever so slightly in awe of him. He was like a bright, tropical bird of paradise, blown in on the winds, and every time she had felt that urge to confide, she had been overcome by a surge of shyness.
‘This and that.’ She shrugged and broke eye contact to set up a little picnic area in the shade of one of the overhanging trees. When she turned round to look at him, he had divested himself of his tee shirt and was staring out at the horizon with his back to her.
Her heart sped up. He was a few inches taller than her and perfectly proportioned. Broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, lean-hipped. He’d shoved his hands into the pockets of his shorts. He’d asked her what she’d been thinking but now she wished she could see into his head, find out what he was thinking. His life in Italy sounded idyllic. ‘Vineyards,’ he had told her, waving aside more in-depth questioning, as though working on a vineyard was something she couldn’t possibly find that interesting.
‘Grapes...’ he had shrugged, when she breathlessly asked for details ‘...that’s pretty much all there is to say on the subject of vineyards. Grapes. You either eat them or you turn them into wine. I’m involved in the latter option.’
She was still shamelessly gawping when he spun round to look at her and she reddened.
‘Tell me you’re not going to spend the day in jeans and a tee shirt,’ he encouraged with a grin. ‘Did you bring a swimsuit or do you have plans on skinny dipping?’
Cordelia made a strangled sound under her breath and hastily got rid of her jeans and tee shirt to reveal a sensible black whole piece. Skinny dipping? The thought alone brought her out in a cold sweat.
‘Ah, swimming costume.
